A Bicentennial Remembrance and a 250th Semiquincentennial Visitation
Please keep our country in your thoughts during this difficult time.
I was a small yute, or youth for those who are not connoisseurs of My Cousin Vinny, during the nation’s Bicentennial in 1976. Even though I was of a young age, there is a lot about it I can remember. I was living in a small, rural town in South Carolina with a population that always hovered around 3,500 people but even in that tiny place there were large celebrations to mark the turn of the second century since the 13 American colonies had declared their independence from Great Britain. South Carolina played a pivotal role in the American Revolution from Fort Moultrie in Charleston all the way to King’s Mountain in the back country, so it was not surprising a rural SC town would pull out all the stops for the Bicentennial.
I was too young to know at the time, but the nation was not in the best place, the Watergate scandal was still fresh in everyone’s mind, there had been fuel shortages, rampant inflation and it was a presidential election year. Gerald Ford, who had become president after Richard Nixon had resigned during the Watergate scandal, was running against Jimmy Carter, the peanut farmer from neighboring Georgia. Even with all of that going on, it seemed the nation forgot its troubles, came together and had a grand celebration to celebrate 200th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
In Williston there was a festival, merchants went all out decorating their shop windows, the Southern Railway, now Norfolk Southern, brought their Exhibit Car and placed it on the tracks in the middle of town. The Exhibit Car had displays on board about the railroad, a rail car demonstrator, and historical items from the founding of Southern Railway. Southern Railways was founded in South Carolina as the South Carolina Canal and Railroad Company and in 1830 operated the first regular scheduled train service in the nation. That line ran from Charleston to Augusta right through Williston so the Southern Railway had deep historical ties to Williston. I from a very young age was fascinated by trains, so the Exhibit Car was my favorite part. The old Southern Railway tracks are gone now, but seeing the trains in Williston when I was living there as a small boy was one of my happy memories from childhood. I will post an entry at some point about my fascination with trains and the deep roots of Norfolk Southern in South Carolina.
As part of the celebrations, my grandmother decided to dress my sister and myself up from characters in America history. It may have been something all the kids in town did, but I do not remember. She put a pair of overalls on me, rolled up the overall pant legs and tied an apple juice can to my side to use as a can for fishing worms and I became Huckleberry Finn. My sister was dressed in a Laura Ingles Wilder-ish sort of outfit; however, she may have been Holly Hobbie a popular doll at the time. My grandmother was crafty and sewed a lot, so she always had some fabric or something to churn out a costume. It may not have been the best costume, but she always tried. The town’s professional photographer, a Mennonite named Mr. Schrock, was out and about and captured both of us in the Exhibit Car on black and white film. Mr. Schrock was a tall man that dressed plainly and had a long beard, and he always seemed to be around any gathering or celebration with a very large camera capturing the moments from the town on film.
I was very young during the Bicentennial, but it made a lasting impression on me. As I got older, I often thought it might be possible but unlikely that I would live long enough to see the Tricentennial, but I felt like surely I would be around for the nation’s 250th Semiquincentennial. I think I assumed it would be another big celebration that would bring everyone together to celebrate the momentous milestone in US and world history. Unfortunately, this does not feel like a celebration and I have heard others say the 250th feels more like a funeral than celebration. I think it is more like a visitation at a funeral home than the funeral.
If you have not been living under a rock, the mood in the country is very off and sad. You only must look at reports of the organized celebrations held and planned in Washington DC. No singing artist who has had a hit since the 1876 Centennial would be caught dead performing at any of the events. Even the slate of washed up has beens that had been announced to perform, like Milli of Milli Vanilli fraudster fame, have very publicly disavowed and backed out of performing. The Great America State Fair has been attended by tens of people and the photos that have come out from it this week have been nothing short of pathetic. The Barnwell County fair that I attended as a kid had more people in attendance for the flower show. Last night I saw that one of the stages was literally falling apart during rehearsals and the performers had to scramble as to not get hit in the head with falling debris. The performers seem to outnumber the audience. The whole thing seems to be a giant grotesquerie of grift to benefit just one man. I will not mention his name because we all know it, unfortunately.
At a visitation, at least the ones I have attended in the South, you have a lot of people awkwardly standing around and usually the casket containing the dearly parted is the centerpiece of the proceedings. In this case, I am afraid our democracy and decency is what is inside the coffin with a bloated, orange faced undertaker in an ill-fitting suit waiting to bury the coffin and get it over with. This undertaker, like some I have heard of, is likely waiting on the life insurance check to come in before he actually buries the coffin.
At these visitations, there are people who are there to pay their respects in silence, the ones who are crying, people who are solemnly talking with the family, the ones who are conducting a mini reunion with friends and trying to be a little jovial under the circumstances and then you have the ones that are awkwardly standing around not sure what to say or how to feel. As a country, I feel like we are at the funeral home visitation stage of our history. I think most of us are all in the awkward standing around stage of the visitation and not sure how to feel or what to say. Most people do not know how to celebrate our this years 250th, many like me I believe, just want it to be over and past us so we can stop seeing how it has been hijacked to service a malignant narcissist.
Myself, I am in the mourning silent stage while trying to think of happier and better times in my country. I will try to remember the 1976 Bicentennial and how great that was and try not to think about where we are at 250th. To continue the railroad references, the country needs to get back on the right track or there will not be a Tricentennial in 50 years. I will be marking the event in a very lowkey way with my husband and our two dogs. That seems the most appropriate. Please keep our country in your thoughts during this difficult time.
TL