Fourth of July #244
For a ten-year old boy growing up in Albuquerque, New Mexico, waiting for the Fourth of July was almost as painful as waiting for Christmas Day. I can still feel the rivers of sweat rolling down my back, days before the Fourth, as I surreptitiously crept into our darkened garage and searched until I found the hiding place where my father had stashed a bundle of fireworks that he had so carefully selected. I was along on the acquisition trip and I still recall the cost — $10.65, way more than he had ever spent before and a good deal over my mother’s admonition, “No more than ten dollars this year, you know we can’t afford it.”
Many days before the Big Night I would creep into the garage and carefully re-examine the goods. Oh the joy! The glee of anticipating those mysterious treasures brought all the way from China. How did they ever figure out how to mix the magic that spewed every color of the rainbow? The pinwheels — large and small, nailed to a fencepost—trailing a river of sparks that brought squeals of delight from the entire gallery. Snakes — ugly little black wads that grew and grew into long black turds just by touching them with a lighted match — they left black stains on the sidewalk for months afterward. Oh the joy! Bottle rockets, Roman Candles, Black cats and Ladyfingers. There was usually an M-80 or two in some kid’s pocket so before the night was over everybody got the bejesus scared out of them. Those things were LOUD.
In thinking back to those unbearably hot days of July leading up to the absolute best day of summer vacation — the Fourth of July and all its attendant excitement — I am struck this year by the different feel of our national holiday. Patriotism and love of country still abounds of course, but it seems somehow tired and a bit false — forced into a viral vise; far from the joyous expressions we learned as schoolchildren and were happy to recite with hand over heart.
Our nation is challenged this season and nothing is as it was.
One year my dizzy cousin set down a lighted sparkler on a TV tray where the entire evening’a supply of sparklers had been laid out for the kids. Suddenly a terrible mini-show of sparks flew everywhere in an eruption of colors and flame and cascades of that familiar acrid smoke — no time or presence of mind to try to salvage any of the sparklers so we all just watched the pile burn itself into a molten mountain of charred wire sticks, a ruined TV tray, plenty of tears and blame and awful silence in realization that a big chunk of our evening’s fun was up in smoke. 
But then somebody got busy and fired up some fuses.
Those mysterious volcanic cones (some more than a foot tall), and pinwheels, and whistlers, and rockets and snakes and firecrackers of every kind and calibre were still safe (‘tho never sane) and the show DID go on that year as every year —my dad made sure of it because he loved the pyrotechnics as much as any kid. There were lots of friends and neighbors and aunts and uncles and cousins around — top-notch steaks on the grill for the grown-ups, burgers and hot dogs and corn on the cob for the kids and plenty of cold watermelon for everybody. There was beer, lots of really, really cold beer for the adults and oceans of soda pop for the kids. Nobody wore a mask.
People brought stuff. Tons of stuff. Food or fireworks or booze or whatever. The fountains and pinwheels colored the sky from dusk until well after normal bedtime. There was always a master of ceremonies, somebody to light the punk then light the fuses. More often than not it was my old man.
At dusk the grown-ups arranged their flimsy folding chairs in a sloppy semi-circle, The kids didn’t need chairs, they couldn’t sit still for a million bucks and were in constant motion, selecting and carrying a never-ending supply of fresh ammo to the chief-fuse-lighter.
It was different this year. The pall of smoke and ash smelled about the same as aways — thicker as the night wore on, of course, Fresno is like that. There were thousands of reckless fools shooting their guns of gang initiation into the air all night, oblivious to the danger that each one of the slugs sent into the summer night must eventually come back to earth, they called no cease-fire. It sounded like a week in Syria — the constant din of an all-out war. At around 9:45 on any Fourth of July night, the decibels flowing up from many miles away were a staccato symphony of cracks and pops and booms of every description.
The air was alive, Some genuine fireworks, others pistols and rifles maybe a shotgun or two. Always illegal, yet somehow passably faithful to the idea of America. This year was Ominous. Louder and longer and deeper in timbre, Angry booms and blasts were meaner this time, more threatening. Closer. Yes, they meant something else. There was real anger in those thundering blasts sent echoing in all directions. The rage built-up against an unseen and misunderstood villainous virus found its voice on July fourth. It was unsettling.
I often turn to Hillaire Belloc to cloak in elegance that which is deeply felt yet impossible to get down in words. There is a Barbarian at our gates in this blue season of discontent, yet stubbornly we fail to recognize him or his grail. Belloc: “The Barbarian hopes — and that is the very mark of him — that he can have his cake and eat it too. He will consume what civilization has slowly produced after generations of selection and effort, but he will not be at pains to replace such goods nor indeed has he a comprehension of the virtue that has brought them into being. Discipline seems to him irrational, on which account he is forever marveling that civilization should have offended him with priests and soldiers. [and statues]
“In a word, the Barbarian is discoverable everywhere in this that he cannot make; that he can befog or destroy, but that he cannot sustain; and of every Barbarian in the decline or peril of every civilization exactly that has been true. We sit by and watch the Barbarian; we tolerate him; in the long stretches of peace we are not afraid. We are tickled by his irreverence, his comic inversion of our old certitudes and our fixed creeds refreshes us: we laugh. But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond: and on these faces there is no smile.“
Happy Independence Day. Will there be a 245th?