The Fourth of July is an important holiday, not so much for its historic meaning as for its local interpretation. For days previously, the skies are anxiously scanned for signs of inclement weather. As the Glorious Fourth dawns a salute is fired, usually by ex-servicemen, and soon in the early morning air the sound of hammers is heard, as booths and "concessions" rapidly go up to be draped with bunting. Flags appear on the buildings and homes. Cars begin to pour into town, parking near Main Street, which has been roped off for the races. The square is soon filled with a milling crowd, all in their best clothes, the children clutching their long-hoarded pennies and nickels which they will exchange for soda pop, ice cream, and firecrackers. The program of the day includes patriotic speeches, airplane and parachute exhibits, races, and bowery dances, and in the evening the climax of the exciting day--a fireworks display. The Russo-Germans know the holiday simply as "the July," and in a good year it is an occasion for new clothes for the entire family, commonly designated "July dresses" and "July suits." Conviviality often joins with practical necessity to provide social occasions for North Dakotans. Butchering, sausage making, soap making, quilting, threshing, burials, illness, all furnish opportunity for friends to meet and visit while performing some deed of necessity or kindness. The farmer who is ill during sowing time will often have his crop put in by his neighbors, and he may be called on in the fall to help harvest for the recently bereaved widow of one of his friends. The neighbor who has lost his home by fire or has had some other misfortune will probably be given a "make-glad" party, at which he will receive gifts in kind and perhaps in money. After harvest, when there is straw to be burned, the young people of the locality will hold strawstack parties, roasting wieners and marshmallows as the burning stacks light the autumn night with their red gleam. Sometimes, with the coming of dusk on winter evenings, bobsleighs slide away from darkened country homes, filled with all the members of the family, from grandparents down to babies. Often the sleigh will pick up additional passengers at a nearby homestead, and sometimes it becomes so crowded that there is scarcely room for the boxes of sandwiches, carefully wrapped cakes, and jars of pickles among the shuffling feet and heated rocks and bricks in the bottom of the sleigh. The singing creak of the sleigh runners accompanies songs that boom out on the night air. Presently a number of sleighs reach an appointed home, but they do not pause long. Across the fields the light of a farmhouse window offers a prelude to their welcome. They become studiously quiet until they reach the door, then burst in with shouts of "Surprise!" There follows a confusion of greetings and commands: "Get a lantern."