|
Celebrating the American dream
by Linda Cope
Every 4th of July my husband's family attended the local park's fireworks display. His mom and dad would spread a blanket on the hill, pass a grease-stained brown paper bag of popcorn, and small glass bottles of Coke to the children, waiting for the show.
It always started with a boom. My husband's older sister would plug her ears with her fingers and cry. As the local Jaycees lit fuses and filled the sky with one colored shower of sparks after another, my husband and his siblings sat on the old blanket howling like a pack of coyotes.
My mother-in-law claims the three of them screamed louder and louder until they'd have to leave. She swears they never saw a 4th of July finale the entire decade of the 50's.
For my family it was just the opposite. My dad, a WWII, D-day vet, didn't like large crowds. Our 4th of July displays were of the backyard variety with neighbors mutually entertaining one another. Throughout the day we played volleyball, lawn darts and badminton. The fireworks included bottle rocket fights (don't try this at home), and the notoriously unannounced and now illegal M-80's, powerful enough to jam your heart all the way to your tonsils.
By dusk, our stomachs were full of B-B-Q, potato salad and chocolate cake. The sun sank onto a mattress of hot July air, thick with the smog of smoke bombs, black snakes, cherry bombs and black cats. Our neighbors, who'd spend an unbelievable twenty dollars on fireworks, would light a fountain. Dad lit his specialty, a pinwheel nailed to the clothesline pole. We'd ooh, ah and applaud one another. My sister and I ran through the yard, double sparklers in each hand, the twin engines on our human airplanes.
Now-a-days, the traditions linger...food, family and an awareness of my blessings. As I watch fireworks at the fair, or at the county park, surrounded by my own children, I realize I'm privileged to live the American dream, to own land, to have honest work, the freedom to raise my family, to worship God. I think of the many who've died in pursuit of this dream, of the soldiers who've never come home from the battlefields, of the people who've crossed an ocean, who are still making their ways to our shores with the hope of what life in the United States can mean.
I realize our country is not without flaws. There is discrimination when we need fairness, blindness when we need clarity, cruelty when we need mercy. But this is rare country, and I believe I hold within my power the ability to make it a better place, to build on what it is, to live my life in a way that shores up its ramparts where it is weak. If God would have asked, my tiny corner of Illinois is the very place I would have chosen. I thank Him for picking so well. I'm proud to be an American, born in the U.S.A. and living in the best country anywhere.
Linda Cope is a freelance writer from Greenville.
|
