I have not been feeling very good about America lately, so the Fourth of July was a weird holiday. I like to do things on holidays. When I spend a holiday just sitting at home playing video games, like I would on a regular weekend, I feel antsy — sick, almost. Then again, I feel antsy and sick almost all the time now, things being how they are.
So we didn’t make plans for the Fourth. My wife and I ended up getting some franks from the grocery store and making Chicago dogs for two in our kitchen, and then we went for a walk to look at fireworks.
It is possible that the city where you live does not do fireworks the same way Chicago does fireworks. Chicago does fireworks like everybody’s forgotten that the city already burned down once. People are shooting up rockets in the middle of the street, with a recklessness that makes you wonder if they’ve got a stockpile of spare hands at home. It rules, unless you’re a dog.
So we wandered our neighborhood for a while, following the explosions, until we ended up at the park a few blocks from our house. There were probably about a hundred people scattered around the big baseball field, all trying to blow up different parts of it. Just as we arrived, someone’s rocket tube fell over in the middle of the baseball diamond, shooting missiles in every direction. People were dodging out of the way. There were children there. It was great.
Right by where we sat was a group of about 20 latinos of all ages, most of them dressed like they’d just come from a wedding reception. They were accompanied by a man in a red t-shirt who had seemingly acquired every box of fireworks in Illinois. As we watched in delight, this hero made trek after trek to the middle of the field, lighting off box after box of deafening pyrotechnics. And it was during this display that I began to understand something about being American.
Fireworks ain’t free. The amount this man was setting off easily cost thousands of dollars. He was very literally setting money on fire. And he was doing it in a public park, for the amusement of friends, family, and strangers. He was performing a glorious, violent public service.
The national anthem we sing at sports games is not the one about how beautiful our country is. It’s the one about the flag, surrounded in explosions. We are a nation of explosions — loud and bright, flashy and expensive. Other countries set off fireworks all the time, but only America saves up months of paychecks to set them off all at once. Our version of public-mindedness is a dude lighting a small arms depot on fire in the middle of a field.
It was generous of this man to put on this show for us. It was also a flex, a display of wealth and bravado. It was also an act of genuine bravery. This man, whose relatives are being actively hunted by this government’s gestapo at this very moment, had the guts to walk out into an open field and light a beacon. This is my sky, he said, I can fuck it up if I want to.
It didn’t make me proud, exactly — the destruction and the glamor and the flagrant display of wealth — but it did make me happy. A love of spectacle is in my blood. And it made me feel like a part of something. For one night, all of America shared a single sky, and almost all of it was on fire