July 4 Remembered

By Doug McReynolds

July 4, 2026

 “I am apt to believe that [Independence Day] will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.”

                                                                                                                                                John Adams

The day would begin, as all July days began, in a heat that had not ceased to be oppressive all night long and would become stultifying by mid-morning.  But when we awoke, tangled among damp bed sheets at a quarter of six on that day, our faces already pressed close to the window screen through which no breeze came, we could sense an immense energy flowing up out of the prairie and filling our bodies with a sense of urgency my brother and I felt on no other day of the year, not even a birthday.  It smelled of alfalfa and elm trees.  We would breathe deeply of it once, and become so filled with awareness, with anticipation of the day and the night to come that to lie longer in bed would be unendurable, the slight pressure of sheet and mattress against our skin intolerable.  We were up and dressed before we thought about it, so when our father came into our room to drone his daily “Rise and shine!” at six o’clock we would be ready for him:  one of us would spring from inside the closet, the other from behind the bedroom door, and we startled him every year.

This was the day we flew the flag.  There would be no work today apart from routine chores.  Eggs had to be gathered, of course, and livestock fed and watered, but that was all.  There would be no hoeing, no mowing, no picking of hornworms off the tomato plants or potato beetles off the potato plants, no picking up rocks, no fetch-and-carrying for the neighbors who traded work with our father.  Today was for a picnic.  Today was for fireworks.

It was a day of rituals, and the first of them was hanging the flag.  Mother would haul it out of the living room closet; my brother and I would unfold it carefully, reverently, lest any corner of it touch the ground, the two of us backing slowly apart as the starred triangle grew almost magically into a long, thin rectangle, then a wider one, and finally into the Stars and Stripes.  Then our father, who was tall enough, hung it from hooks above the front porch, and we always checked to make sure he had got the stars in the upper right hand corner, where they belonged, and he always had.  The flag could be seen from the road, and we imagined people from all over driving past our farm just to look at it.  It would hang until sunset, then be put away with the same care as had been given it in the morning, as though it or what it represented might somehow be broken if we were careless.

Our mother would begin frying chicken early.  Always chicken.  Fried chicken, baked beans, potato salad and cherry pie:  the menu was as sacred as the flag or the fireworks.  Chicken met special occasion; beans meant picnic.  Potato salad was for summer, and cherry pie for George Washington.  She would be through by lunch time, but no one wanted much lunch.  If we opened the refrigerator door during the afternoon, though, either to reach for the milk jug or simply to stand for a moment in the cool air, there would be the varied and aromatic smells of onions and mustard and chives melding into the one ambrosial smell that means the salad has finally set long enough.  We would have to sample the salad two or three times during the afternoon just to make sure it was aging properly, and it always was.

Immediately after lunch, for it was not possible to wait longer, came the first fireworks, the snakes.  We were not allowed firecrackers, and we did not miss them.  Snakes were exciting, and they left black spots on the sidewalk that would remind of us of this day all year long.  They would burn and fizz and pop and grow and curl, and no firework could be more satisfying during the daytime.  When we got tired of them, we would burn three or four together for novelty, or drop them into a pail of water to see how long they would continue burning.

When the snakes were done, there was nothing to do but wait. 

Then, at seven o’clock, the picnic.  A blanket would be spread out in the shade of an elm tree in the front yard, the food would appear, and lemonade beside it; we would eat magnificently off of paper plates with plastic forks so there would be fewer dishes to wash later.  It was always hard to leave enough room for pie, but we always managed.  Then the clearing away, the taking down of the flag, and the nighttime fireworks.

The nighttime fireworks.  I will never again see such an awesome, breathtaking display of light and color as was generated on those evenings in our front yard, and I am reconciled to that.  The energy which had breathed into us out of the prairie in the morning had been gathering itself all day, biding its time, defining itself, awaiting the opportunity to express itself suitably and memorably and gloriously.  In the fireworks were its opportunity, and our dreams.

First came the sparklers, boxes of them, and the twilight deepened to night while we stared and swung our arms and cupped our hands to catch hot stars and wrote our names on the air.  Then it was fully dark, and out came the Roman candles.  Then the cones called flower pots, which sprayed showers of orange sparks so high and so wide that the still, blue air turned solid behind them, and, when they were finally spent, we could continue to see where each falling spark had etched itself into that palpable night.

But even this was only prelude.  My brother and I, our little sisters, our parents, the energy of the day and of the night:  all was gathering to one circle of light so intense that it illuminates our lives even now.  We could feel it coming to a head as the last sparks faded in our sight.

There was a telephone pole where the dirt road below turned up into our lane, and Father would walk down to that pole, alone, with a step ladder, a hammer, a nail and a pinwheel.  He would tack the pinwheel to the pole just as high up as he could reach from the ladder, and then he would light its fuse and run back to us.  The wheel would spin and spin, and the red and green and blue and yellow fires would fuse into white, and we would watch, and our eyes would shine and we, watching, knew that the world was good, that our dreams must come true and that nothing could ever make us truly unhappy.

When we moved to town things changed.  I believe, though, that some tattered shred of pinwheel remains these decades later, tacked to that telephone pole at the end of the lane that led up to our home.  I know that such a one was there when we left the farm, because I looked at it as we drove away.  I see it today in the mind’s eye, and it spins, and it gathers strength, and its colors fuse into a white hot circle, and I am secure in the certainty of all good things to come.

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