I was 10 years old in the bicentennial year of 1976. America had just been through the Watergate-spurred spin-out of the Nixon presidency, the fall of Saigon, an oil crisis, and the resulting economic stagflation. We needed a reset, something to celebrate, and along came our 200th anniversary.
My father worked at the C&H sugar factory, across the water in Crockett, which, since the ships were coming direct from the Hawaiian cane fields, allowed for all sorts of interesting contraband to slip into the mainland undetected. Most importantly—for a ten-year-old boy—this meant illegal firecrackers: bricks of Black Cats and batteries of bottle rockets.
One of dad’s co-workers, a Portuguese man named Frank Freitas, had been on a Liberty ship in WWII and somehow ended up with the ship’s pilot bell, which he had spiffed up with a fresh coat of silver paint for the occasion. Frank installed the bell on the back fence of our grandmother’s backyard where we were gleefully trying to blow up any and everything we could with the “Super Charged Flashlight Crackers.”
Between the black-market Black Cats, rockets bursting in air, the cutting toll of the bell, and the guy across the street with an unlicensed shotgun, a joyous noise was made, starting early afternoon and only taking a short break for everyone to gorge themselves on dad’s famous barbecued lemon chicken before it got dark.
As soon as the Sun went down, we all gathered on the front porch of the house my family had lived in since the turn of the century. With the cars all moved safely out of harm’s way, it wasn’t difficult to imagine what the scene could have looked like 50, 60, or even 70 years previously.
With all-appropriate pomp, our giant box of fireworks was carried down to the sidewalk, as this was back when you could buy as much ordinance as you could afford from an alarming number of stands in town run by boosters of every stripe.
The following ritual followed a carefully-proscribed pattern: first up were always the snakes, as the last of the light allowed us to watch the intumescent ropes of black ash grow and writhe on the cement, scarring the walk for weeks afterward.
Snakes were followed by the ceremonial passing out of the sparklers, which we all enjoyed waving around as showers of hot sparks of potassium perchlorate, titanium, aluminum, and God-knows-what burned down the metal wire toward bare hands young and old. The first act was always capped off by some Tasmanian devil-like Ground Bloom Flowers that were sure to set the dry grass afire if you let them.
The next chapter was possibly was the most ill-considered, and I seem to recall, the first to be banned outright. We nailed cardboard Catherine wheels ringed with angled rockets to the trees that bordered the property. Trees made of… well, July-dry wood. As the discs ignited and began to spin, sparks were hurled in every direction to the delight of everyone except perhaps the fire department five blocks away.
The stars of the show were always the big fountains. Dad always handled the lighting of these as apparently one needed just the right levels of Olympia and gin & tonics in the blood to sufficiently steady one’s hand.
As we got older we never outgrew the delight in patriotic pyromania. The city itself went big for many years probably in an attempt to draw the breakout flareups to one centralized spot making it easier to put out fires and haul off pugilistic drunks.
I only bring all this up as next year is the our 250 anniversary as a nation, and we find ourselves in—if not a similar spot, one plainly as uncertain. As the explosions began last night, I could not tamp down my dismay at the state of our country at this point in history and actually broke into tears.
The reactionary-led Congress had just signed off on a bill that will turn ICE into a police force larger than most militaries, while depriving millions of Americans of the healthcare they need to survive. SNAP benefits have been slashed, taking food out of the mouth of hungry kids to give billionaires more tax breaks.
This time around, there hasn’t even been the feeble pretense of Reagan-era trickle-down theory. It’s piss. Everyone knows it’s piss, and they’ll have that hat as well if you don’t mind, or even if you do. Tragically, as I took in the flag on the night of the Fourth, I knew I would not be putting it back up until the current regime is out of power. I cannot support this culture of spitefulness for its own sake.
When I think about the gleefulness with which a concentration camp was built in the Everglades, complete with “Alligator Alcatraz” merchandise, it makes me sick to my stomach. Within my lifetime, we have gone from celebrating freedom with toxic black snakes to the toxic idea of using real snakes to terrorize immigrants.
This are not the values that Frank Freitas boarded the Liberty ship to go defend. This is not the country that we celebrated 50 years ago. I only hope that we can turn this thing around before it is too late. On that day, I will gladly hoist the Stars and Stripes once again.
Maybe I’ll even find some Black Cats.
Román Leão 
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