it was the 4th of July?
So goes the pitiful cry in the “X” version of Dave Alvin's classic song. Like the brokenhearted and disillusioned couple in the song We The People have for the most part forgotten it was the 4th of July. How can this be when half-witted talking heads invoke the founding fathers on the ubiquitous television tabloids on a daily basis. The History Channel gives us biographies of our favorite historical figures complete with lurid details. Republicans constantly revile Democrats as feckless elitists without any shred of patriotic honor (what this has to do with tax-cuts, I have no idea). For their part Democrats paint all Republicans as Fascists bent on dismantling the Constitution. There are American flags on every second vehicle or front porch in the nation. Founding fathers, heroes, patriotism, the Constitution and Old Glory in our face 24 hours a day, seven days a week, how in the Hell could we have forgotten it was the 4th of July?
We are constantly bombarded with the ideas and images we became familiar with in our grade school history books, but today these ideas and images aren't embedded in a context that makes feel as good as they did when we were children and they came packaged in stories of heroism, honor and sacrifice. Even as children we understood that as Americans we were heirs to this legacy. Hearing these stories as a child was almost like being at the reading of a will and learning you had been left a fortune. Today we usually hear these ideas used in a divisive way. If our flag is knotted and wrapped around the neck of the American People it is no longer a symbol of freedom and justice but an implement of torture. If our historic figures are presented as human being, they will become less heroic. These figures themselves may have preferred to have remained men and women, but as a nation we need to keep them as legends. My God, please don't tell me that this glorious trust fund is bankrupt.
I literally forgot that it was the 4th of July in 1989. I was road weary after traveling with my wife and our friends Jennie and Paul across the English Channel and then down to Tour, France where we sat in a Moroccan restaurant. The young French-Moroccan woman who waited on us at some point during the meal asked if we were British or American. Paul having just a bit more French than me replied that we were both as he was an Englishman and the remainder of the party was American. This greatly excited the girl and in broken English she wished us a “Happy Freedom” and rambled something about a lake. As we were walking down the street after dinner enjoying the perfect weather, a red, white and blue poster caught our collective eye. Now this being France and only days before their 200th Bastille Day red, white and blue posters and decorations were no rare items, but this one had its header in English and sported stars and the arm and torch of Lady Liberty. It read, “Independence Day, Fete Nationale Americaine, 4 Juillet 1989, Lac de Tours.” Even the French remember it is the 4th of July.
The 4th of July, 1995 is the one that I will never forget. My wife and I had just moved into a house in Jennifer Garner's old neighborhood in Charleston, West Virgina. It was a 1940s brick structure of American eclectic style with a lead lined bomb shelter and a million dollar view of the city below. I had hooked up the new gas grill and we were hanging out with our closest friends in town, another successful but artsy couple. We ate roasted ears of corn,drank pinot noir and shot bottlerockets from Sam Adams' bottles.
When darkness crept up the hillside we walked down to the end of the street to get a better angle on the fireworks which were to be fired from the bridge spanning the Kanawha River. Already there were cars lining the road which curled up from the valley to our neighborhood. By looking at the cars I don't suspect that most of the folks who had parked along the roadside could afford a home on the hill. Don't get me wrong the cars were not trashy as West Virginia has a fairly strict vehicle inspection program. They were just the sensible cars and trucks of the working poor.
Soon the street and the little public green were full of people talking, laughing and smoking. Playing with their children and saying, “they are about to start, looky there Travis they are going to start shooting them directly.” One of Charleston's police officers was there to direct the through traffic of the locals and to clear a parking space for the enterprising pizza delivery boy who showed up with a car full of pizzas. The officer even purchased a few and passed the slices out to the humanity closest to him. There was a still anticipation as the synchronized musical score started to echo up the rocky cliff face. Whoosh, pop, bang and Ahaaaa. The pyrotechnics bloomed at eye level as we stood on that hill and watched the most glorious waste of money. Red, green, sparkling blue and the concussive variety that only flash before thumping your chest with a deep, BOOM.
After the finale when the music faded and the crowd clapped their appreciation to the artist over a mile away who could not hear them, some inspired soul sang out the words, “God bless America.” That was as far as the lone voice got through the song before he was joined by the choir of a few hundred standing on that hill. This wasn't something orchestrated from without. It was the type of spontaneous brotherhood that I have so often witnessed in Appalachia. Where a poverty of the wallet is never mistaken for poverty of the soul and where freedom and liberty are understood to be by-products of mercy not prizes that can be purchased on their own. These people never forget. The Statue of Liberty was never so moving a sight as the black cop holding a white child holding a slice of pepperoni pizza silhouetted against a 4th of July fireworks.
Dry your tears baby and take a walk outside,
it's the 4th of July
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