Bicentennial Memories

50 years ago today

I have very few memories from my childhood, but I do remember the summer of 1976.

We lived in a small town near Columbus, Ohio. The town has since been swallowed up by Columbus’s growth and is almost a suburb at this point. But in ‘76, it was still a part of small town America.

Our family lived in the most wealthy area of the town. The people who lived there knew they had more than anyone else in town. Many taught at the upscale university in town, my dad included. There was an unspoken feeling in that neighborhood of being better off than anyone else. This was a feeling I did not like even as a child. Superiority never felt right to me.

Perhaps as a result of being in such a “nice” area, our neighborhood had its own celebrations for the 4th of July. Mind you, the town had a parade and activities, but we just had to do our own thing.

July 4th would start around 6 a.m. when Mr. Smith (a neighbor) would drive through the entire neighborhood laying on his car horn. You see, he had donuts for sale for $2.50 a dozen and wanted to wake everyone up to get some. (Are donuts $2.50 a piece now?) This was considered expensive then, but I suppose it was some kind of neighborhood fundraiser. These were plain, glazed round donuts but were very fresh. I’m assuming the only bakery in town was up all night making donuts for the 4th. My mom would send me out with the money to get a dozen. I remember running down our blacktop driveway in flip flops, already hot from yesterday’s sun, to meet Mr. Smith at his car. It was already sweltering out - humid and miserable, in my book, and I would run as fast as possible to get back into the house. Although we did not have AC, it was still better inside than out.

My parents appreciated the donuts but not the car horn at o-dark-thirty. I was awake, though, because I could not sleep in that heat. I was born running very hot and summer was a bad time for me. It did not help that my bedroom was on the north west side of the house and there was no insulation in it. In the winter, it was so cold in there that frost crawled up the wall, forming a triangle in the corner nearly three feet tall. I thought that was cool and never remember being cold once, but I do remember how blistering hot it was in the summer. I hated summer for that reason but did like the 4th.

After eating a breakfast that was mostly donuts (the only time of year I could do such a thing), it was time for the neighborhood parade. We had to line up at the pool with our bikes. I remember it was hot that day and the sun was already brutal. I wanted to look pretty, but I never had been, so I remember lying to everyone and telling them I had a cool costume at home to wear. Obviously I did not.

Decorating the bike was a big deal that started a few days prior to the parade. In reality, I suppose an adult could have done it in under 5 minutes, but I took great pride in my bike and remember wanting it to be perfect. As you can see in the photo below, we wove crepe paper through the bicycle tires in red, white and blue and taped streamers to our handlebars. The best view of a tire is from some kid who fell by our mailbox.

I’m the complete moron in the dark knee socks, which I am assuming were dark blue. Can’t tell since the photo is so faded. But… KNEE SOCKS. IN JULY. Insane! I bet my mom told me not to do it and I argued since it was the only blue thing I had. God knows I was hot to begin with and the only reason I can see why I wore them was to look patriotic. My brother is to the left of me in the photo. He did not have problems with the heat and now lives in Arizona. That’s a hard pass for me. Lovely state, too darn hot.

I miss being that thin. And on that note, see any kids overweight? There weren’t any. We didn’t have any “fat kids” (that’s what we called them, no matter how unpopular that term is now) in our neighborhood and I think only one in the entire school system. Very different times.

There were kids on bikes and riding “Big Wheels” as well in the parade. Remember the Big Wheel tricycles? They were American made then, just like my bike. We had to stop often to let the big wheel kids catch up. The RV, driven by some really rich neighbor, blew its horn throughout the parade.

After the parade, we ate lunch consisting of hot dogs, chips, watermelon and probably ice cream, then went to the pool. You see, our neighborhood was so exclusive that we had our very own pool so no one had to go swim with the “other people” in the city pool. You had a pay a membership for our pool, though, and some families did not pay for it, presumably because they had no use for the pool. But on the 4th of July, it was a free day, so anyone could swim, even without a membership. The pool was packed. It was darn hot.

