Former Colonies Revel In 221 Years of Independence

The United States marked its 221st birthday with the usual cookouts, fireworks and flag-waving parades--including the nation’s oldest continuously held Fourth of July parade in Bristol, R.I.

Historic, but not tradition-bound, the 2.6-mile parade--started in 1785 as a prayerful walk to celebrate independence from Britain--now includes beauty queens, a phalanx of sailors, eight drum-and-bugle corps, teams of aerobic dancers in spandex and a trumpet-playing Elvis.

“I get goose bumps every time,” said 72-year-old Clara Pinhero, who’s gone to the parade with her family for as long as she can remember.

Other Independence Day celebrations Friday included Philadelphia’s ringing of the Liberty Bell and a concert featuring Ray Charles and the Philly Pops orchestra.

Boston’s Esplanade filled up Friday with spectators for the Boston Pops concert at the Hatch Shell, and hundreds of thousands gathered for the fireworks along the East River in New York and at the Mall in Washington.

Unfazed by a crackdown on drunkenness that restricted alcohol consumption to a few designated areas where $3 beers were available, hundreds of thousands of people found plenty to celebrate in the shadow of the Washington Monument and other national shrines.

“I’m glad that George [Washington] and all the boys did a great job breaking away from the British, to be honest,” Wilson Ray Jr., an operations analyst at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., said while listening to a gospel music concert.

“This is a great place to come,” Ray said of the Mall, a grassy stretch from Capitol Hill to the Lincoln Memorial. “I’m just feeling a little bit more of an American today.”

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At naturalization ceremonies that have been a July 4 tradition at Monticello, Va., since 1963, former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Colin L. Powell urged 64 new citizens to become involved with community associations, to read and watch the news and to share their views with their leaders.

When Jodi Maxey and her husband brought their four adopted children to receive their naturalization papers at Thomas Jefferson’s estate, Powell gave her a hug.

“He told us we had done a wonderful thing,” said Maxey, who adopted the children from South Korea. “I just started crying.”

In Hollister, Calif., the 50th anniversary of the so-called Battle of Hollister--the riotous biker party that inspired the Marlon Brando movie “The Wild One”--got off to a roaring start, although a couple of motorcycle mishaps put a damper on things.

Six people were injured in two accidents in which a motorcyclist lost control of the bike. Six people, including one of the bikers who crashed, were arrested on suspicion of drunk driving.

Authorities prepared for more than 100,000 people from all over the world to pour into the town of 25,000, about 85 miles southeast of San Francisco.

The bikers arrived for the three-day festival eager to celebrate the nonconformist image that the 1947 event helped create. It was in Hollister over the 1947 Independence Day weekend that some bikers attending a nearby rally got drunk, turned its main street into a race track and even rode through a hotel lobby. Dozens of people were arrested.

Bikers insist that a subsequent story and an allegedly staged picture in Life magazine exaggerated what happened. And 1954’s “The Wild One” depicted outlaw bikers taking over a small town.