Fourth of July

4th of July vs. the 12th of Never

Last week I received a flyer that was sent to all Shelter Island residents announcing that the 4th of July will be celebrated on the 12th of July with fireworks at Crescent Beach. Why? What else does the town have scheduled on the 4th of July? Everybody's off. Nothing's open. And why? Because it's the fucking 4th of July!!! Everybody's off and everything is closed so we can celebrate the 4th ON THE FOURTH! There's no point in celebrating it on the fifth, the sixth, or the twelfth. By then the moment has passed, the energy has dissipated, the burgers are cold and the beer is flat. When it's over, it's over.

The 4th of July is sacred to Americans. It is a day of thoughtful reflection, picnics, barbecues, boating and listening to John Philip Sousa at full blast. I have every intention of playing my patriotic music at a high volume. The 4th is a day of trying to guess whether the chicken is cooked through, a day of realizing there is no such thing as "enough beer," a day of wrangling crying babies and obnoxious children, of resurrecting old family fights and starting new ones.

Everyone I know has a family story that happened on the 4th of July. I have a friend who accidentally lit his sister-in-law's potpourri on fire while lighting a match in her bathroom. Panicking and not knowing what to do, he threw the burning popourri out the bathroom window, leaving the poor woman to wonder why her bathroom smelled of burnt sage, and where the hell her potpourri was.

One year, my mother and aunt put six cases of beer in my Uncle Bill's trunk for him to bring to the barbecue. My other uncles yelled at them for putting that much beer in the trunk of the family's Head Alcoholic. Uncle Bill eventually showed up. He made a spectacular entrance as he drove through the fence and between the horseshoe pits, where a game was in progress. He had five cases of beer left and a lot of cans. And this was the real beer - Ballantine, the heroin of beer. All the men drank it while smoking filter-less Lucky Strike cigarettes. The combination created the worst breath I ever smelled, prompting my Uncle Walter to say to my father, "Listen, Whitey, just 'cause your breath smells like ape-shit, that don't mean you're Tarzan." Which became a popular family saying to denote someone who thinks too much of himself.

Then there was Aunt Eleanor, related by marriage, who was not the brightest crayon in the box. On one 4th of July, which we were to spend on the family clam boat, Eleanor had her hair done for the outing. Eleanor had been on the boat before and any woman who has been boating at least once knows that there is no hairdo in existence that the wind and the spray can't pull apart in five minutes or less. She spent the whole trip trying to maintain her hairdo in the hot, smelly cabin, and complaining. This was the same boat trip during which my Uncle Walter stood on top of the cabin to dive off, and was stopped by my Aunt Carol who yelled, "Wally! Don't jump in with the new watch I just got you!" He responded, "Okay, honey." Then, as the family watched, he took off the watch, put it in the pocket of his shorts and jumped in the water. He never lived it down. The family tormented him about that watch for years, because that's how families bond. It's not just the lovey-dovey crap, it's what these people have on you that keeps you all together.

Celebrating the 4th on the 12th dilutes its importance. The birth of the nation we hold so dear IS important enough to stop what we're doing and celebrate. Let's not let corporate-convenience tie it to a Monday or Friday just to create a three-day weekend. That's okay sometimes, but not this time. People died, then and now, to protect and defend this country. It IS important enough to stop and celebrate what freedoms we have left.