"July Fourth"

"I knew them too: The men and women, still powerful and still dangerous and still coming, North and South and East and West, until the name of what they did and what they died for became just one single word, louder than any thunder. It was America, and it covered all the western earth." - William Faulkner

Louisiana missed the first July Fourth, but it has been a holiday here since The Purchase of 1803. Well, at least since the Civil War ended in 1865. O. K., since the Hilton Hotel wanted fireworks on The River, after the 1984 World's Fair!

July Fourth celebrates America's disunion with England, something that happened before Louisiana joined up.

Celebrating America's revolution further lost allure after England helped New Orleans break the Union blockade, and that same Northern Union gave us occupation under "That Beast" General Spoons Butler. Furthermore, July Fourth came to be known here for Louis Armstrong's Birthday Party in Jackson Square. Armstrong's Birthday bash has been upgraded to "Satchmo Summer Fest," and moved posthumously to the weekend of July thirty-first through August fourth, and to the U. S. Mint on Esplanade Avenue (and nearby clubs). You can pass a good time here with music, food and poetry. Lee Grue, Faubourg Bywater's literary granddame and editor of the New Laurel Review, will read at the festival's "New Orleans Jazz Poetry," on the second floor of the Mint, at one p.m., Sunday, August third.

One July Fourth back in the fabled Sixties, when I was a less than fabulous college student, I went to Memphis to visit a friend who wrote for The Commecial Appeal. He in a Sergeant Peppers' coat, I in a French Gendarmes cape visited the presidential campaign headquarters of George Wallace and his running mate General Curtis LeMay. Wallace and LeMay are half forgotten today, but in the fab Sixties they were daily colorful news figures. They attracted lots of lose screw Conservatives but were, of course, so far to the right as to never seriously threaten the White House. The elderly retired General told a reporter during the campaign, if elected Vice President he hoped to drop nuclear bombs on somebody deserving. Wallace and an aid whisked him from the stage. Wallace returned alone and told the assembled press they were lower'en a snake for confusing an old man like that.

There was ample evidence we would not be well received at the Wallace/LeMay headquarters, but it was the Sixties and we hadn't a lick of sense. We went because we wanted campaign buttons, and pamphlets, and posters to laugh at in student bars from Memphis to Chicago. We got them, and no body bothered us.

Our quest was born when someone showed up at the Student Union at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, with a bumper sticker that read, "Get US Out." It came from a John Birch Society office in Saint Louis, and referred to the endless right wing hope of getting the United States to withdraw from the United Nations. In the worst laid plans of politicians, the slogan was written in the days just before LBJ discovered Vietnam. It read," Get US Out," but it said, "Get US Out of Vietnam." How many college beers were hoisted in laughter over such fumbling rightie-tighties - in those days before Karl Rove and Paul Wolfowitz?

The U. S. eventually got out of Vietnam (after fourteen years) and under Landslide's risky leadership may leave the United Nations, too. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld recently said more American troops are needed in Iraq, in defiance of U. N. hopes, and in spite of Landslide's victory demonstration landing on the deck of the USS ABRAHAM LINCOLN. If it is not over, after all, will President Bush take off in a fighter jet from the deck of the LINCOLN?

As I wrote the above line, Landslide came on the radio tossing down the gantlet anew before terrorists yet proven. "Bring'em on!" said he in his best cowboy accent.

"Preventative war is like committing suicide to avoid death," wrote Bismarck.

Bring'em on? Has he not been doing just that?

Tropical Storm Bill arrived in a flash, and moved ashore in that charmless way that puts NOLA on the wet side. What that means in outlander talk is more rain than you can imagine, replete with street flooding and fools in cars pushing water into each other's houses. The eye passed over The City, and the winds stilled, comparatively. Windows on the side of the house that took such a heavy beating were thrown open. One dormer, looking towards The Lake (possibly North), was open for the entire storm. The air just sucked through taking any little straying raindrops with it.

July Fourteenth is Bastille Day, a holiday always celebrated by George Washington, and in some New Orleans circles. Not at Landslide's White House, though. Not this year. "The problem with the French," said Landslide, "is that they don't have a word for entrepreneur."

American English is an eclectic language, given to adopting words from many tongues. Perhaps they don't teach this at Yale, but according to my French/English dictionary "entrepreneur" is the French word for "entrepreneur."

Have a safe July, from Independence Day through Bastille Day and on past Satchmo's new Summer Fest. www.satchmosummerfest.com