“Let us be lovers we’ll marry our fortunes together.”
“I’ve got some real estate here in my bag.”
So we bought a pack of cigarettes and Mrs. Wagner pies
And we walked off to look for America.

-Paul Simon – “America”

Remarkably, there’s not much of a Fourth of July celebration here in Britain. Probably something to do with not wanting to commemorate the beginning of the end of the British empire or something like that. So, there’s not much going on for me today. A few of my friends will wish my a Happy 4th of July. I’ve been invited to a BBQ by the husband of a Rhodes scholar (I’ve not met his wife but I’m sure she’s an exception to what I’m about to say), but a) it’s going to be raining and b) it’s going to be filled with Rhodes scholars. If you’re a Rhodes Scholar, I apologize in advance, but these folks are the worst variety of American in Oxford. They’re going to become lawyers and politicians, they wear ties all the time and they only mix with other Rhodes Scholars. Tossers.

So it most likely be a quiet Fourth for me. That’s OK, but for a few years it seems like we always had a BBQ on Independence Day. There have been some interesting ones. Trying to shoot people off my roof in Columbia with bottle rockets springs quickly to mind. I think my friend Casey still has powder burns. But in talking to Dr. O’C today I was reminded of one of the best.

Just before July 4, 2001 I was driving to Kansas City Airport to pick up this wonderful women I had been, quite succesfully I must point out, wooing from afar. She was flying in from San Diego to take a job at Mizzou and see how things went with us. I had a 4th of July BBQ that week, it was a Thursday apparently (Dr. O’C reminded me). I don’t remember who was there at all or much about the party, but I know Dr. O’C was there and that’s all that really mattered.

We don’t really have an anniversary, Dr. O’C and I. We met on her birthday which is right before Valentine’s Day, so you don’t really want to have an anniversary then. Maybe it would be better to have it be the 4th of July. Give us something to celebrate on the day now that we’re no longer in the States.

For some reason the Paul Simon song that I started this post with reminds me of that time. Especially that hot drive to the KC airport…

“Toss me a cigarette, I think there’s one in my raincoat.”
“We smoked the last one an hour ago.”
So I looked at the scenery, she read her magazine
And the moon rose over an open field.

“Kathy, I’m lost,” I said, though I knew she was sleeping.
“I’m empty and aching and I don’t know why.”
Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike:
They’ve all come to look for America
All come to look for America…


Simon & Garfunkel - Greatest Hits - America

Hope all my American friends have a great 4th.

Popularity: 5% [?]