“This land is your land, this land is my land From the California to the New York island
From the Redwood Forest, to the gulf stream waters This land was made for you and me
As I went walking that ribbon of highway I saw above me that endless skyway And saw below me that golden valley This land was made for you and me.” (This Land Is Your Land/Woody Guthrie)
From the Redwood Forest, to the gulf stream waters This land was made for you and me
As I went walking that ribbon of highway I saw above me that endless skyway And saw below me that golden valley This land was made for you and me.” (This Land Is Your Land/Woody Guthrie)
Our entire block would have our charcoal grills out (in the front of the house, not the back porches OMG), lounge chairs galore, lighter fluid first filled the air with the warning stay away this is flammable but with the teasing hint that, just wait till the hot dogs and hamburgers ooze and drip. That morning my father, a police sergeant, would have provided each household a flag on a 24-inch pole, and all of the kids placed them on the lawns, even assisting some of the more elderly neighbors, so our entire street screamed this is Independence Day, and we are patriotic! It was to be secret, but somehow my father managed to provide all the kids with the fireworks, rounded on the top looking like a cocoon, but just long enough so, as each mother would remind us, “no one’s fingers would be shot into space, as the fire cracked in colors of oranges and blues and if you lucky white!
“Let us be lovers, we'll marry our fortunes together I've got some real estate here in my bag So we bought a pack of cigarettes and Mrs. Wagner's pies And we walked off to look for America Cathy, I said as we boarded a Greyhound in Pittsburgh Michigan seems like a dream to me now It took me four days to hitchhike from Saginaw I've gone to look for America.” (America/Paul Simon)
There was a war. No one knew exactly why, except that the Government explained some like a Domino Effect, stating that if South Viet Nam turned Communist, every country on the Asian Pacific Coast would turn Red, cross the sea to Australia, climb on the back of humpback whales and soon the entire West Coast of America would be “Commies.” “Love it or Leave it,” was the motto, and the real test for the 4thof July had been your loyalty to the Government or your folly to even listen to protesters! And then there was the time of gas rationing, our energy was being controlled by those damn Arabs, who not only hated democracy, the real heart of America Christianity. The 4thbecame a protest to demonstrate that our nation was the one with values, the kind the Founding Fathers had insisted; especially the part about freedom of and from religion!
“There's something happening here What it is ain't exactly clear There's a man with a gun over there Telling me I got to beware I think it's time we stop, children, what's that sound Everybody look what's going down” (For What It Is Worth/Stephen Stills)
The American dream turned into a nightmare. The wise men of the Kremlin understood that the South never lost the Civil War, that many white folks believed slavery was the right way to run a Capitalistic governing system. An empty vessel filled with orange skin and dyed blond hair, bellowing about his wealth, fame and fortune, was discovered, and the perfect Trojan Horse was re-created by sinister, despots with lots of green cash and blackmail, and hacked into office was the first compromised agent by an adversarial government. And Independence Day morphed into “get ready folks, Fascism is about to embrace, “…from sea to shining sea…” and like North Korea, Moscow, and sadly as in the case of Tiananmen Square in China, America will find tanks on the streets of its Capital City, squadrons of fighter jets above the cities sky, and Troops, dressed in war gear, parading. And sadly as Woody Guthrie once wrote, “…for the times, they are changing…”
