originally posted at Coffeegrounds...
Belmar, New Jersey
Canon EOS Elan 7ne, ISO 1600
In Red Bank, the town where I somehow am allowed to run amok,
Independence Day is celebrated today, on July 3. All of the locals
drag beach chairs or picnic tables to their postage stamp front yards
and watch the fireworks while eating potato salad and chatting beneath
the oily scent of citronella.
It's one of those holidays that also brings down thousands of
out-of-towners, those who we on the shore refer to as "Bennies." We're
not terribly fond of or nice to bennies, and that's probably unfair, as
they bring money and spend it.... only there's a certain class of newly
rich bennies that are set on making sure you know that they're gracing
you with their money. Often, these bennies drive Hummer 2's and
Cadillac Escalades. My brother, a waiter at one of the fifty thousand
Italian restaurants in Red Bank, has noticed that bennies are easily
identifiable by the fact that, when told that the restaurant is BYOB
because it lacks a liquor license, they will ask, indignantly "Why!?"
as though it were a personal insult.
I complain about the bennies, and I know they'll swarm around my
town like pudgy, sunburned locusts today, but they're as much a part of
the place as I am. And, well, they're as much a part of the nostalgia
I have for Independence Day (along with Christmas and Thanksgiving, my
three favorite holidays). Pushing through crowds, a sausage-and-pepper
sandwich in a paper napkin, the cordite smell of fireworks, the distant
sounds of rock and roll made before I was born.
If I drove down to Sandy Hook, paid the five dollars to get into
Gateway National Recreation Area, I could peer into the summer haze and
see the Statue of Liberty, and know that near there is an island where
my family came in order to escape the Nazis and the Soviets. The
grandparents bought bad synthetic knit shirts that pulled taut over
their bellies - the ones that they developed with pride in this new
land of good jobs and police that didn't make people disappear - and
their sons met, then exceeded, the grandparents expectations, with one
becoming a CEO, another a professor at Princeton, and a third becoming
a judge. It was with the grandchildren - my peers - that things got a
little crazy, but three generations are sufficient fodder for a little
rebellion, and I'm sure my grandfather, had he outlasted his stay in a
Stalag for more than six months, would have looked on in amusement.
We all grew up with love for that something about this country that
we couldn't really put into words, even obliquely. Strange glints were
seen in our eyes when we shared barbecue chicken and watery American
lagers at summer barbecues, the children playing in a pool in which my
uncle had hand-painted a picture of Snoopy surfing. Contented,
slack-faced gazes stared down from couches and the plastic seats at
Shea Stadium when my father's generation discovered the ultimate in
Americana: baseball and a love for the underdog. Eye-clenching ecstasy
took my cousin by surprise when he discovered that rock-and-roll really
could save his soul. He's a thirty-something father of two now, still
rockin' out with the band, a successor in interest to the Ramones and
the rest of the sloppy punk scene of 1970s New York City. I lost my
breath, then my heart, to the mountains and deserts of Utah, New
Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, and Wyoming. I was seduced by the west, by
the cowboy, the Navajo and the ghosts of the Anasazi, by the mountain
men of the past and the naturalists of the present.
So, it's a big day for me. I'm going to head down to the water now,
camera strapped around my shoulder and sausage-and-pepper sandwich in
hand (albeit briefly) and watch couples with baby carriages and sore
shoulders from carrying a toddler on their neck prepare the next
generation for its love affair with America. We'll stand together
while the toddlers dribble soft serve ice cream on their fathers'
heads. I'll watch the next generation slowly catch on to the love
affair that has taken three generations of men in my family. Here's to
them falling in love too.
Recent Comments