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Western Fourths
| Article
# : |
19236 |
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Section : |
LIFE
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| Issue
Date : |
7 / 1991 |
2,649 Words |
| Author
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Chilton Williamson, Jr.
Chilton Williamson, Jr., is senior editor for books at
Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture. His latest book is
The Homestead, a novel published last year by Grove Weidenfeld. |
No reader will easily forget Laura Ingalls Wilder's description of a Fourth of July celebration in Little Town on the Prairie. In a frontier community in Dakota Territory in 1881, just before dawn, the Ingalls family was awakened by booming sounds produced by gunpowder hammered on the blacksmith's anvil in town one mile away but sounding "like the noise of battles that Americans fought for independence." Mrs. Ingalls would not attend a celebration that included a horse race, but Mr.Ingalls went, for on the Fourth of July, "no work could be done except the chores and housework." Having changed into his Sunday suit and put on his good felt hat, he walked with Laura and Carrie from the claim to town. In town, there were firecrackers and smoked herring for sale, and at the racetrack a barrel of free lemonade with a tin dipper in it for everyone to help himself. Then:
Beside the flagpole, a man rose up tall above the crowd. The sound of talking died down, and he could be heard speaking.
"Well, boys," he said, "I'm not much good at public speaking, but today's the glorious Fourth. This is the day and date when our forefathers cut loose from the despots of Europe. There wasn't many Americans at that time, but they wouldn't stand for any monarch tyrannizing over them. .. We licked the British in 1776 and we licked 'em again in 1812, and we backed all the monarchies out of Mexico and off this continent less than twenty years ago, and by glory! Yessir, by Old Glory right here, waving over my head, any time the despots of Europe try to step on America's toes, we'll lick 'em again!"
"Hurray! Hurray!" everybody shouted. Laura and Carrie and Pa yelled, too, "Hurray! Hurray!"
"Well, so here we are today," the man went on. "Every man Jack of us a free and independent citizen of God's country, the only country on earth where a man is free and independent. Today's the Fourth of July, when this whole thing was started, and it ought to have a bigger, better celebration than this. ... By next year, likely some of us will be better off, and able to chip in for a real big rousing celebration of Independence Day. Meantime, here we are. It's Fourth of July, and on this day somebody's got to read the Declaration of Independence. It looks like I'm elected, so hold your hats, boys; I'm going to read it."
Nearly as striking as the beauty of this simple ceremony is the celebrant's desire that it should be less simple. One hundred and ten years later,
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