One
score and 15 minutes ago, Our Good Friends in Marketing whipped up a nation in the grips of
an unprecedented consumer frenzy called Bicentennial Mania.
Though there were plenty of moments not “made for TV,” the Bicentennial
lingers in memory mostly for its commemorative tumblers, its lunch boxes and
its Organizers (by Mead). Whereas July 4, 1976 had been billed as the ultimate
appreciation of liberty, the entire year ended up more as an exercise in Pop
Culture Commerce, an institution as American as the Popiel Pocket Fisherman, or
Cracked magazine.
In Indiana where I lived, the coming of America’s 200th birthday was bigger
than Bigfoot, more anticipated than the arrival of the Sears Wish Book.
In fact, it completely pre-empted my hometown’s annual fair, “Salisbury Steak
Daze.” On the day Myth Met Merchandising, I was 12. Being just old enough to be
“way into it,” but just young enough not to notice what was really happening, I
was ripe for the hype.
In fairness, this gala celebration of our civic religion probably wasn’t the beginning of what is now known to some as the Hype & Action Figures
Era, but it was arguably critical mass, with everybody from KISS to the United
States Treasury cashing in on the merchandising lolla-pa-ganza.
There was the Bicentennial Minute — a family-oriented, made-for-TV,
nightly historical vignette featuring earnest, backlit thespians such as
Charlton Heston as the voice of God or George Washington. Educational? Yes, but
wedged inside each history lesson was also a prime-time commercial to view
while you learned.
I can recall exactly where I was and what I did that Fourth of July 20 summers
ago; can you? True, it’s not quite the same as asking “where were you when
Kennedy was shot,” but if you were a kid, the mind’s eye is equally as likely
to have stored a vivid image of JFK’s motorcade as it is to have archived
hundreds of pictures of fire hydrants painted to depict Revolutionary
minutemen.
Sensing hype levels that only America can achieve, other countries around the
world sent majestic “tall ships” to join in our celebration (probably for much
the same reason you’d attend your boss’ kid’s birthday party) as if to subtly
remind us, “We have outhouses older than you people. Get over it.” Perhaps the
Shameless Promotion of Crap really began in the heyday of mass production
during the first half of the century (think of Ralphie and his disappointingly
commercial Ovaltine secret decoder ring in A Christmas Story) but if the
Bicentennial wasn’t all hype, it certainly was merchandised to within an inch
of its life.
At that precise moment in history, all I wanted was for Rocky to kick Apollo
Creed’s ass. As the milestone drew near, I was far more concerned about having
to burn the flag should it inadvertently touch ground. To me, Evel Knievel was
the Father of Our Country; I neither knew nor cared about the eternal struggle
of Liberty vs. The Fast Buck. Still, nobody can fault the opportunistic Folks
Down in Promotions, circa 1975, for simply reading the signals correctly: “Slap
some red-white-and-blue on it, and the people will come.” They did, and we
came.
This accounts for the 7-Up Bicentennial Bottles sitting in my mother’s kitchen
cabinets right now. These were green-tinted bottles which you later cut and
sanded, using your Ronco Jar and Bottle Cutter, to make a lovely drink glass.
Why go out and buy pre-made glassware anyway?
Liberal distribution of flags, bunting, and anything else in our national
“tri-color,” to attract attention, also sheds some light on the genius of Sly
Stallone, who artfully chose Bicentennial-era Philadelphia as backdrop to
Rocky, then rode his ensuing wave of Hype & Action Figures Era
adoration to become a Blockbuster Movie/Licensed Products Mini-Economy unto
himself.
To further prime the pump of American consumerism, the U.S. Treasury rolled
out new and improved money to add to the enjoyment of our national pastime:
Buying Shit. The onslaught began with the $2 bill that spring, by which I
instantly became hypnotized (my opportunistic dad had given me one). I spent
hours studying it, folding it up, taking it places on my banana-seated bike
(with sissy bar), hiding it, re-hiding it, losing it, then finding it again
later. However, when I laid eyes on the Treasury’s piece de resistance,
the Bicentennial Quarter (which featured the familiar rebel drummer on its
“tails” side), I cashed in my $2 bill and never looked back.
I began hoarding the newly minted quarters, thinking their value would someday
double or triple. (It should be noted that collecting, at that age, was a
bizarre endurance event combined with an obsession bordering on the unhealthy.
Right about then, I had become heavily entrenched in the “Street Sign Theft
Phase” experienced by all pre-pubescent males. You’d unscrew a street sign for
display on your bedroom wall; your mom would ask, “Where’d you get that stop
sign?” and you’d reply, “I found it.”) I hid the coins under my bed in a white,
4″x4″ cardboard jewelry gift box (the kind containing a cut-to-size, fluffy
cotton swatch). Every night, I’d head to my room, lock the door and empty the
shiny contents of the box onto the carpet. Defying my usual short attention
span, I continued this ritual until I had collected about $20 worth. Then I hit
The Wall.
On that fateful evening, opening the magic box no longer produced the required
rush. My first thought was, “What the hell am I doing?” followed by a beat of
realization: “Hey, this is negotiable currency!” So I converted my collection
into Wacky Packages stickers, stashing and ritually examining the Trading Cards
Based on Parody Versions of Actual Products every night until school started.
You had to hand it to Bicentennial Mania’s Founding Fathers. Knowing they only
had a tiny window of opportunity to get me involved, they’d hit me where I
lived. By mid-March 1976, I couldn’t get enough of Bicentennial pencils,
folders, lamps, thermoses, pajamas, alarm clocks, T-shirts and hats, and by
early June, I had been reduced to a quivering, pyromaniacal Freak of Nature
(“How long can I hold this thing before it explodes?”).
The workhorse, the staple, of any reliable Arsenal of Bicentennial Democracy was the firecracker. More
than an amusement, a firecracker in the possession of a sixth-grader was a
tool, really. With it, you could probe the limits of physical science in the
kid world: How many molded plastic army men will perish in a single blast? How
high will the lid of the Bicentennial Pringles canister go? Will Bactine cool a
second-degree burn? When will that ringing in my ears stop?
The Fourth of July, 1976 was significant also because it happened to be the
critical July 4 during which I would need to prove my demolitions expertise to
protect my coolness rankings in the neighborhood caste system.
Banned in my house, “illegal” firecrackers were easy to purchase “by the
brick” from the neighborhood kids. These were kids whose parents would make a
run to neighboring Tennessee every June 30 to “score the hard stuff” (the
parents who’d also take New Year’s Eve celebrations “to the next level” by
firing shotguns into the sky). At some point that day I lit off whatever
illegal fireworks I could smuggle onto kid-approved testing grounds, and all
was well with the world. Nothing could equal the sight, nor smell, of a black
cloud of gunpowder smoke — the very smell of liberty itself, friend.
If I’d had it my way, I would have used only the good stuff. But as it was, I
tested mostly “legal” fireworks, because legal fireworks beat no fireworks. My
lingering fascination with “snakes”
(a cylindrical carbon that, when
ignited, expanded into oblong, charcoal turds) and “smoking monkeys” (a
miniature plastic, Buddha-like primate equipped with his own pack-o-smokes)
also started July 4, 1976. And even though the legal stuff is usually less fun,
you can’t tell me a cheap thrill doesn’t come along with the
suspense-generating granddaddy of them all, the sparkler: a hand-held, red-hot
needle — on fire — that compels its holder to run around the yard, barefoot.
In retrospect, the only thing dumber is giving a kid a woodburning set.
That night, after many hot dogs and ears of corn, my entire family headed
downtown to watch the widely hyped “deluxe” version of the city’s annual
fireworks display. Turns out that “deluxe” actually meant “we bought a whole
bunch of extra boomers” (those loud ones that don’t do anything but hurt your
ears). Mildly disappointed, I live on.
As with so many things in life, the anticipation for 1976 was not exceeded by the actual event (we have
our pals in the Department of Excessive Hype to thank for that). Eager to avoid
such disappointment, we forked over our $2 bills and our Bicentennial quarters
for red, white, and blue socks, and the newly revived 13-star colonial flag. My
hometown gushed with news of the impending arrival of the Freedom Train (a
rolling, three-car train/museum whose main attraction seemed to be its
memorabilia-generating ability to postmark a letter “The Freedom Train, USA”).
Americans to the end, we plowed optimistically forward to the Limp Payoff.
En route to the hollow prize, nobody violated my inalienable right to wear a
two-pound, pewter minuteman belt buckle affixed to a white vinyl,
three-inch wide belt. Messrs. Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin (he of
the long, dangly kite string) had seen to that, even though they could not have
foreseen what two centuries of freedom would come to. Nor could I have
appreciated their sacrifices on my behalf; after all, who needed dead old
history guys anyway, when one had daily access to freedom-generated
trendsetters like Bert Convy, Richard Dawson, and Gene Rayburn (he of the long,
skinny microphone)?
Twenty summers later, my definitive Bicentennial memory is not of the tall
ships being waved through New York Harbor by the Statue of Liberty (“C’mon,
let’s go, keep it moving… nothing to see here”). Whenever I think about the
Bicentennial, I see “The Spirit of ’76,” the familiar painting of heroic rebels
returning from battle. One is playing a drum, one is bandaged with a head
wound, one has a guitar, and Ace Frehley is dressed as a Funky Spaceman.
Looking back on 1976, the whole thing seemed to have been about tall ships
and smoking monkeys. Was that so bad? Not on your life. Patriotism had become a
commodity. And “it’s a free country” meant, then as now, “I can do as I damn
well please” — the real declaration of independence. n Stuart Wade, co-author of Drop Us a Line, Sucker!, was saddened when we didn’t
convert to the metric system by 1979 as promised.
This article appears in November 1 • 1996 and November 1 • 1996 (Cover).