I was going to write something frothy for today. After all, it’s still a holiday, and I’m in the business of “Here. Drink [eat, visit] this! It’s good!”
I used to look forward to the 4th of July, and the Schuster family traditions that started when I was a kid. I have been a full time New Yorker since my late teens, and I was born in the city. But when I was an infant, my parents moved to Connecticut. My dad tells me that what sealed the deal was that in the car on the way back to the train bound for Grand Central Station, they passed a bunch of kids in flowing wool scarves skating on a frozen pond in that sort of iconic Norman Rockwell painting way (in 1972, A Charlie Brown Christmas had yet to be a thing in their lives).
Winters in southern New England were still cold enough for ponds and tiny lakes to freeze solid in the 1970s and ‘80s.
Having grown up in Far Rockaway and starting their adult post-grad school lives in the Big Apple, the country life seemed idyllic to my parents. My mom’s first real career break as a physician was happening outside of the city and Dad was willing to make the commute to teach chemistry at NYU. They were ready to commit to the country life, a major adjustment that was made slightly easier knowing the city they knew and loved was not too far away. They still could, and would, return often.
Summer in the sticks had its equal share of charms. The first house we lived in had a large backyard with its own little pond and babbling brook. It’s where my dad first honed his exceptional grilling skills, which came in handy when we combined households with my maternal grandmother and moved to our second house, which had a pool.
That pool was where it was AT in summer, and the July 4th holiday weekend was a time to entertain hordes of city slickers and a few local friends in and around it, rain or shine. By the time I was in college, a regular group of seven or so NYC inner circle pals would join me at the house for what would often be at least two full days and nights of poolside shenanigans.
You wouldn’t know it now, what with me freaking out whenever I have to do things like descend the spiral staircase at Brandy Library, but I could be somewhat of a daredevil. I had a Stupid Pool Trick. We had these foam, plastic-covered lounge floats. They weren’t the inflatable kind, although we had those too (my favorite were the alligators), but they were ridiculously comfortable to stretch out on and didn’t ever spring a leak or sink. Problem was getting onto them from within the pool.
After some trial and error, I figured out that if I positioned the float in the water at the deep end with the head cushion bit facing our low diving board—maybe about two feet away—I could do a running leap into a kind of somersault style dive onto it. I would then take advantage of basic aerodynamics to land, tuck, and roll out with my head perfectly settled onto the cushion and my torso aligned with the rest of it. Ta-daaaa!!!
I was careful not to drink and dive, although drinks were plentiful past a certain point of the day. It was the 1990s and definitely involved frozen concentrate Piña Colada and Margarita mixes thrown in the blender with the cheapest, most additive-laden tequila there was (you know the one). I do remember that the rum wasn’t as terrible in quality, though. My parents had a set of highball glasses with part of the Declaration of Independence etched onto them that friends had gifted to them in 1976, the Bicentennial year, and I remember drinking out of those.
We had no one telling us we were mixing our gin and tonics all wrong, or that our rum was too sweet or that we definitely should have been wary of anything labeled as “gold” in the liquor aisle. No one in the press decreed that anything was an official 4th of July beverage. Early American punch recipes sweetened with oleo saccharum weren’t on our radar yet. We made drinks with whatever would just be the easiest thing to whir in a blender or mix with tonic in a single glass or pour out of a wine bottle and be done thinking about it. We had nothing to compare them to.
Maybe someone cracked a Founding Fathers joke at some point, or did a silly impression of a President or some other politician, but that’s where the current affairs political discussion started and ended. None of us were happy when there was a Bush planted in office, but we had faith in the basic checks and balances of the democratic government system. The notion of democracy was as pastoral as the tableau of those kids that my parents had spotted doing Hamel Camels on a frozen pond on what used to be a normal winter’s day. If we didn’t like the current political conditions, it was reasonable to look ahead toward a goal post on the horizon with a new election.
Looking back, I know a lot of the lifestyle choices we were making over that holiday, and other long weekends and birthday celebrations and anniversary parties and such happened because it never occurred to us that we were setting ourselves up for anything that could have harmful implications—from what we drank to the hot dogs we grilled and ate to the substances we put into that pool and swam in to me running on a slick diving board and slamming my back onto something.
Some time in the early 2000s, during the course of the final years that my parents owned the house, before they moved back into the city full time like I had already done, store bought fireworks were legalized in the state of Connecticut. Some of the towns, like the one my parents lived in, were still “dry” from Prohibition, but you were legally welcome to purchase booze across the town line and blow shit up in your yard. And we did.
It was a holiday. We had the day off. I know every person gathered around that pool, even my grandmother, had been working pretty hard for those couple of days of leisure to celebrate the official founding of the Land of the Free.
Today is another Independence Day and I can’t see a goal post right now. I am not in a “hey, drink this!” frame of mind. I’m not feeling very “Yay, America!” I can’t stop thinking about RBG pumping iron at the gym, Pelosi ripping the speech, Schumer and those glasses balanced on the edge of his nose, Bernie and the mittens.
They were all once extremely capable people whom we could trust with the keys to the government. As they aged in front of our eyes, they retreated into familiar patterns and backed the people who had worked for them in the past. No one tried hard enough to find replacements for any of them—younger people with sharper reflexes—while they still could. As long as we sent around the memes saying how “cool” they were, how brave, how resilient—not selfish or inconsiderate of future generations—we were all still going to be cool too, right?
In the years since those weekends in the country my parents have moved twice. By the time of their first move, more than half of the Bicentennial memorial glasses had broken. By the second move in 2021, only one was left. The last time I checked it was no longer in my parents’ cupboard. It just broke one day, swept up, and the pieces were thrown in the trash. My parents are in their late eighties now. They’re smart and capably still live on their own, but they break a lot of glasses these days.
I truly hope that this time next year it still feels like a day to celebrate living in a country where I do whatever seems like the fun thing to do with some time off. I want to be able to whir a bunch of (way better) stuff in a blender, maybe find a pool to dive into.
I am hoping that I don’t have to spend it looking for a place to run to and hide.
Thanks for this beautiful piece. It brings back many wonderful times with friends and family in years gone by. In retrospect it was magical . Yes, those famous Independence Day glasses were very special, but like many things time has taken its toll. But why no mention or picture of Woofer?
Much love, Mom and Dad