Fourth of July

  • I’m going to be relieved when tonight’s fire­works bonanza hap­pens (cour­tesy of “Crazy Jimmy the Rock­et­man.” Why is it fire­works sales­guys always have to be crazy? Would peo­ple not think they were get­ting a bar­gain from “Mildly Dis­turbed Fred” or “Sort of Odd Sid”?). This is one of those areas where you can buy real fire­works — as opposed to the city and desert regions, where you’ll get busted if you so much as draw a pic­ture of one — and so the rev­elry has been going on for about a week. The whole town has sounded like a giant bowl of Rice Krispies, as fire­crack­ers are jubi­lantly lit and run away from. And those annoy­ing scream­ing Petes hap­pen from time to time as well. EEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!! I don’t know who first thought up those things, but I’m bet­ting they were deaf and thought it was a fine bit of karmic pay­back. (“Lis­ten to this, morons!”)

    Was this what John Adams had in mind?
    He wrote to Abigail:

    “I believe that it will be cel­e­brated by suc­ceed­ing gen­er­a­tions as the great anniver­sary fes­ti­val. It ought to be cel­e­brated by pomp and parade, with shows, games, guns, bells, bon­fires, and illu­mi­na­tions from one end of this con­ti­nent to the other.”

    (If you’re a fan of the movie “1776″, this inter­est­ing bit of trivia is immor­tal­ized in Adams’ song “Does Any­body See What I See?” I love that movie.)

    So did he pre­dict it or did his sen­ti­ments help bring it about? Or did he just have a darned good idea? The fine upstand­ing peo­ple of the newly free colonies were prob­a­bly much more will­ing to go with this vision because it also sounded like a roar­ing good time. If Adams had told Abi­gail that he could clearly see the day when the Fourth would be cel­e­brated with hop­scotch tour­na­ments and the wear­ing of blue pants, they might have been more polite and the prophecy would go unfulfilled.

    Oops, the sky is now one-tenth of one degree darker than it was when I started, so we’ve got­ten our first boom! Bet­ter lis­ten to what­ever music I want to now before the per­cus­sion gets more regular.

    It’s a good hol­i­day, so thanks, Mr. Adams. But thanks also for not hav­ing a vision of it being a week long.


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    July 4th, 2006 | Grace | No Comments |

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