On the Fourth of July my wife Peg, and our son Jim, along with his wife Gina and our granddaughter Elyse spent the long daylight hours anticipating the nighttime fireworks extravaganzas to be exploded by generous patriotic citizens. I have been amazed since I was a boy at how much effort, time and money ordinary Americans expend to celebrate our Independence. Whereas we boys spent our lawn-mowing money on cherry bombs and Roman candles, municipalities and businesses light up the heavens with spectacular displays of bursting pyrotechnics.
We younger celebrants might spend scant time ruminating on the glories of America’s military history, but we did join in by dueling with imaginative ways of blowing up almost every conceivable container. The resulting burnt fingers and blurred vision were just part of the experience. Of course, every now and then some fool would experiment by flushing cherry bombs down a commode or setting off grass fires with T.N.T.’s.
Regardless, everyone loves to see exploding displays that call forth our good fortune to have been born in the U.S.A. We may not long dwell on the true reason for the Fourth of July but we all drink deeply of the fireworks that commemorate it. That is what whet our anticipation as we endured the long daylight waiting to ooh and ahh over the upcoming displays.
That was why when Mother Nature let us know who really was in charge, we experienced profound disappointment. The huge, powerful storm that began just as darkness finally arrived almost drowned out our enthusiasm for sitting outside to see the explosive shows. However, as all Americans, we refused to give up on our yearly celebration, especially on this 250th year of Freedom.
And, in the Mexican restaurant where we had stopped to eat as we endured the wait for darkness outside, inside the lights went out when the lightening began to strike and the thunder roared. A group of Gulf and Iraq War veterans were trapped inside with us; they sat at the bar and faced the raging storm just as they did the wars. And when our son introduced himself as a fellow combat veteran, they started yelling and congratulating him as Toby Keith’s song Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue began to play loudly from one of the vet’s cell phones. The whole dining room sang along as Gina and Elyse led the music. If you know the lyrics, you do not need me to recite all of them. But the core message is:
♪ American girls and American guys
We’ll always stand up and salute
We’ll always recognize
When we see Old Glory flying
There’s a lot of men dead
So we can sleep in peace at night when we lay down our head. ♪
The whole restaurant of strangers spontaneously sang to America in the dark as the storm raged outside. The 4th of July emotion filled the house.
So, as sheets of rain and blowing winds did their best to dampen our spirits, we just got into the car and searched for others as reckless and determined as we were to see the great show. What we found were that adults were as determined as we boys used to be to celebrate our nation’s birthday, even in the face of flooded roads, falling trees and incessant lightning strikes. It became a game entered into voluntarily, if ignorantly, by virtually every person who could get a pyrotechnic device to light between acts of death-defying recklessness.
As I drove the five of us around in search of fireworks displays, we found countless descendants of our Founding Fathers who, also, refused to be intimidated just by a little thing like death and destruction. Now, Gentle Reader, I do not claim that good judgment prevailed, but I know we sure had a lot of fun and felt very patriotic.
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