Happy Jool-eye Fourth!
July 4th, 2009
A few years back I went to the US of A to celebrate July 4th for my book The Naked Man Festival. I chose to celebrate the holiday in the town of Capitan, New Mexico because I didn’t want the anonymity of a large city. I wanted a small town parade followed by a great big small town party. I stumbled upon Capitan by typing in ‘July 4th parade’ on Google and, on page 37 of my search, found the ‘Village of Capitan’website with pictures of their Annual Fourth of July Smokey Bear Parade. The parade seemed to be entirely made up of fat people sitting on the backs of trucks waving American flags. It was absolutely perfect. That was exactly the Independence Day experience I was after.
I did find some other interesting ways to celebrate the Fourth of July on the net, though. In Oatman, Arizona, for example, it gets so hot that they hold a massive egg-frying contest—on the footpath. Back in 1986 in Willimantic, Connecticut, they couldn’t afford a band for their parade so they asked everyone to bring their ghetto-blasters along. The local radio station then played band music. Last year over 10 000 people turned up to the Boom Box Parade with their ghetto-blasters. In Lovington, New Mexico, they’ve utilised their large summer lizard population by running The World’s Greatest Lizard Race every July 4th. In 1976 this inaugural event wasn’t too successful, though. When a large tub covering the lizards was lifted, the lizards didn’t move. They were so petrified by the large crowd that they began to eat each other. The lizard with the largest stomach won the title. Still more horrifying is the Rainbow Gathering held in a different ‘forest’ every year. On the Fourth of July, a haze of hippies (I believe that’s the collective noun) sit in a massive circle in a ‘meadow’, hold hands and chants ‘Om’ together for a few hours. I think I’d rather eat the lizards.
Capitan had no lizards, hippies, boom boxes or frying eggs to speak of but, besides the parade, they did have an Old West Ranch Rodeo, a Country Dance, a Chuckwagon Campfire BBQ and free tattoos for the kids. The Mayor of Capitan promised: ‘Our sleepy village comes awake with a parade and rodeo that’s just too much fun. We let our hair down and have a great old time.’ I pictured a hootin’, hollerin’ time with a bunch of rowdy cowboys and cowgirls accompanied by lots of knee slappin’, moonshine drinkin’ and general yee-haain’. It was actually mostly fat people sitting on the backs of trucks waving American flags, but I did get a bit of hollerin’ at the rodeo that’s just too much fun. And here’s a few pics to prove how much fun it was. Oh, and happy Jool-eye Fourth!
On July 6th, 2009 Maki said: