418. What we really do on the Fourth.

BROWDERBOOKS

Silas and me at the Brooklyn Book Festival, 2018.
We'll be there again this year.  Maybe my hair will be combed.

Three bits of news:

1.  I have signed a contract with a self-publishing service to publish my next nonfiction title.  This is a step into the unknown, or at least the unfamiliar.  More of this as things progress.

2.  A self-styled word witch in Arizona will interview me next December.  Having never been to  New York, she asked me for a paragraph about why New York is special.  Here is what I gave her, well aware that New York is not for everyone:

What ties my blog and my nonfiction titles together is my love of New York.  This is a very special place, noisy, congested, and turbulent, but also wonderfully diverse and creative.  We New Yorkers know all the city’s faults, but we love it anyway and couldn’t live anywhere else.  We’re doers, we walk fast, we think fast.  (“The pace of New York!” was the immediate observation of a friend of mine, on her first visit to the city.)  While the rest of the country talks sports, we talk opera, theater, film, dance, and art, and are glad to have more than our share of them.  Going down the street, we sense energy and determination, and are grateful to be living in the most exciting city in the world.  It’s wild, it’s big, it’s crazy, it’s always changing yet always the same, it’s New York.

3.  Readers' Favorite reviews has given The Eye That Never Sleeps two five-star reviews and three four-star reviews.  My publisher is of the opinion that these reviews are of little value, but I disagree.   This brings up the subject of how "pay to play," so reviled in politics, has become the norm in indie publishing, meaning the world of small presses and self-publishing.  I will discuss this matter in a future post.  It's complicated.

For more about my books, go here.


      What did we do on the Fourth?

So what did we do on the Fourth?  The answers are in – about twenty of them, enough to draw some conclusions.  (One person I queried declined to answer, perhaps puzzled by my intentions.)  Nobody entered Nathan's traditional hot-dog-eating contest on Coney Island, and for that I am grateful.  

But few of us were patriotic as Tammany politico G. Washington Plunkitt understood the word, since he mentioned sitting in a hot, humid hall listening to a reading of the Declaration of Independence, followed by four hours of speeches and music, before the champagne- and beer-anointed Tammany celebration could begin in the basement of Tammany Hall.  So here are our ways of doing the Fourth, presented in categories.  Admittedly, these categories are arbitrary, since a given answer may fall into two or three of them.  I’ll use the category that seems most relevant.

TRAVEL

Yes, some of us were traveling on the Fourth, which meant that little by way of celebrating could be done.

·      One friend was waiting with her husband at Calgary International Airport in Alberta, Canada, for a flight to New York, returning from a two-week visit to Japan and her native Taiwan.  She hoped the Fourth at the airport would be quiet.

·      Another friend was flying home to New Jersey after visiting his family in their favorite summer vacation spot, Traverse City, Michigan, which was hosting the National Cherry Festival, with cherries all over the place.  At Newark Airport he took a train to Bloomfield, New Jersey, where he and his partner have been living for a month, an hour’s commute from his job in New York.  They then had a grilled dinner on their building’s communal terrace, and from there watched fireworks at night.

·      Another friend was with her husband in Paris, with no special plans for the Fourth.  But inspired by me, she decided to read the Declaration.

RURAL  AND  SHORESIDE  DELIGHTS

Some of us were relaxing in the country, happy to be away from the city and its pressures and noise.

·      One friend was with her partner at their country house, hacking at the jungle of weeds in their garden, then taking a quick dip in their pool.  A light lunch, then a nap, then dinner in a nearby restaurant.  No interest in the nonsense being staged in Washington; hopes afternoon rains will descend on the presidential parade.A·      Another friend was staying with friends, “unplugged,” at a lake house that, ironically, belongs to a patrician English family.  Grilled hamburgers and sausages on the Fourth, and discussed but didn’t see fireworks.  Has also discovered an unexpected devotion to kayaking.   

•     A friend who lives on Staten Island went to the Fort Wadsworth Overlook and sat in the shade on a lawn chair, gazing out at all of New York harbor, with the city in the distance.  As she did so, she listened to a seaside concert of band music from several decades.

·      Another friend who lives on a little island off midcoast Maine announced that she would not be watching the “despicable man in Washington.”  Pressed further, she confessed to consuming a cold tuna salad and strawberry shortcake, followed which she watched a beautiful sunset and the fireworks of the towns along the coast, their noise sounding like distant thunder.  She also sent photos showing flags and bunting on display at her shop and on the front porch of a nearby guest house, which for me is a reminder of how the Fourth used to be celebrated, and maybe still is, in small towns throughout the country.

Hitchcock

Hitchcock

FAMILY

Yes, some of us hung out with family, whether a big clan or a small one.

·      One resident of Lincoln, Nebraska, went to a lake outside of town where his grandmother used to live, and visited with nieces and nephews, and lit fireworks by day and by night.  (Fireworks are legal in Nebraska on and around July 4.)  Result: sunburn.

