July 4 about more than a weenie roast

Call it one of my biggest pet peeves – the people who think of the holiday we celebrate Wednesday as the “Fourth of July,” and who think the term “Independence Day” is nothing more than that ridiculous film from some two-plus decades ago.

For the holiday that celebrates the events of some 242 years ago on this date is supposed to celebrate the events upon which the one-time English colonies of North America declared themselves an independent nation.

OF COURSE, I’M sure many people think that’s “boring!” and nothing more than ancient history. They prefer to think of this as the day we’ll dig out the barbecue grills, roast a few hot dogs and watch an explosive spectacle in the skies as we go out to our local park in the evening for a fireworks display.

That, and we find a way to turn this into an extended weekend – taking time off from work to make for an unofficial vacation.

If anything, the Independence Day holiday of 2018 will be unique because the actual “day off” comes on a Wednesday. We can actually pick if we want it to be the end of an extended weekend, or the beginning.

Or, for some incredibly lazy types, it will be a double weekend. A whole slew of time off – because why try to work when so many of your colleagues have disappeared.

I DOUBT MANY people will be giving history much thought. Which really is a shame.

Because at a time when our nation and our society is split so seriously, what I think we most are in need of is a history lesson. If anything, I think our “commander in chief” could most use such a lesson – since his sense of ego is such that I think at times he truly has no comprehension of what his campaign slogan truly means. Either that, or his sense of history comes entirely from those “Schoolhouse Rock” cartoons of the 1970s.

I’ll be honest; I don’t know exactly how I’m spending the day on Wednesday. A part of me thinks it would be useful to spend the day in historic meditation. Pondering the many sacrifices that generations past have made to create a nation and a society that so many from around the globe are eager to be a part of, while trying to calm the family dogs down as they endure an evening of explosives.

Instead, it could turn out to be little more than an over-glorified weenie roast, with me getting all outraged over my other pet peeve – people who persist in slathering their hot dogs in ketchup. Now that’s a truly un-American concept!

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EXTRA: Hoosier explosives going off overhead this holiday weekend

I was born in the part of Chicago where the Illinois/Indiana border was located just a few blocks away to the east.

 

Many of those fireworks you'll hear this weekend came from places like this store in Hammond just off Interstate 80-94 and four blocks from the Illinois border. Photograph by Gregory Tejeda

I was raised in suburbs right on the state line – heck, State Line Road was literally just another side street and places like Hammond, Munster and Whiting were just nearby towns.

AMONG MY CURRENT bits of employment that allow me to earn something resembling a living is work I do for one of the daily newspapers covering Lake and Porter counties in Indiana.

My point is that I probably have spent a lot more time amongst the Hoosiers (although I think that Hoosier-dom doesn’t really begin until one gets east of Valparaiso – everything west is just an extension of Chicago and Illinois).

But in coming days, for all I know even tonight, we’re going to have one of Indiana’s chief exports dominating our scene – no matter how much we wish it would go away.

I’m speaking, of course, about fireworks. All those explosives that will be blowing off particularly on Monday but some people just won’t be able to wait until then and may begin as soon as Saturday night.

IT’S INDEPENDENCE DAY come Monday – the date we celebrate the fact that the British colonies on the East Coast officially broke away from Great Britain, then eventually grew their way into our beloved United States of America.

Personally, I think I’m going to wind up with my father on that day – as he’s already getting himself geared up for all the relatives he’s inviting over to his house so he can fire up the grill and try to pretend that he’s engaged in something resembling gourmet cooking; outdoor-style!

But what would an Independence Day holiday be if NOT for the local yahoo who lives on your block feeling compelled to stock up on all kinds of explosives so he can fire them off throughout the night (simulating the “rockets’ red glare, the bombs burst in air” of the Star Spangled Banner?).

 

Does it do anything for you?

And because such explosives are heavily restricted in Illinois (the official municipal fireworks displays are coordinated by local police and fire department officials to ensure they don’t wind up burning down their towns), people in the area turn to Indiana in order to buy their devices.

IT ALWAYS AMAZES me the stores gathered near the state line on the Indiana sign that go out of their garish ways to advertise the fact they have for sale products that would warrant one’s arrest just a block or two to the west. Almost as tacky as those tobacco products stores bearing such names as "Smokes" or "Ciggies."

For as it is, Illinois people aren’t committing a crime of any sort if they blow their money on fireworks, then shoot them off over on the Hoosier side of State Line Road. It’s the moment they try to drive a trunk full of fireworks back across the border that they become the legal equivalent of smugglers.

Although I don’t think they’re so much venal as just idiotic.

Sorry, but I’m not a fireworks-type person. I just don’t see the point of such a spectacle – particularly since I feel I saw it when I was a kid and don’t need to keep doing it over and over and over again the rest of my life.

