Arkansas Blog: Happy Fourth

It's one of my favorite holidays.

Barbecue is generally involved. Sometimes band music.

You can get your Fourth on in a variety of ways today.

One is at the Clinton Presidential Center and Park, where there's free admission all day to the presidential library. Food vendors will be operating in the park, music is planned and there will be fun for kids -- Safari Train, bounce house, a water slide and obstacle course -- beginning at 10:30 a.m. The Delta Brass Quintent plays from 10:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. The Chicken King will distribute free chicken wings from 2 to 4 p.m. The Dell Smith Experience takes the stage from 6 to 9 p.m. and then it's time for the Democrat-Gazette's Pops on the River-closing fireworks at 9:30.

I'm also going to indulge myself by reprinting on the jump a July 4 column I wrote back in 1990 at the Arkansas Gazette and reworked once for the Arkansas Times. It's purely a guilty pleasure for me to stir July 4 memories of days long ago lakeside in South Louisiana.

FROM 1990

I love the Fourth of July.

It is a pure holiday. A day off with a minimum of the claptrap greeting cards, lawn displays, pre-holiday parties, and post-holiday bill remorse that can make a holiday more of a chore than a celebration.

On July 4, we pursue happiness. Some of us might even remember that the pursuit of happiness was among those rights listed in the Declaration of Independence, whose signing the holiday commemorates.

Everybody has an ideal way to celebrate the Fourth. Here's mine:

I join old friends and their extended family at their camp at Big Lake, a brown and brackish expanse near the Gulf of Mexico in south Louisiana. (Camp is the local word for a modest frame house with a screened porch, typically built beside a body of water. A camp is used for recreational pursuits such as drinking and bourre, or other card games played for money.)

We go fishing early, so as to be sure to have a sunburn before the day ends. If we happen to land any croaker or catfish, we give them away.

We also tie chicken necks to lengths of twine and then throw out the lines, which are secured along the rickety dock jutting into the lake. The children in attendance are instructed to check the lines periodically and, when possible, scoop up any nibbling crabs with a dip net.

The crabbing is punctuated by howls of children. Splinter-removal surgery helps some of them. Others just need a little comforting after poking a finger or toe too close to the claw of a big blue crab.

About midday, someone stokes up the Cajun cooker, a barbecue contraption made from a 55-gallon oil drum. There will be spare ribs and, for the cook and kibitzers, a few ropes of smoked sausage.

We swim a bit in the oily, spit-warm lake as the ribs cook. More cooling are the washtubs full of iced drinks.

In late afternoon, the feast begins. There's the barbecue. Platters of sliced homegrown tomatoes, salted and peppered. Huge pans of eggplant casserole, studded with shrimp. Homemade potato salad, heavy on the mayonnaise. Baked beans. Garlic French bread.

Then dessert. Watermelon. Brownies. Baked bananas with cinnamon, butter and pecans. (Don't ask me why.) Maybe hand-cranked ice cream.

Stuffed nearly immobile, we groan in the wicker chairs on the porch. The ceiling fans don't cool us much, but the breezes disturb the flies a bit. The sun sets on the lake, occasionally silhouetting a freighter passing on the nearby ship channel. At dark, a sackful of small-time fireworks might be ignited on the dock. The tradition, and not the firepower, is the thing.

When we were younger, the smart alecks among us occasionally staged mock Fourth of July pageants, full of sarcastically patriotic speeches delivered by players wrapped, literally, in the flag.

We were too ignorant to know how close to the rebellious spirit of the day we really were. Better than our own impromptu remarks would have been some of the words of the founding fathers.

" We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."

Declare something like that in public these days and somebody might try to have you arrested.

Comments

In Nashville (Ark) the Fourth will be celebrated on the Fifth. Neal McCoy in the city park. Salute to veterans, some local talent, hot dogs and lemonade and the usual aerial fireworks at conclusion of the show. Bring your own lawnchair and leave the cooler outside the gate.

Posted by: Louie | July 4, 2008 08:35 AM

Max: Hip, hip, and hoo-ray for your encomium on the Fourth of July.

It stirred memories of an experience I never had.

We were still living in Lake Charles when you originally wrote that piece and during our years there had enough experiences involving many of those individual ingredients to be able to envision and understand them.

Just never had them all rolled into one on a single day.

