Best 4th Cookout / Cook-in Story?

What's your best 4th of July cookout, cook-in, BBQ or whatever get together story.

I think mine was about 30+ years ago. Decided we were going to have a big get together for the 4th. I built a BBQ special for this event by cutting a 55 gal. drum in half and welding some angle iron inside and getting some expanded metal grating to use for grates. It was pretty crude, no hinges on the lid, etc., but it was huge. The plan was we were going to cook my favorite chicken (which is pretty much your standard chicken parts marinated in Wishbone Italian dressing). I think we had about 60-70 people over. Got a full keg of beer and iced it down in about a pickup load full of ice and a few bottles of Jack.

I'd gone to some bulk meat store and gotten chicken, a WHOLE LOT of chicken! Chicken was cheap, so it was right up my alley. But then I had to figure out how to marinate all that chicken. I sacrificed one of my coolers and trimmed all that chicken up, dumped it in the cooler with a bunch of ice and poured in more bottles of Wishbone Italian dressing than I cold count.

Party was rockin', even my folks and their friends were dancin' to the beats on somebody's truck stereo. Lit up about 5-6 bags of charcoal on the new BBQ (fully burned out and sterilized first), and man, we had one hell of a fire going to cook chicken!

Had a great time, which lasted late into the 'morning' of the 5th. Ate about 40 lbs. of chicken and sent tons home with people, cooked tons of marinated shrimp, veggies, corn and other stuff. Laughed, told all manner of tall tales, drank gallons of beer and whisky...ate more chicken. Must have went through about 300 lbs of ice that 4th, but everything stayed cold. Even had cold beer (not much) left the next morning to take the edge off.

The one thing I'll never forget was that homemade BBQ grill and the cooler I used for the chickens to marinate. Kept both of them for years and years, but never had another big gig like that one (a couple close, but not so big).

Reminded of this story because the wife and I are doing some marinated chicken tonight on the "barbie".

Same method, much less chaos and fanfare, but still the same recipe.

She made her famous corn salad (which I requested), (that stuff is 'jump off your roof...GOOD!') Some nice BBQ sauce when the yard birds come off the grill...ALL GOOD!!!

Back fifteen years ago and before we would have big BBQs. Today for the fourth we decided to make an old time favorite that the wife and I have not had in over twenty some years...Hamburger helper. Yup, it is still as bad as it was before.

Oh well, hot dogs and corn on the cob on the grill tomorrow with some boiled baby reds. Kids do not come over much anymore, they got their own families and lives.