·      A resident of Alexandria, Virginia, had a cookout on the Fourth with his partner, parents, siblings, and cousins by the dozens, prior to a big family reunion on July 6, some thirty strong.

NOTHING  MUCH

Some of us did little or nothing related to the Fourth.

·      A friend in Massachusetts said the only Fourth-related thing he and his partner did was to avoid Trump’s “Stalinist parade” on the Mall.  They don’t really observe any holiday.

·      A friend in North Carolina made banana nut bread on the Fourth, which he pronounced delicious, but otherwise did little else.

·      A resident of south Texas announced that she doesn’t celebrate holidays.

·      A friend in Brooklyn Heights went to a friend’s house in New Jersey for a barbecue, but then came back to the Heights and hid in his apartment, as his beloved Brooklyn Heights Promenade got overrun with people wanting to see the Macy’s fireworks.  He felt grumpy like a true New Yorker.

·      One friend ignored the holiday completely because his longtime partner had some kind of an attack and is now in the hospital for tests, unable to recognize his partner or remember his name.  Not a stroke or seizure, perhaps an infection.  My heart goes out to them both.

RARE  AND  SPECIAL

Some of us marked the holiday by doing something special and rare.

·      One friend went to a couple of friends’ barbecues, but also donated money to RAICES, a Texas nonprofit, in support of treating immigrants humanely at the border.  She feels queasy about celebrating the nation’s hypocrisies with regard to liberty past and present.

·      Another respondent and a friend saw three movies in three different theaters back to back, getting drinks or snacks near the theater entrances in between.

·      A cousin in Kokomo, Indiana, said that Kokomo celebrates its automotive heritage just as enthusiastically as it celebrates the nation’s birthday.  The Haynes-Apperson Festival celebrates local pioneers who claim with some credibility to have produced the first U.S. automobile (sorry, Henry Ford).  It fills the town square with booths selling food, and other vendors who rip kids off by luring them into playing silly games, while a nearby park becomes an elaborate carnival with all kinds of rides.  Located a quarter of mile away from the brouhaha, she avoided it at all costs, but took bran muffins to a friend recovering from surgery.  Otherwise, she hid.  But her husband, being a beer distributor, had no time off; his trucks ran all day.

·      Another Kokomo resident sat with family under a beach umbrella and did some reading at a nearby quarry that has a beach, and then did a few laps on jet skis, an aquatic motorcycle.

TRADITIONAL

For me, a traditional Fourth involves flags, a parade, and fireworks.  When I grew up in Evanston, Illinois, long ago, one of the family (me, when old enough) got out through a second-floor front window onto a little balcony, and placed an American flag in a holder designed to receive a flag pole.  This done, Old Glory flapped gloriously in the breeze, matching other flags flown by our neighbors.  There was nothing political involved; we just did this to celebrate Memorial Day and Independence Day.  Then there was a long and impressive parade that we watched on Central Street, and a magnificent display of fireworks at Dyke Stadium, the Northwestern University football stadium, that night.  Personal fireworks were still legal, but could not be sold in Evanston.  For them, you had to go north to No Man’s Land, a stretch of lakeside land not incorporated as a part of a town; there, free from local ordinances, fireworks aplenty could be had.  We lit sparklers that traced patterns of sparks when we waved them in the air at night; little sticks called snakes that, when lit, stretched out like tiny black snakes; and Zebra firecrackers, which popped and crackled wickedly.  Somehow we managed not to burn or blow ourselves up, but this was all small-time kid stuff compared to Dyke Stadium at night.  Only one respondent, maybe two, did anything approaching my memory of the Fourths of long ago.

·      On the afternoon of the Fourth, a friend in Lincoln, Nebraska, took her kids to a neighborhood party in a park   There the kids paraded down a sidewalk with decorated bikes and wagons, following which they ran in a sack race and tossed balloons.  In the evening she took them to their grandmother’s place and (quite legally) set off fireworks.

·      Another friend, based here in the city, had dinner with friends who live near the East River.  Then they went out to watch the traditional fireworks that were set off down around the Brooklyn Bridge.

         And what did I do?  After reading the Declaration (nine minutes), not much.  I made a note at the time, but I can’t find I, it must be lost into the sands of oblivion.  I cooked in, but I don’t remember what.  And I listened to classical music on WQXR, so I must have had a dose of Bach and Beethoven and Vivaldi, though I can’t be sure.

CONCLUSION

Most of us don’t celebrate the Fourth in the traditional, old-fashioned way.  Does that mean we aren’t patriotic?  I hesitate to say so.  Yes, maybe we take our freedom for granted.  But maybe just doing things that our society allows us to do, whether travel or relaxing in the country or kayaking or jet skiing or seeing movies or just loafing about, is a way of celebrating freedom.  Instead of talking about it, you just do it, you live it.

Coming soon:  Either something that happened 37 years ago, whose full significance I've just come to realize.  Or how "pay to play" has come to dominate indie publishing (and everything else, it would seem).  Or Lady Gaga: She makes Madonna look tame.

©  2019  Clifford Browder