With our children grown and living elsewhere (I can't say "gone" because they already lived elsewhere before we moved there), we mostly spent the day inside with the air conditioner doing its thing and celebrated with ice cream (Blue Belle) and/or watermelon.

In the evening we took in the big celebration of music and fireworks from the Capitol Fourth on the public TV channel!

Not exactly the same as the up-close-and-in-person as yours, but it made a memorable day for us as we acknowledged and remembered the patriots who bought the day for us in deep respect and appreciation. We were, after all, free to celebrate it as we pleased, which, to us, seemed to be mostly what it was all about!

Thanks for the reminder!!!

Posted by: springflower | July 4, 2008 09:18 AM

Jesse Helms died.

Posted by: hugh mann | July 4, 2008 10:58 AM

Thanks for the reprint, Max. That could have been me, growing up in south Ark.......and,
I know what *camps* are in south La.
Frenchie is cleaning the carport and singing french diddy's, soon he will come inside to get
his harmonica. I went to sit a moment and ask him what the 4th of July means to one not
born here, but had to make a choice to come, learn a new language, way of life, study, study,
pass tests to become a citizen.
His answer, *I love Canada, it will always be home but, I had a dream to better myself and
Canada didn't offer that to me.....the USA has given me everything, a career, wife and
family I adore, scores of friends and I even discovered Arkansas.*
Wonder how many of us could go thru those rigors to become a citizen?
I know I would fail on the first...learning a new language.
AMERICA,,,,what a country.....hope we get it back soon!!!!!

Posted by: jazzy | July 4, 2008 11:03 AM

Another disaster in the making? Clicky

Posted by: Cato | July 4, 2008 11:04 AM

I just told Frenchie to go buy a watermelon.....LOL

clicky

Posted by: jazzy | July 4, 2008 11:34 AM

This seems like a strange Fourth of July, even though the actual signing began on July 2 and continued into late August and many say much later, up to a year. Congress settled the controversy by passing a resolution in 1941 making July 4 official even though John Adams' letter to his wife Abigail said July 2 would be "a great day of Festival."

Just a few short years ago you couldn't go two blocks in Chickenopolis without seeing several flags on cars, trucks, building, and horse-drawn vehicles. And that was in Oct and Dec. Flags were simply everywhere and were I a stranger I would have swore that it had become the Fourth of July year round. Those were the good old days when Armanie Ronnie assured us that a vote for Bush was a vote for GOD. Life was simple then. Design a spy camera for terrorisks and Jesus got you a Homeland Security contract for life until some uppity divorcee wanted her share of it.

The metropolis of Springdale is now back to normal. Sales tax collections have fallen for 14 months and it's no wonder. You can't even find a little flag at the Dollar General Store. There was an abundance of flags during the Rodeo parade July 2.. I mean just on the floats and carried by cowboys and cowgirls in tight fitting jeans. There's something about a 25 year old cowgirl in a sheer Western blouse carrying a flag on the back of a sweaty golden stallion that really gets the Fourth juices flowing. Don Tyson cut a ribbon that day on a parkway named for him.

Tonight will watch the Rodeo Association shoot off about $15,000 worth of the rockets red glare. Oh mercy me. I don't know if they will let us get close. .We can't find the Sri Lanka antenna flag. Seems I've lost my Made-In-China flag lapel pin too. I think I put it in Armani Ronnie's offering plate when they asked for a special "love offering."
.

Posted by: eLwood | July 4, 2008 01:41 PM

Oh yes Max. Thanks for mentioning that original Cajun smoker. They were great! Best ribs in the world came from them, esp if done with green Ozark hickory.

Posted by: eLwood | July 4, 2008 01:49 PM

Want a thrill and a good cry???

Posted by: jazzy | July 4, 2008 05:50 PM

Barack Obama: mental stress cannot justify late term abortion.

Apparently Obama has seen the light on the evils of late term abortion. there may be some hope for him after all, if he continues to shift further to the right.

On an unrelated note, I think President Clinton should be commended for having his library and massage parlor open for free occasionally to repay the good citizens of the state for the support they provided in taxpayer money to fund the land for his library. The miniature White House exhibit complete with a replica of the George H. Bush oval office is well worth the visit.

Posted by: Severus | July 5, 2008 12:00 AM

Arkansas Blog

Happy Fourth

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