Hummingbirds, Hot Dogs and the Fourth of July

It’s the 4^th of July, and I’ll bet few Shore residents will be thinking, “ We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal.” This is our signature declaration of liberty and the occasion of Independence Day.  We’ll be too busy with fireworks, cookouts and family.  Of all our national holidays, Independence Day is the most festive. It’s a blast. Fireworks go off everywhere.

Where I live, if you miss fireworks in St. Michel’s, you can catch them in nearby Oxford or Cambridge. Around the fourth, night skies over the Shore appear like meteor showers.

When I think of the Fourth, my first thought is of fireflies and hummingbirds.   As a boy, on the Fourth, my family would visit a friends’ lakefront home to celebrate. We’d arrive toward evening. We’d swim awhile. As the sun set, fireflies appeared. I loved chasing them and then putting them in a jar. As I ran around, I’d hear something fly past me making a loud buzzing sound. I never saw it. It always scared me. A monstrous bug, I thought. I was about forty years old before I realized it was a hummingbird. Now I associate these experiences with the fourth. Hardly patriotic!

I may not be a model citizen but I am human. However significant personal or national events are, or how joyful or traumatic life circumstances turn out, you and I will invariably recall them first through some peripheral associations as I did identifying the holiday with humming birds and fireflies. We get back to the basics through our convoluted associations. Our minds behave like we peel onions: we start from the outside and work in.

Like fireworks, hot dogs are popular on the Fourth. Nathan’s, on Coney Island, however, takes eating hot dogs way over the top.

Independence Day each year in Brooklyn, N.Y, Nathan’s, a renowned hot dog restaurant, holds a contest. About forty thousand spectators attend to see who can consume the most hot dogs. On July 4^th 2012 Joey Chestnut won his sixth title by consuming 68 hot dogs in ten minutes. The contest was televised. I’ll bet, when Independence Day arrives, Joey’s first two thoughts are: how many and how fast.

I say over the top since I see no relationship between wolfing down 68 hot dogs as relevant to Independence Day. A tenuous case might be made that our Declaration of Independence leaves Joey free to eat himself silly but it doesn’t support my idea of equality: there’s only a winner and lots of losers.

But who am I to judge Joey’s patriotism?  There’s no essential connection to the birth of our nation in my trapping of hapless fireflies or hearing frightening sounds on a summer night, than there is to Joey’s extravagant pig-outs.

In no way are Joey and I equal. I couldn’t eat 68 wieners in week much less in ten minutes.  However, our country secures for both of us the same opportunity: the freedom to follow our bliss, whether we seek it on hot dog buns or by catching fireflies in glass jars.

Now that’s an opportunity worth celebrating.