That summer, my small hometown of Randolph, New Jersey, buzzed with patriotic spirit. A big Independence Day celebration was planned, and the air was charged with excitement. But when I look back now, what I remember most about the Fourth of July is not the parade or the fireworks. I don’t recall proud and joyful feelings of camaraderie.
Fifty years later what sticks out in my mind were two brash young men who busted through the calm conformity and gave the middle finger to the status quo. This was the first time the bigger, messier world beyond my hometown became real. This was my first taste of rebellion.
The culmination of a year’s worth of history lessons and a grand community celebration didn’t strengthen my patriotism. Instead, it sparked a long reckoning with what it means to resist conformity and question conventional thinking, and I slowly began to see the nuanced and complicated layers of the American story.
When July 4th finally arrived, we sat in front of the A&P waiting for the Independence Day parade to roll by. Families made of ticky-tacky lined the streets like sheep, and well-tailored moms and dads beamed proudly at the unadulterated wholesomeness and abundant prosperity that surrounded them. I stood among a gaggle of pie-eyed, giggly children fueled by the excitement of a day filled with a parade, BBQs, and fireworks. We waved American flags with gusto and repeatedly squealed, “Yankee doodle went to town riding on a pony. Stuck a feather in his cap and called it macaroni.”
Lampposts were decorated with red, white, and blue bunting, and flags snapped crisp and sharp in the breeze. Children licked Bomb Pops that turned their tongues blue, and I squirmed as my mother smeared Coppertone on my face. It was the perfect snapshot of American life and at the time, I didn’t know there was any other way to live.
The final cars drove through the parade route before the road was closed to traffic. In line with the sensible Volvos and roomy Woodie station wagons was a menacing black convertible. Rust pocked the body of the car, the dark paint was fading to the point of developing a chalky white residue, and the engine had a deep, throaty rumble. In the car two scrappy young men with shaggy, wind-tussled hair hooted and hollered, and one wore a black leather vest with no shirt underneath.
“Yankee-fucking-Doodle can kiss my ass,” one of them bellowed to the parade crowd. This got a boisterous guffaw out of his buddy who slapped his hand against the dashboard. This moment of unapologetic defiance roared through the warm air and the curse word popped like a firecracker. The day’s neat harmony was broken.
Randolph is a town of topsiders and madras shorts; Capri pants, Izod shirts, and pearl necklaces. The counterculture does not thrive here. There’s a script and people stick to it. Fathers work white collar jobs and mothers serve in the PTA. Children do their homework without being asked and families talk politely around the dinner table each evening.
In Randolph, nonconformity wasn’t just frowned upon; it was absent. No one wore leather vests, and no one shouted at parades. Dissent lived in places far away. These young men vibrated with a wild energy we didn’t see here. They were like characters who had stepped out of the television set, and I was mesmerized.
I glanced at my four-year-old brother who was still joyfully waving his flag oblivious to the convertible. For him, Randolph was the same as ever, but for me, something had shifted. It was as if a curtain pulled back and through it, I glimpsed the world beyond my hometown. Grittier for sure, but a bit more authentic and possibly even exciting.
With pursed lips and tight smiles, grownups dismissed this jarring burst of profanity hoping the children wouldn’t ask questions. I stare wide-eyed, pretending not to notice but secretly I was in awe of these young men who weren’t interested in fitting in or playing along.
That sensory jolt, brief, loud, and completely discordant, has lived with me until today. That moment revealed that not everyone sees the world the same way or shares the same beliefs. Before then, America had been a collection of superlatives, proud slogans, and upstanding citizens. The idea that those men could mock our celebration, curse at it even, was outrageous but also eye opening.
At age seven, I didn’t fully grasp what I was seeing or have the words to describe it. My life was a cocoon of a comforting sameness: supportive families and obedient children; orderly houses and ship-shape lawns; similar goals and upwardly mobile aspirations; a common sense of good and bad, right and wrong. But for the first time I was seeing that in America there were people who disagreed, sometimes loudly, rudely, and brazenly, and that freedom, the very thing we were celebrating, might include the freedom to flip the whole thing off.
Their dissent planted a seed. I didn’t have to scream from a car window, but I could respond in subtle ways. I could choose to see things from more than one angle. I could consider that there were more stories that the ones I was told and that life in Randolph wasn’t the only way to live. These young men weren’t being patriotic in the way we learned in school, but they were showing me that American freedom, something my teachers proudly championed, includes the freedom to refuse to toe the line.
Over time I began to think about other versions of America, the ones that we don’t always talk about and that don’t always get a spot in the parade. While I knew there was a world beyond Randolph, I started to acknowledge that world and began to see it was more complex than the tidy, packaged truths I’d been handed.
Half a century later the clash between polished conformity and raw dissent manifests itself in protests, online debates, and dinner table arguments. Our disagreements have more outlets and are harder to ignore making it easy to feel nostalgic for the past believing it was a simpler and more unified time. But in 1976, at least in Randolph, New Jersey, that sense of unity was often false as nonconformity was discouraged and many stayed silent. What I witnessed during the Bicentennial celebration brought to life American’s uneasy tango between order and chaos, conformity and protest, followers and free spirits.
Over the years I have learned that loving one's country isn't about performative patriotism and blind loyalty. Rather, it’s about thinking critically, engaging with our history, acknowledging (And even embracing) our differences, and striving to make our country a better place for everyone. It means approaching the future with a willingness to make room for voices that get us to consider other ways of seeing and experiencing the world and sometimes even challenge our comfort.
Today, when I read sanitized news stories or hear politicians “telling it like it is,” I think back to that rusted convertible and the untamed voices disrupting the Bicentennial parade. And I smile because freedom means having the right to yell, “Yankee-fucking-Doodle can kiss my ass.”
No comments:
Post a Comment