SOMEHOW, I CAN’T help but think there are better ways to pay tribute to the efforts of those “founding fathers” who created a nation that has been a world-leader in bringing about the concept of freedom to parts of the globe.

Eating the Italian sausages my father plans to grill on Monday (I have a niece who insists on having them even though she usually insists she won’t eat pork) and watching weak little bombs go off overhead can’t be all there is to the holiday?

 

How many kids have ever heard of REO Speedwagon?

Somehow, I even think the people who will be at U.S. Cellular Field on Monday to see the White Sox take on the New York Yankees will be doing something more worthwhile with the holiday – even if they’ll have to endure the sound of REO Speedwagon (memories of junior high school-era bad music pop into my head) performing the national anthem AND “God Bless America”).

And in the end, at least a few neighborhood cranks will wind up calling the cops Monday night when their neighbors feel compelled to show us just what they bought during their little side trip to Indiana this weekend!

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Having to flee one’s home ought to be a disgrace on an Independence Day

I recall a day from back when I was a kid and my brother and I went with our mother for a day-long visit to grandma’s house.

Putting in overtime this coming weekend

What provoked this visit wasn’t any real desire to see the relatives. It was that there was talk of white supremacists feeling the need to come to our neighborhood in suburban Lansing and hold a rally of sorts, just a couple of blocks from where we lived.

NOW I DON’T remember the specifics of this particular rally, which would have been back in the late 1970s. I seem to recall a local radio personality (and by local, I mean someone on a suburban-based radio station whom most of Chicago would never have heard of) who got all worked up over “Roots” being shown on television.

So perhaps it was a batch of crackpots showing unity in their outrage over having some of the horrors of slavery in this country being illustrated on national television – and living on to this day on DVD.

Or maybe it was some other outrage the bigots felt. Quite frankly, those people rarely have any sense of logic about the way they perceive anything. So who knows what bothered them?

All I remember is that my mother didn’t want to be around. So off to grandma’s we went.

IF MY MEMORY is correct, that rally didn’t amount to much. I was told by people who didn’t leave that day that it turned into a few people yelling and shouting and screaming and pretty much making fools of themselves.

I do recall that when we came back home, there was quite a bit of trash strewn around the streets on the block where we lived. Much more than would be if it were just a neighbor’s dog running loose and getting into the neighbor’s trash cans.

But that was the extent. A fairly minor incident, and not one whose details have really clung into the crevasses of my mind.

Not everybody will view Independence Day in this way

Although that feeling of having to leave our home for the day because we didn’t want to get caught up as collateral damage, of sorts, popped into my mind Wednesday when I stumbled across a Chicago Tribune report about how some Chicagoans are planning weekend trips this weekend because they don’t want to get struck by stray gunfire.

I FEEL GRATEFUL that I have never lived in a South Side neighborhood where such an approach to life during the holidays is commonplace.

Although it strikes me as particularly odd that on a holiday meant to celebrate the ideals upon which this nation was founded (“life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” and all that jazz), some people feel the way to protect their lives, liberty and pursuit of happiness is to skip town.

Because there are those individuals who view Independence Day solely in the context of explosives and the chance to set off rounds of gunfire.

As a reporter-type person, I have seen the many holiday weekends in which people wind up getting picked off by stray bullets. I remember one incident where a bullet fired into the air wound up coming back to Earth about a mile away before someone got shot (although the oddest incident I recall from my police reporter days was the naked woman being chased around 95^th Street and Western Avenue on a New Year’s Eve some three decades ago).

THE NEWSPAPER REPORTED about how there also will be extra police on duty this holiday weekend. Hospitals also are working to ensure they won’t be short-staffed if they get a sudden flood of gunshot wound victims.

It makes my one-time incident of having to see grandma for a full day seem kind of minor by comparison, because it wasn’t an annual tradition of a trip that we planned to make just to survive.

So while some people may think the quintessential Chicago holiday weekend is attending the Grateful Dead (or a reasonable facsimile thereof) concert or festivities at Navy Pier, keep in mind that some people think a successful holiday involves just staying alive.

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Fireworks on 4th – what’s the big deal?

One of my memories of the Bicentennial proper (as in July 4, 1976, when I was on the verge of turning 11) was being at an uncle and aunt’s house in suburban Park Forest when one of my cousins, myself and a couple of other kids managed to get ahold of some firecrackers.

Nothing overly elaborate.

BUT THEY WOULD explode a few seconds after being lit. Which for a 10-year-old was something of a kick, I suppose. Although I’ve never messed with fireworks of any type since, and I can’t say I think I’ve missed out on anything spectacular in life.

So count me among the ranks of the grouchy old men who is going to be wondering what is wrong with all the nincompoops who are going to feel compelled to cause explosions every chance they get all this week – particularly Wednesday night and through much of Thursday.

