Brass and drums penetrating me as bands marched down the street in colors far brighter than my crayon box. Surrounded by legs. Band members perplexing me with their seriousness amid all the cheer and smile and hoop de doo and dogs barking and babies screaming and kids yelling to each other across the street between the rows of majorettes.

The promise of hot dogs, buttered ears of corn, strawberry shortcake hung in the air. Just the promise. Too early in the day yet. But I knew it was coming. The gunpowder/sulfur smell of cap pistols filled the air at this time of the day. The heavier smell of industrial strength fireworks will dominate later. But hot-dogs and corn and cake were the promise. You can taste a promise when it's a good one. When you're sure it'll be kept. Mothers were good for those kinds of promises. It was Independence Day and it was un-American not to celebrate in this fashion. Joe McCarthy was saying so on the radio every day.

Riding bikes with patriotic streamers and playing cards clothes-pinned to the spokes for pop. Baby carriages decorated for their oblivious passengers. Endless games of tag and delightful marathons of hide and seek defied mosquitoes and sunburn and scolding mothers who warned us not to step in dog dirt. These were days that were closer to the spirit of independence than today.

Cars without seat belts. No thought given to drinking and driving. Ball games in the street, knowing traffic would stop. Chain-smoking parents. Sharing one ice cream cone with a friend or with your unleashed dog. Running around the city of Brotherly Love un-chaperoned and unworried or even worried about. Older brothers who hitchhiked. Long walks in the public parks and forests where the mounted police would always direct you to the nearest intersection. Penny candy stores where you could use the phone to call home if you did wander too far from home.

Twenty cent double features and nickel bags of popcorn. We had the run of the city. We knew independence. Every day was Independence Day. But the Fourth of July had parades and fireworks and hot-dogs and relatives who drank too much and said outrageous things that grandmothers would scold them for, taking the attention from our own fresh behavior.

We knew more about independence long before we knew anything about the Declaration. When we did learn the reaction was like, no shit, duh, of course. Not exactly taking it for granted but it seemed like such an obvious way to conduct one's life or the life of a nation. The only one questioning anybody's patriotism for independence of thought was McCarthy and his followers before they were discredited. But the late sixties would see it happen again and now patriotism and religion are thought to be one and the same by many.

I have to believe that all things run in cycles. We will return to some form of national sanity. But I'm still waiting for the return of that childhood feeling, Running the streets of Philly on the Fourth of July. The promise of Hot-dogs, buttered corn and shortcake. I was never big on strawberries. Independent thinker that I always was.