They still remain, the remains of The Fourth of July, such as a set of Patriot Theme baubles on a moderately sized and multi-faceted stick, both round and square and rectangularly flag-shaped, set in a small and quaint corner of a front yard just down from me, in all colors that include but go beyond the trinity of red, white and blue. Tiny actual flags above them, two of them. All a full 50 lining the sidewalk and entry walk to the house a few more blocks down.
But The Fourth speaks for itself, as all things of business necessary except, say but not limited to, the American standard of the convenience store, are shut down. Gotta see fireworks, most workers do, and grab a space to park your butt or your boat hours in advance. Such as to later also take in, and be taken in, by the Stillwater show. Standing in Line? Tonight? With the lights on? Heavy glow. More on that in a later post.
But what about The Third, on a Monday, which means that it becomes a floating (word chosen intentionally to account for you crazy partiers) four-day holiday. Or maybe four-and-a-half, as so many of you — yeah you — took not only the in-between Monday as a vacation day, but the Friday aft off to get the party started. And a bouncer friend who had just had it with it all, said well gee, with this shit-show brought by shutdown most everywhere else, it means I won’t get a break from dealing with rowdy people until after Wednesday passes. But then wait, he rethunk with my prompting, The Fourth that is at play, actually ends on Tuesday. I think his angst is understandable.
So, Joe goes back to The Third. I had some deadline stuff to deal with and needed the always fickle editorial OK, but would anybody be in, as you can never tell what an editor or ad client is going to say, even if it would seem to a logical person to be a slam dunk. So with one, got an answer back prior to 8 a.m. as I am sure they, still working from home, wanted to just get the minimal done and get their gonzo grill going. Thus a rubber stamp of a rubber stamp? So I pushed the process along, to no avail as the sun rose higher, with they and so many others. Just see ya on Wednesday, or you will be so swamped with backup work that it becomes Thursday.
So I had a vested interest to see if all commerce, such as mine would be, would stall on that Monday. So I did what all good Patriots, or even more modern Pagans, would do to find out, then proclaim. I put my trust in Google. What’s indeed open for Patriot patrons, and they report uhm, its a holiday and thus there have been no updates by this business to their website since say, 2022, so we can’t ensure accuracy.
But what did pop up, as far as closure(s), on the a majority of search possibilities? That bastion of unbridled American commerce, read capitalism, as this is The Fourth, the stock market(s). We all knew already about things like mail delivery, government offices and maybe banks, from past experience.
So what did I find? And verified. These markets will close their rampaging doors at 1 p.m. So hey, and I may be being cynical, those in Boston and upper-crust Connecticut and New York, haughty all, then can pack up and still hit the Hamptons and New Hampshire and Maine, well before nightfall, and shoot off early the often-illegal stuff they bought in that trek to Wisconsin — one of the few places you can get it — after deviating north from high-profile business done in Chicago. Maybe hide “the works” when coming back through Ohio. But like the past firing of muskets, it passes muster when traversing the Massachusetts foothills.
I told that laugher to my mom, twice, and she didn’t get the joke. Maybe that’s because she’s from southern, sliding a bit westward, Milwaukee, at the doorstep to the state were so much of this is legal and going bang well into the night is as much as farming truly the standard operating procedure (SOD).
But back here, where we are truly westward. A new server friend downtown was doing her first stint in summer, as a true newbie, and experiencing Booster Days, which with the Tuesday timing of The Fourth, could choose to run a full five days. Craziness all the way through until 10:30 p.m. at her late shift, and though she’s not a metalhead, she could appreciate it too, At This Place We Call The Zoo.
Down the block, they invited the creatures into their establishment, in case they needed to sober up. Dunn Brothers coffee, across the street from the Smilin’ Moose, would be open 7 to 7Â — not Seven Eleven — on July Fourth.