holiday | This Brand New Colony

Well today is Fourth, the day we Americans celebrate our nations birth. When I was growing up the fourth was always a big a deal but as time has gone on it has become less and less important. I grew up in a very small town in northern California called Benicia. It’s pretty much frozen in time, one friend once referred to it as a real life “River City” (a Music Man reference). I mean in my lifetime I have witnessed more than one public “Cake Walk” in this town.

The beauty of this is that the fourth always proved to be real life Americana at its

People line up for the Benicia Torchlight Fourth of July Parade

best. On July 3rd the town would gather on our main street for the parade. It was always an opportunity for overly confident middle aged women to belly dance in public, kids in dance classes to do routines, the high school band to perform, and local business and churches to promote themselves with floats. I was in the parade a few times over the years for various performing groups I was involved in. Including one occasion where the theater group I was in had me sing “Heal the World” by Michael Jackson on a “float” (the flat bed of a truck), we also sang a song from Aladdin while the instructors pudgy husband walked around shirtless painted blue like the genie. That was… pretty embarrassing.

The following day about 85% of the town went down to the main city park for the Fourth of July festival and picnic. My mom always bought the fancy foods we couldn’t normally afford, my favorite being spinach dip. A variety of local vendors would sell their wares in tents and local bands would play genuinely terrible covers in front of the town Gazebo while drunk women “of a certain age” danced with themselves like they were at a real Rolling Stones concert. The whole family would relax and eat and read in the usually mild weather. As my brother and I got older we elected to run off with our friends and return to the picnic blanket throughout the day. Like all events in a small town this was a big social occasion where people would catch up with friends they hadn’t seen in a while.

In the evening the town put on a “Firework Spectacular” over the marina, which

Fireworks over the bay in Benicia

was the butt of jokes year round. It being a small town, we had a relatively small budget for these things. Typically the fireworks would go off one at a time or in a maximum of two at a time over 45 minutes with a short finale. At some point you would see a small fire begin on the island and 4 or 5 would go off at once unplanned. The most common joke would be after 1 fire work would go off there could be a delay of several minutes and someone (possibly the same person) would loudly say “OH WELL TIME TO GO HOME, GREAT SHOW BOYS!”. Every year the town would laugh but ultimately fall into a hushed quiet when the show started picking up pace. These were the best fourth of Julys I ever had.

I only spent one fourth of July in New York City and it was fairly depressing since I was stood up by my then boyfriend and ended up watching the fireworks alone while Mariah Carey wailed off key. Since then all of my fourths have been spent in Vegas, but so far adulthood has prevented me from ever having a real fourth with my husband Joey. We both end up working, usually late, or if we don’t work late we are to tired to go do much. I usually cook something special but that is it. One year we watched the same fireworks show from our various workplaces over the phone. But every year I find myself wishing for those old school holidays, who knows maybe someday when we have a kid that nuance and awesomeness will return, for now though at least I have the memories.