For the latter date is Independence Day in this country. We celebrate the date some 237 years ago when our nation declared itself to be free of colonialism – even though it took another seven years before Great Britain recognized that fact and another six before we had a constitution with Bill of Rights that made it clear this nation was likely here to stay!

My guess is that all the explosions we hear are supposed to be reminiscent of the cannon fire that once occurred on battlefields. It’s supposed to give a martial effect to the day. Why worry about esoteric concepts such as “freedom” and “democracy” when you can blow something up?

NOW I’M NOT one of those people who is going to be turned into an emotionally-shattered mess come Thursday with all the explosions that will take place across my neighborhood (unless, by chance, someone misfires badly and it becomes my residence that gets destroyed).

It’s going to be more a matter of annoyance. Largely because I don’t get the appeal. Even the 10-year-old in me was satisfied after a few minutes of this type of stuff. Are the bulk of us really that emotionally stunted?

No, I won’t call the police that day. Because I have enough sense to realize they’re going to be overwhelmed with enough calls from knuckleheads who are losing control of their behavior.

They’re going to have better things to do than to chase down juvenile-minded people.

BUT IT’S STILL going to be annoying. In fact, it already has started.

A week ago, my neighborhood had fireworks being blown out after sunset. Of course, part of that could have been the fact that it was the night that the neighborhood lost power due to last week’s sudden storm.

Perhaps some people, with no electricity or anything else to do, felt compelled to try out a few of their potentially incendiary devices. Although I’m sure their cover story was that the Chicago Blackhawks had just won the Stanley Cup, and they wanted to celebrate!

I’m sure some of us can curse out the concept of Indiana – where the sale of these fireworks is legal; unlike Illinois. Although I couldn’t help but notice a report that even in Indiana, the actual use of those fireworks is restricted to a specific time of the year.

THE “13 DAYS of hell,” as described by Hammond Police Chief Brian Miller to The Times of Northwest Indiana newspaper – a period of time in which we’re in right now. And even the Indiana law enforcement officials find the whole issue to be an annoyance.

Personally, I have always found those businesses set up right on the Illinois/Indiana border that sell cheap cigarettes and fireworks to be somewhat tacky. Although because they stay on the “other” side of State Line Road, they are fully-legitimate businesses.

Just not one in which I ever care to spend my money. Happy Independence Day – despite the pseudo “bombs bursting in air.”

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It just doesn’t “feel” right

I comprehend the idea of a shorter Taste of Chicago as an event that fits better within the budget of city officials.



Grant Park's pristine beauty will be besmirched for a few days this week for our city's annual, but abbreviated, food fest



I’m sure there are many people who only go one day per year. So they will still have five days to pick from beginning Wednesday, and they will have the option of gorging themselves on whatever edibles they choose to spend lots of money on.

AND AS FOR those people who work downtown and like to make several stops, they’ll still be able to do that for a few days this week.

But somehow, I can’t help but think that this year’s Taste of Chicago just doesn’t feel right. And it’s not because of the fact that the guy who cooks those ridiculously huge turkey legs (bigger that some peoples’ heads) won’t be among the event’s vendors.

It’s the timing of the event. I can’t help but think this is taking place a week late. Monday should be the day that we do the final review of how much cleanup had to be done to restore Grant Park to its potentially-pristine condition. Because it should be over by now.

But it isn’t. It hasn’t yet begun.

IT’S GOING TO take some getting used to.

Because in my mind, and those of many other Chicago residents, the Taste of Chicago is a summer-time event that coincides with Independence Day celebration.

It was a 10-day string that would be scheduled to include the July 4 holiday proper, along with the July 3 fireworks display along the lakefront near Navy Pier.

Chicago knew how to throw an Independence Day party. But that is all now history.

FOR CITY OFFICIALS gave up a couple of years ago on the downtown fireworks display – leaving many Chicago-area residents who used to converge on the central and near North part of the city to have to resort to whatever nearby suburban village was having its own fireworks show.

And now, we’re waiting until after Independence Day is over and done with before even beginning the Taste of Chicago. Although I suppose those people who show up on Saturday can claim to be celebrating Bastille Day!

Even if, to the best of my knowledge, none of the restaurants whose foodstuffs are being offered up are serving anything even remotely resembling French cuisine

For those who want to rant that it would be wrong to celebrate a French holiday, keep in mind that Milwaukee has an official festival for that date each and every year.

AND IT WAS the French who were the original European colonizers to much of the Midwestern U.S. Does anyone really believe that the English would have come up with a name like Illinois?

Even if they tried to use variations on native tribal names, they likely would have come up with a more Anglicized spelling than anything ending in an “ois.”

Not that I’m pushing for a Bastille Day celebration in Chicago any time soon. Or that I even care all that much personally about the idea of a shorter Taste of Chicago.

It just seems that we’ve lost something that made the event rather special by having it tied into the holiday in which we celebrate our nation’s birth.

