dual personalities

Happy Independence Day!

We grant no dukedoms to the few,
We hold like rights and shall;-
Equal on Sunday in the pew,
On Monday in the mall.
For what avail the plough or sail,
Or land or life, if freedom fail?

The noble craftsmen we promote,
Disown the knave and fool;
Each honest man shall have his vote,
Each child shall have his school.
A union then of honest men,
Or union nevermore again.

–Ralph Waldo Emerson, from “Boston”–read it here.

Today in St. Louis we are also celebrating the 150th anniversary of the opening of Eads Bridge, a true architectural marvel. It was the first bridge in St. Louis, the first in the world to use steel and the first in the U.S. to use caissons for its piers.

At the time there were many doubters who were concerned about the safety of the structure, but people were reassured two weeks before the grand opening by the sight of an elephant lumbering across the wagon deck. It was an unscientific test, but in the 19th century many people believed elephants knew instinctively not to set foot on unsound structures. (This made me think of that famous scene in Gunga Din (1939) when the elephant is willing to step onto the rickety bridge to follow Cary Grant…)

Needless to say, Eads bridge was sound…

Well then, exactly at daybreak on July 4, 1874 on a clear and sunny day, a thirteen-gun salute was fired to honor the original colonies of the United States. At 9 a.m. 100 guns were fired, fifty on each side of the the Mississippi River, to signal the beginning of a huge parade.

“A link of steel unites the East and West” was painted on one side of the bridge’s main arch. On the other side, decorated with evergreens, appeared a fifty-foot-high portrait of the man of the hour, James B. Eads. A display of fireworks completed the evening festivities.

I hope you all have fun plans to celebrate Independence Day with friends and family. If not, read some Emerson or Whitman, watch an old movie like Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) or Alleghany Uprising (1939)…

…Read Esther Forbes’ fine book Paul Revere and the World He Lived In or Eric Metaxas’ If You Can Keep It: the Forgotten Promise of American Liberty or David McCullough’s 1776.

“The year 1776, celebrated as the birth year of the nation and for the signing of the Declaration of Independence, was for those who carried the fight for independence forward a year of all-too-few victories, of sustained suffering, disease, hunger, desertion, cowardice, disillusionment, defeat, terrible discouragement, and fear, as they would never forget, but also of phenomenal courage and bedrock devotion to country, and that, too they would never forget.”

Be proud. Be loud. Open the windows and blast your neighbors! That’s what we did when I was growing up. We had this LP and this was one of my favorite pieces:

God bless America!