 |
| Happy 4th of July!!!!! (photo copyright S Botham 2011) |
There’s not much to do in Chelmsford - during the week or on
the weekend. It is small town New England at its finest. I LOVED going to the
liquor store when I was little. It was an overwhelmingly exciting place. Not
only was it filled with beautiful glass bottles of colorful treats that I could
only imagine tasted like various melted popsicles, there were kid friendly toys!
When you turned to the right and walked towards the refrigerated walls at the
back of the store you would find the wishing well. Can you believe it? A
WISHING WELL! With an acetate thatched wooden roof and blue water on which was floating a smiley yellow rubber duck. Little did I know that this was actually just a
wine cooler.
The real treat though is one that
still returns every Christmas. Model trains. The largest display I’ve ever
seen. It runs the entire depth of the liquor store (and this is NOT a tiny
establishment). I can press the button to start the trains on their journey
around the tracks and feel about 25 years shed from my pericardium. The joy and
wonder spreads from ear to ear, like it did the first time I set foot inside
the walls of Disneyland. And when I analyze it, I realize that a tiny piece of
this spark is present every time I set foot in Harrington’s liquor store, and I
am certain that many other children and adults feel the same way. Then I wonder
if perhaps it isn’t normal to instill this association of joy with liquor
stores in small children.
You haven’t
lived until you’ve experienced small town New England patriotic celebrations.
The first thing that must be realized is that the beginning of this country in
this region is a matter of sick and twisted pride. There is a remembrance of
bloodshed. After all, the Revolutionary War started HERE. People fight about
whose town is more important, as if we were living in a bad Christopher Guest
film (something similar to Waiting for Guffman). This is the place where people
regularly dress up in costume from the 1700’s, and march around playing fife and
drum and waving flags, and pretend that the British are coming. Naturally, these
people need something to do so most towns have a 4th of July
parade. Chelmsford is no exception. We have a parade, a road race, and on the 3rd
of July there is a county fair-style mess (to us it’s “the booths”) on the town common where different groups from town either sell food or have raffles and silly games where kids can win things like glow in the dark bouncy balls (which
they then take home and immediately test out in the closet with their little
brother, and accidentally crush little brother’s fingers in hinge side of
closet door, leading to a trip to the emergency room).
What does it mean to be an
American? Is it something we should be proud of? There was a time when being an
American stood as an association with those who saved the people of Normandy
from the approaching doom of Hitler’s invasion. Being an American also matched
you up with the painted caricatures of US government heads like Reagan and Bush and negative words on
the sides of buildings in Havana. While the paintings are propaganda, it still remains true that the embargo made it near impossible for Cubans to access
much-needed antibiotics and other medications produced by American pharma corporations. (Thankfully, now a lot of these
medications are being produced overseas so I would hope that has changed).
I can call Barack Obama a f#$%$@#^
chucklehead many times a day (and I DO) and not have to sleep with a gun under
my pillow, but for how long? How long until I’m no longer allowed to own a gun? Things are
changing here, and some things I find worrisome. I applaud people’s right to
worship or not as they choose. And I understand that people want the
separation of church and state. I completely agree. I become concerned when
people no longer want to be gracious to the country in which they live. And
even WORSE, people are more worried about offending others by being gracious to
their own country. THAT is offensive to me. To pledge allegiance to the flag,
to me, is like saying thank you. Thank you; I’m lucky to live here; I’m glad I
don’t live in Bhutan. When you’re in elementary school, and you are reciting
the pledge of allegiance, you don’t yet know that you are glad you don’t live
in Bhutan. But you are. And you will figure it out. Can we learn to appreciate
the sentiment, and stop arguing about the dogma?
As a
musician, I am lucky to have an opportunity to play pops concerts for patriotic holidays. I am
divulging a well kept secret right now: I LOVE playing patriotic pops concerts.
I don’t mind playing off beats in Yankee Doodle and Sousa marches. It is
unbelievably rewarding to play the Armed Forces Salute, which goes through the
theme song for each branch of service, and the veterans and active members are generally invited to stand during their respective songs. I always think about my
grandfathers during the Army and Navy tunes (they both served in WWII), and my friend
Latoya who’s a Marine (Afghanistan). As select audience members stand I
watch the pride beaming from their eyes, these noble people who let their guard
down for a brief moment, just long enough to allow someone to acknowledge how
much they have sacrificed. It brings tears to my eyes. At a recent concert, I
had a similar reaction during God Bless America. It’s not one of my favorite
songs (it’s growing on me), but it strikes a chord with many. During our
performance, about halfway through, three men of my mother’s generation or a
bit older (definitely old enough to be around during the War in Vietnam), rose up out of
their chairs and loudly started to sing along. It wasn’t the kind of singing
you get in a drunken show tunes bar party. They held their heads high and their
shoulders back and opened their mouths wide. You could see and hear from their
conviction that being American DID mean something to them. I fear for the day
when these people are gone.
I think our government is filled
with a bunch of rich buffoons who wouldn’t know what it was to struggle unless
you threw them naked in a 20 feet deep, glass shard filled pit of starving
lions. They’re out of touch, and they don’t care, including that dickhead of a
president who has spent more tax dollars on vacations than I will make in a
lifetime. They are not America. They are just a used up old Philippe Starck for
Target fruit bowl. We are America. The struggling soulful people inside the
fruitbowl. Fresh kumquats and tangelos.
My next-door neighbor, who has since
passed on from cancer, was Cambodian.
He spent a large chunk of his life hiding in the jungle from the oppressive
militia of Pol Pot to try and get here. He saw his own family shot down in
front of him. He was the kind of person who would pick up hitchhikers and drive
them anywhere they wanted to go. He felt it was his job to help other people
because he was lucky to have made it here. I still can’t buy anything with a
“Made in Cambodia” tag on it. His wife and daughters are
still living next door. He has a beautiful granddaughter now. And thanks to his
courage, none of them will ever have to worry about lions and tigers (or
despots) again. That is something worth being proud of.