I swam a lot in general, mostly because I hated summer heat so much. By the end of the summer, I was tanned so dark that my grandma called me “the little Indian girl”. My brother (not biologically related) tanned pretty well, too, but would burn faster than I did. In fact, I never burned. I never used sunscreen. I was adopted and as it turned out, I was actually Native American. Didn’t know my heritage till my mid 40s, but clearly my grandma was on to something. I was on the swim team and held the record for fastest breast stroke for almost a decade. The pool water probably ruined my hair, but my mom kept hacking it off because she didn’t want to deal with long hair, so I guess I didn’t care how bad my hair looked after spending 6-7 hours a day at a pool. Unsupervised. No parent in sight. Never an issue. Rode my bike there and back, unsupervised. No helmet. No fear.

While I hate summer even now (actually now more than ever since I’m even more intolerant of heat), I’d give anything to feel like that again.

OK, back to the 4th. After being at the pool all day, we’d eat dinner. My dad gilled flank steak, which he had been marinating since the day prior. It was always well done and I did not know the joys of rare beef until I grew up. My mom made her own potato salad and we had more ice cream for desert. We them went to the city fireworks… something our exclusive neighborhood did not have of its own. I am pretty sure we saw the fireworks that year, but I remember my parents being so ticked off at my brother and I one year that they took us home before the show. I don’t remember what we did, but do remember there was a storm coming in. There were mammatus clouds in the western sky. I was obsessed with storms and wanted to stay outside to see them. Turns out I had a biological family member that was a weatherman and also obsessed with the sky. I guess I know where that obsession came from now.

I fell asleep that night -well, as close to sleep as I could get in that heat - with the sounds of a train whistle across the field. The train ran all year, all times of the day or night. I could hear it coming from miles away and then heard it fade into the distance, all the time with the rhythmic clacking of the wheels. To this day, that is such a comforting sound on the rare occasions that I get to hear a train.

What I remember most from the summer of 1976 was the overall feeling of pride, celebration, accomplishment and hope. I remember hearing non-stop about the bicentennial in school earlier that year. People gathered. They celebrated. I don’t remember any fear, any dread, any apprehension, any bad anything. My parents watched the news, but it was the news, not propaganda. Even though I was a kid and my parents would not have told me about terrible things happening, if they were, I knew people weren’t stressed and upset. I was, unfortunately, an empath and would pick up on stuff like that.

But that summer? No, nothing bad - it was a celebration. Of freedom. Of independence. Of 200 years here. Of the pride that we as Americans had. One nation, undivided, indivisible.

I don’t want to turn this into a negative post, so I won’t, but I have to say I don’t see those things on our 250th birthday. I don’t see happiness or celebration. Mostly, I don’t see hope. We are divided. I don’t like that. I don’t believe for one second that our government will ever preach togetherness as a nation again - in fact, I think they like the division - but that does not mean that each one of us can’t choose to be connected to our neighbors far and wide.

And, I have to say this is the first 4th of July without my dad. I went to Kroger and almost got a donut today, but decided against it… somehow, it just isn’t the same as the 6 a.m. dozen I had a half century ago. It wasn’t the donuts. It was the family, the celebration, and the vibe. I’d give anything to feel that again.

I wonder if my old neighborhood still has the bike parade or if it has gone the way of… well, neighborhood celebrations. I bet most kids don’t ride bikes now because there are these things called cellphones and the internet. I’ll say it again and again… I am so glad I grew up when I did.

Where ever you are, I hope you’re having a great 4th of July. Celebrate however feels right. For me, that’s hiding in the basement from the heat. I might decorate inside for fall later, you know, just because I can’t wait for it. Hey, that’s independence right there, y’all!

Happy Independence Day! Regardless of all the nonsense going on now, I will always love the USA I remember from 1976. ❤🤍💙