BECAUSE WITHOUT THAT tie, the event becomes nothing more than a chance to feed one’s face with too many variations of pizza and barbecue, along with various takes on ethnic cuisines ranging from Italian to Mexican to Irish to African.

And, of course, fried chicken from Harold’s – which portrays itself as the ultimate South Side joint.

Although if Taste of Chicago officials really wanted good chicken from a neighborhood joint, they’d include a stand from Hienie’s -- located around 104^th Street on Torrence Avenue, for those of you who never venture south of Roosevelt Road.

Smothered in the store’s “hot” sauce (forget the mild version), it is a treat I don’t get all that often. But is something that adds to the cuisine character of Chicago. Which is what this event is supposed to be all about!

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Fireworks fest leaves me cold

Friday is one of those events that has evolved into a Chicago tradition that I must admit leaves me cold.

I have never done it. And I wonder about the intelligence quotient of anyone who does partake in the festivities.

THE EVENT THAT I refer to is those people who will be among the 1 million-plus who will gather along the downtown Chicago lakefront this evening with the intent of watching the official Independence Day fireworks display.

Part of it is that I have never really understood the appeal of fireworks, or how the sound of explosions is supposed to make me feel patriotic and fortunate that my grandparents made the decision to immigrate to this country some eight decades ago.

But there is something about the pre-Independence Day festivities that I just can’t get into. Spots close to Navy Pier have proven to be a particularly popular area to watch the pre-Independence Day fireworks display scheduled this year for Friday. Photograph provided by State of Illinois.

I think I’d sooner eat one of those giant turkey legs, followed by a half-dozen pieces of pizza and a slab or two of ribs, followed up by a giant watermelon slice, at the Taste of Chicago. Of course, if I really shoved that much greasy food down my gullet, I’d be regurgitating it right back up (plus I’d be too broke to do anything else the rest of the holiday weekend) in a matter of minutes.

THE PEOPLE I have never understood are the ones who make the point of showing up ridiculously early on July 3 so they can get a so-called “front row” seat to the fireworks display.

We’re talking about a seat along the lakefront, bringing their blankets and beach towels so they can lay out in what passes for the beach.

They stake out their spots in the sand and wait there for hours so that come nightfall, they can be in front of everybody else for “the show.”

The problem is that “the show” is in the sky. So how is one seat any better or worse than any other? It’s all happening “up there,” not in front of us.

SO IT SEEMS like many people will waste a day in the sand for nothing.

Not only that, but there’s also the fact that they will be pinned in front of the crowd. Which means that by being the first ones to show up, they also will be the last ones who get to leave.

The people who head for the lakefront just in time to catch the first colorful explosion are going to be the first ones who get out.

Perhaps I’m being alarmist, but I have always wondered how big of a catastrophe could occur in Chicago on a July 3 if some sort of disaster took place that suddenly required everyone to evacuate the lakefront.

WOULD WE WIND up with hundreds of thousands of people stuck in a mass of human flesh and bone, unable to move? Or would it get ugly and turn into a riot, with people fighting their way out of the mass?

Some people have as a phobia the thought of spiders or flying in an airplane. For me, it would be being stuck in the crowd on the lakefront, all because I was foolish enough to want to see the pre-Independence Day fireworks display.

So I don’t go.

I honestly don’t feel like I’m missing much, even though I will be the first to concede that the downtown Chicago fireworks display the day before the Independence Day holiday is an event on a grander scale than any of the fireworks displays that will take place on the holiday proper.

ALL ACROSS THE suburbs on Saturday (and on every July 4), people will get their chance to see another fireworks display. If you really need to see explosions, I’m sure you can find a municipality nearby that will put on a show for you.

Or perhaps you will have neighbors who will decide to shoot off their own collections of rockets, which they probably purchased during a recent trip to the Land of Hoosiers. Just the other day, I was at the Illinois-Indiana border where I saw a family loading up their vehicle bearing Illinois license plates with the wares they purchased from a store that specializes in fireworks (along with cheap cigarettes and pop).

I can already anticipate which of my neighbors are going to think it is their Constitutional Right to blow things up (yes, some of my neighbors have a “Beavis and Butthead” mentality to them).

And while I won’t be one of the people rushing to the telephone to call the cops (figuring that the police can’t be so dense that they don’t hear the explosions for themselves), I certainly won’t get upset if someone else does.

PERHAPS I JUST have a “get those kids off my lawn” mentality, but I have always believed that Independence Day ought to be a day of quiet reflection – one in which we contemplate the advantages we have in our lives by virtue of the accident of birth that we weren’t born in Afghanistan.

Somehow, the idea of turning the day where we celebrate the creation of our nation into a cornucopia of cheap weenies cooked on the barbecue grill and bottle rockets being blown to smithereens seems like a trivialization of what the holiday is supposed to be about.

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