During the
summer of America’s bicentennial year, 1976, everybody in the environs of New
York City was talking about “Operation Sail.” This special Fourth of July
celebration slowly but surely got rolling in the weeks leading up to
Independence Day. Hundreds of tall sailing vessels—throwbacks to a bygone
age—navigated their way to New York Harbor and the Hudson River.
I was
thirteen years old that summer and, as I recall, “Operation Sail” was a big
deal. An aunt of mine, younger brother, and I hiked over to the Henry Hudson
Bridge, which connects Northern Manhattan with the Northwest Bronx at the
confluence of the Harlem River Ship Canal and Hudson River. In this rare
instance—the only time in my memory—the bridge closed to traffic so that one
and all could congregate on its span and feast their eyes on some of the ships
on the river. It was quite a spectacle with New Jersey’s Palisades supplying a
picture-perfect backdrop. Bicentennial fever raged in the heat and humidity of
this memorable New York summer.
Perhaps
the biggest difference with today’s Fourth of July festivities—as compared to
the past in my old Bronx neighborhood—is the almost complete absence of
firecrackers, bottle rockets, Roman candles, and their various offshoots. These
things were all illegal when I was a kid, but it seems that anybody who wanted
them could get hold of them in Chinatown or someplace else. The police, for the
most part, turned a blind eye to the possession of fireworks. Firecrackers
popped weeks before the Fourth, and the day itself was one big bang. The
morning after found the local streets covered with spent everything. I remember
combing through the street debris for the occasional unused firecracker.
Can people
even buy a box of Sparklers nowadays? Despite setting the family garbage can on
fire by prematurely discarding one, they were generally harmless fun. It’s a
good thing garbage cans in those days were made of metal and not plastic. The
garbage men who had to lug those heavy things around are no doubt better off
today, but those venerable cans survived Sparkler fires and lived to tell.
(Photo
from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)
