“… A Fourth of July Weekend Reminiscence Meant to Lower the Discourse After Such Fine Independence Day Pieces by Front Porchers Kauffman and Salyer“

Rock Island, IL

Eight o’clock p.m., July 3, and I am home alone. Clear skies and sunshine pouring down once again like honey. Fireworks tonight over the river, to be admired by men and women of flesh and blood who live in a place but love an abstraction. Their very garb declares it. “These colors don’t run.” “Freedom isn’t free.” “God bless America” (and damn everyone else).

Nevertheless, I mount the bike and coast down the hill toward the river. Ain’t My America, but I do live here. Here, on this river, in this place, with these people, all of whom I love insofar as I can, and because I’m commanded to, though, truth be told, I’ll be hard pressed to find one I actually like.

Where once a riverboat docked (gambling money bankrolls our schools, where we admonish our children to be resourceful and self-reliant) a new park named for a former mayor has opened—opened this very day. The riverfront has been much improved, and I must see it. I must see the men and women and children, the wheelchairs and motorcycles, the bunting and the garb and the yellow ribbons that tell me to “support our troops” so long as that doesn’t mean “bring them home.”

I want to be here, to smell the corndogs and popcorn, hear the bands and the children laughing and shrieking and splashing in the new fountain their elders will one day tell them to leave behind. (Go places! The sky’s the limit!)

I want see the boats anchored on the river and the brave souls doing cannonballs off port and starboard, off stern and bow, into the mighty muddy Mississippi river as it rolls unsuspecting toward an oil spill.

O this mass of humanity! Every one of us loved of God and not a soul worthy of an angel’s fart. With their lawn chairs and blankets they come to the river. They drive their chevys to the levy, sit shoulder to shoulder in the late sun.

Listen to them laugh! See them eye one another, tell their children to quit running off, covet the wives and husbands of other men and women! I love them more than I know—and dislike them more by the minute. (Note to self: read a book on improving your charity in twelve easy steps.)

I head upstream, far from the madding crowd, and find two benches that look out at the water. I colonize one for myself.

Look at that river and the people cannon-balling into it! Someone should tell them—or do they already know?—that they can’t cannon-ball into the same river twice. How casually they do it—and yet with what relish! Maybe they don’t need to know or be told. Maybe they already know and don’t give a rat’s ass. Maybe I should just cannon-ball into it myself instead of looking out in this meditative hour and thinking about the flux of all things.

Emerson, you boorish orator with your flood of words and drop of sense! It’s all your fault! You’ve ruined me for everything but priggishness. Someone should have busted your Unitarian chops!

How the people do increase in number! The lawn chairs and blankets inch toward me like Burnham Wood to Dunsinane. I’m less alone than I’d hoped to be. And now what is this? A man half-stoned and toting a garbage bag full of beer cans—full ones—is taking the bench next to me. He’s brought his binoculars. He’s checking out the B.Q. on the boats. He says something to me and I decide to agree. I also start planning my escape.

I hear something. It sounds like the sputter and gurgle of a slow-moving motor boat. What do I see as I look off to the west (this crazy river goes east-west here) but a slow-moving motor boat sputtering and gurgling. It’s clear what this dude is after. He doesn’t need ’nocs to check out the B.Q. He’s got proximity.

“Oh, man!” says my bench partner, by which I expect he means “Oh, baby! Where were you back when I made the decision to look at the world with yellow eyes held in place by red fishnets.”

Two more stoners join him, also toting garbage bags of beer. It’s hard to be sure, but I think they’re talking about a couple of maenads they know. I’ve heard eight foul words in as many seconds and decide I don’t want to be around when the fuzz show up.

So I take one last longing loving look behind at the azure sky and the golden eye of heaven, turn my front wheel toward the gathering eastern darkness, and peddle upstream atop the berm, then away from the river, then up the difficult slope of the river valley to my home, where waits a wonderful book on food and—could it be?—an olive dying to be doused in something clear yet botanical.

The minutes pass, and at length I hear the distant popping of the fireworks. No doubt they’re spectacular. They’ve been spectacular every time I’ve seen them arching above Old Man River, spreading out in symmetry and splendor, their vivid colors reflected brilliantly by the water beneath. It’s an image that almost makes you believe the divine will could indeed be done on earth as it is in heaven.

But how, I wonder, on so large a scale? How with such vague loyalties in our faithless hearts? How with such vapid slogans on our untutored lips?

We do love our abstractions. That much is sure. Their yokes are easy, their burdens light. Plus they come fully equipped with the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air.

I close my book, pop the olive in my mouth, and think of those forgotten lines Katherine Lee Bates gave us: “America! America! / God mend thy every flaw. / Confirm thy soul in self-control, / Thy liberty in law.”

Bah! Smacks too much of place and limits.

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Tagged as: democracy, family, home, humor, liberty, limits, localism, place