July 4 Post

I've never cared much for fireworks. This may go back to the Bicentennial day, July 4, 1976, the only real memory I have of which was of going to the enormous fireworks display in Washington, D.C. sometime in the afternoon and sitting on a blanket on a hillside for hours and hours in the middle of a crowd of thousands of people waiting for the event to begin, and then at the end of it the ordeal of walking back to the car amidst that crowd for what seemed like forever. In retrospect, I guess it was too much for a six year old. My fondest memories of fireworks are of setting up a chair in the street in front of my grandparents' house during the years between 1985 and 1990 or so and watching the display from one of the parks in nearby Northeast Philadelphia, which was visible over the trees and telephone wires at the end of the street that formed the horizon. No crowd, I guess. In some recent years we have gone to York Beach in Maine where they shoot the fireworks off from a barge out in the ocean. Those days are fun, and my children like them, but logistically I don't find them enjoyable, finding parking, trying to feed a lot of people when everyplace is so crowded (yes, we bring a lot of food with us, but it's never enough), getting out again at night, being envious of the adults in the bars and nicer restaurants I am walking by. These are my associations with fireworks. A more hard-bitten critic would take them apart on some grounds of stupidity at the idea of gawking at a display of lights being shot into the air, and I admit that I do wonder what, if any, appeal these shows have to other people's minds, but if my family members like them, for whatever reason, I cannot bring myself to go full H. L. Mencken on them for the sake of trying to win points with some imaginary public or group of people that is going to then welcome me into their exalted society.


The other day I went to a store and the girl at the cash register had so many piercings around her mouth that were filled with rather sharp jewels that I realized you couldn't very well kiss this person on the mouth comfortably even if you were the sort to take liberties with little concern for any adverse consequences. But I haven't seen anyone complaining about this or writing about it being a problem from an actual kissing standpoint so the people who do kiss these girls obviously have worked the matter out.


Some people online were challenging themselves for the Fourth of July to list 50 reasons why they're glad to be an American. While I probably don't need to do this, as there is a lot of evidence on my blogs that I am something of a patriot, lists of 50 tend to be a challenge to come up with, and it is sometimes worthwhile to write things out in an organizing, clarifying way.


That said, there is a difference between "things I like about America" which is the way I instinctively began filling out the list, and "reasons I'm glad to be an American", which implies the condition "as opposed to something else" and is a little more difficult, and even prosaic, to express.


1. The United States is, for everything that is unserious about it, still an important country, at the center of many of the great movements and events of the time, not for the most part a backwater, and while I am not as connected as intimately with these exciting things as might have been hoped for, I am not as completely shut off from them as some people, even among our own citizenry are, either.


2. It is unlikely that the country is going to be invaded and occupied by an especially vicious, genocidal foreign army within my lifetime (I think). Some think the internal oppression will be ratcheted up to ever-increasing levels of dominance and humiliation and the like, but I don't consider matters to be at that point yet. I actually just missed crashing into 2 moose at 60 miles an hour on a dark road last Saturday night, which might have killed me off without a government domestic or foreign having to lift a finger.


3. Obviously I think our "mainstream" history, traditions, arts and literature, etc, are actually rather inspiring, and being somewhat immersed in/part of the continuity of this has always been something I've taken pleasure in.


I'm already worn out after three responses.


4. I personally found many aspects of my schooling experience, both at the high school and college level, to be highly rewarding, but I am aware that most people do not share in these positive associations, and there are indications that the quality of the experience in many instances is not as satisfying as it often was formerly.


5. I have not managed to travel in the wide open spaces of the country as much as I would have liked to do, and perhaps I would be disillusioned if I were to take the trip someday, but the romance of the idea is powerful, and even though I have never been near places like Texas, Arizona, Kansas, California, et al, and geographically they have nothing in common with where I have lived all my life, I still feel that the mythology associated with them is something I have some claim to.


6. American women are often maligned, though I think the real problem for most men is that if you are not yourself a winner in some way you don't have a lot of opportunity to come across the more attractive ones with pleasing personalities because they do not linger long in dead end, non-happening type situations (because they don't have to), and this does contribute to a sense of cultural desolation that I think is under-rated. Much of the country is almost more haunted at this point than elevated by their existence, or the idea of it, but without the idea, what do you have?


7. Football (and by extension baseball and basketball, but 1970s football was the first sport I took an interest in). While I prefer the 1960s and 70s version of it, and despite all of the highly publicized long term downsides to playing the sport, I do still kind of love it. It was the game I played most in my childhood, and to be outside at the onset of autumn as well as its gloomy end still calls up images of the old field set surrounded by the townhouses in the development where I lived, with the sidelines marked by the back fences of the houses on one side and the playground equipment on the other, and the silver electrical box marking the right corner of the goal line in the enclosed end of the stadium...


Going back to #6, do American men give up on enjoying life earlier than men in other places because of the difficulty/inaccessibility of interacting socially with charming women? It seems that they might.


I'm going on vacation for a week, and I'm not going to get to 50 by the end of the night anyway. There is enough here to make a posting though.