Apologies

I tend to associate Independence Day less with illegal fireworks and hot dog guzzling than with marching bands and squirt gun fights. Instead of the Atlantic Ocean, my hometown sits on the banks of a mosquito-infested pond and watches a blaze of fireworks erupt from a local high school field. There is no mass drinking at this patriotic ceremony. In 1776, like today in my bucolic community, such an activity is for the sanctity of a man's castle.

The greatest part of the 4th of July is the parade, where a congregation of charitable associations, local politicians, high school summer bands, small businesses, and police and fire departments move in a moderately organized manner down some of the lesser arteries of town and pass out free candy. Shriners zip around in their clown cars, marauding parties of recent graduates super soak the high school band's wiggly columns, maybe a State Fair Butter Queen will be sitting on the retracted ragtop of a '62 Chevy Impala.

John Philip Sousa--not Kobayashi--personifies the 4th of July.

And sometime in the early morning you try to fall asleep to the sound of illegal fireworks.