Fourth of July After the War to End War

I don’t like to say that things aren’t what they used to be, but I doubt that there will ever be another Fourth of July like the ones we had when I was a small boy.

They were raucous, exhausting and super-patriotic. In the 1920s, World War I was fresh in everyone’s mind. It had been, after all, the war to end war, and most of us believed it.

In the eyes of a small boy, World War I was the noblest event in history; it was the Holy Grail. American doughboys had sailed the Atlantic to save the world (“Goodby Broadway, Hello France!” “Lafayette, we are here!”).

Somehow that war stayed in our minds longer than World War II did later on. After World War II we were so horrified by the revelations of the Holocaust, and so frightened by the specter of the nuclear Armageddon, that any romantic feelings about the war itself were subdued.

But we all felt good about World War I. The American Legion was an organization of veterans with enormous political power. We looked with forebearance on their juvenile high jinks in gratitude for their heroism.

Boys my age collected souvenirs of that war. I had a genuine doughboy helmet and a wooden model of a Springfield rifle. For hours on end I played at war in our back yard, going “over the top” and invariably dying in the end. I was rather a theatrical lad, and very good at dying. My abiding fear was that there would be no war when I was old enough to fight. I needn’t have worried.

I remember an incident with my father. Riding beside him one day in his Wills Sainte Claire, I asked him if he thought there would be a war for me when I grew up. I have never forgotten the anger that crossed his face. It is one of my strongest impressions of him. He said, “Damn it! Nobody wants another war!” I was cowed, and from that point on I believe I looked less favorably on soldiering as a career.

In 1925, we had no notion that the Treaty of Versailles had irreparably divided Europe, and that the seeds of the next war were already planted. Even when we declined to join the League of Nations we thought, “Good. Best keep out of it.”

We were in our era of wonderful nonsense. The nation was prosperous. The stock market was climbing. President Coolidge said, “The business of America is business.” On Broadway the Marx Brothers were cavorting in “The Cocoanuts.” Everybody was singing “Yes, Sir, That’s My Baby!” Lou Gehrig joined the Yankees. In Germany, “Mein Kampf” was published.

I have vivid memories of the Fourth of July in Bakersfield. As usual in July, it was unmercifully hot. Chester Avenue was like melted wax. Painted crosswalks wavered and the soldiers’ boots left depressions in the pavement.

But every small town in America could still turn out an impressive company of doughboys, and they still marched with vigor, like conquering heroes. They were still young and lithe, and their uniforms still fit. We stood on the hot sidewalks and cheered them as they marched past.

The bands were typical small town bands, heavy on the oompahs and full of spirit as they pumped away at “The Star-Spangled Banner,” “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary,” “The Stars and Stripes Forever” and “Over There.”

Ahead of the doughboys came first the thinning troop of Civil War veterans. If they had been 20 when that war ended they would have been 80 then. They teetered precariously along the soft street, bumping into one another, but still wearing their old uniforms, blue and gray, with pride.

Then came the Spanish-American War veterans; middle-aged, but still vigorous, and their contingent was large. At last count, only one was left in the nation.

When one remembers the Yankees parading down Broadway or down the Champs Elysees after the reconquest of Paris, it is hard to realize that one day we will all be gone.

After the parade, we all retired to the city parks to picnic on tubs of fried chicken and barrels of ice cream. Despite Prohibition, our fathers drank home brew and became noisily patriotic.

Things didn’t turn out the way we thought they would; but we still have something to celebrate. We are still free.