Monday memory: the Bicentennial

It actually came at a time the country could use a celebration.

I think it’s been said somewhere that America is a great nation because America is a good nation. We showed that in the wake of 9/11, but that was also the era of instantaneous news and communications.

The mid-1970s was a tumultuous time in American history. Being a tween at the time, I was barely aware of our ignominous retreat from Vietnam or the Watergate scandal that brought down a president - a leader whose original choice for vice-president resigned because of his own corruption, leaving the nation for the first time with a President whom no one elected in Gerald Ford. The things I was aware of were the long lines at the gas stations during the first oil crisis and the surging cost of everything - we just couldn’t WIN (Whip Inflation Now. I remember those buttons.)

So the nation needed a feel-good event, and the Bicentennial was just the shot in the arm necessary to take our minds off those thorny issues. But the one thing I remember most in the runup to the actual event was the Bicentennial Minute.

Every night on channel 11, which was our CBS station in Toledo, the network would break into its programming, pausing to talk about an event during the American Revolution or a personality who was involved. It was usually narrated by someone involved with a CBS show, so it was a bit self-serving, but this was a glimpse at history - think of it as Schoolhouse Rock for adults, although it wasn’t often musical. In looking it up, I found out the look at history was so popular that CBS extended it past its original intended closing date of July 4, 1976 to the end of the year. The Bicentennial Minute ran almost 2 1/2 years, every day.

In truth, I don’t remember a whole lot about what we did for the Bicentennial proper aside from driving down to the viaduct over the turnpike so we could see Swanton’s fireworks better from a vantage point a couple miles away. It was our first summer in the house we had built on five acres, after living in the city of Toledo my whole life prior to that. So on July 4 we probably played baseball on the backyard field we had laid out.

But 1976 was a year when everything a tween was into seemed better because of the hoopla, particularly the fair we would go to from my grandparents’ house. (That was the Pemberville Free Fair, which, by the way, has continued to thrive over the decades.) It seemed like they put a little extra effort into making the fair a special one that year. Turns out the 1976 version would be the last or second-to-last edition I would stay at my grands for because they moved down to Florida the next year. (I went back years later as an adult and found that not a whole lot had changed. But two months hence I was a Maryland resident.)

Yet all the celebrating, whether it was additional attractions at the fair, a super-duper long fireworks show, or the tall ships that visited various harbors, showed the world that we were still a great nation because we were still a good nation. Not a perfect union by any means, but it was an era where people still tried to do right by their neighbors. (Of course, it helped that we actually knew our neighbors back then instead of sheltering in place with our screens and Netflix. Yes, I’m guilty as charged too although I have met the newest neighbors thanks to our dogs.)

While I’ve heard some rumblings about how America will celebrate its semiquincentennial, I don’t think these events have yet captured our imagination. I doubt anyone is going to give up valuable commercial time to do a Semiquincentennial Minute because by the time they say the phrase, time will be up. But we’re coming up on the three-year mark away from the holiday, which will occur July 4, 2026 whether we are ready for it or not.

Lord knows we could use something to take our minds off our general condition.