Independence Day

Unlike other holidays such as Thanksgiving and Labor Day we can always count on the Fourth of July to fall out on July fourth. This year it conveniently happens on a Monday which gives us an extra day to take advantage of that mattress sale we’ve all been waiting for. It promises to be a big day for hot dogs, beer, flags and Yankee Doodle Dandy reruns. Remind me what any of this has to do with the Declaration of Independence.

It will also be the weekend when firecrackers go off driving dogs to bark themselves hoarse and set refugees from Afghanistan and Ukraine into a round of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. I can easily live my remaining years without any more fireworks. I even get no kick from parades. Mere oom-pah-pah sends no thrill to moi.

The hoopla we celebrate is for a document notable for its hypocrisy as it excluded all but the small minority of propertied white men. Call it aspirational. The Declaration did not even suggest a nation. (Lincoln got that wrong in his Address at Gettysburg). It was a rallying cry for revolution leading to the Articles of Confederation.

One indisputable fact is that the fourth of July is the day three of our first five presidents died.

I’m going to mark the day by adding strawberries to my bowl of cereal along with blueberries and almond milk. That’s about all the red, white and blue I can muster. I might also wave the white flag of surrender and ask Alexa to play Charlie Parker’s bluesy sax followed by Red Norvo.

The tricolors in the news these days are the now famous ketchup dripping from the wall and pieces of the blue plate special in the Trump White House. To each his own flag. As I recall, ketchup has a history in the Oval Office. That other illustrious President, Richard Nixon, was also an enthusiast. His regular breakfast was cottage cheese abundantly reddened with ketchup. He even got H.R. Haldeman to eat the stuff as a mark of fealty and look where that got him.

Didn’t Ronald Reagan proclaim that ketchup would suffice as a vegetable in school lunches? Not even Marie Antoinette could have thought of that when she flipped off the starving masses dismissing them with her famous remark of letting them eat cake. Could it be her decapitation was the result of Robespierre trying ketchup on his cake crumbs?

Is it ketchup or catsup? I think Heinz gave it the K and it stuck particularly on the walls where Trump is having his tantrums. He may have already lowered the resale value of Mar-A-Lago. I wonder if the mustard is also coming off his hot dogs.

My guess is that Hollywood has always been the biggest buyer of ketchup using it as a blood-like substance in Westerns, war movies and assorted mayhem. Whatever it takes to fake authenticity.

In their pursuit of happiness some are more equal than others. I remember when the down and out would frequent the Automat, get a free cup of hot water, add a few globs of ketchup and call it tomato soup. Is this a great country or what?