{"id":2507,"date":"2026-07-05T17:03:03","date_gmt":"2026-07-06T00:03:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.doniscasey.com\/?p=2507"},"modified":"2026-07-05T17:03:03","modified_gmt":"2026-07-06T00:03:03","slug":"independence-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.doniscasey.com\/?p=2507","title":{"rendered":"Independence Day"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The recent 4th of July, the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, has caused me to reflect upon all the many, many 4ths I have enjoyed in the past. Like birthdays, most of the 4ths I have lived through blur together now, or are completely lost to memory, but one in particular stands out for me, and that is the Bicentennial.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Talk about a once-in-a-lifetime experience. (I suppose that a person could live through more than one centennial event, but could one remember both of them, that is the question?)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n


In 1976, I was newly married and living in Lubbock Texas. We went downtown on the day and joined the crowd for the Independence Day Parade. I love parades, anyway, to the extent that I almost always tear up when I hear the drums and first catch sight of the flag corps, and of course this parade was spectacular in that already-spectacular Texas fashion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Several local businesses were giving away free cake and hotdogs. The crowd around the tables was rather like a monkey riot, what with people grabbing free food hand over fist, and Don ended up with one whole hot dog and one that had been ripped in half. Both were squashed, and just delicious.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fifty years later, I feel more anxious about our future than I did when I was young. But I am very grateful to have lived when and where I was born.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This brings to mind other memorable anniversary dates. Many years ago, we returned to the Western Hemisphere on a Polish ocean liner, the Stefan Batory, after several months Europe. We sailed across the Atlantic and right up the Saint Laurence Seaway to Montreal and landed on Canada Day, July 1, for a wonderful welcome home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

July 7 is the third anniversary of the launch of my first novel,\u00a0The Old Buzzard Had It Coming<\/em>. The joy of the occasion was dampened by the fact that my mother, who had been instrumental in the research for the book, had just died a few months earlier. Besides, I was so nervous that I practically had an out-of-body experience. I\u2019ve launched eleven other books since then, and I have to say that it has gotten easier.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The recent 4th of July, the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, has caused me to reflect upon all the many, many 4ths I have enjoyed in the past. Like birthdays, most of the 4ths I have lived through blur together now, or are completely lost to memory, but one in particular stands out […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[131],"class_list":["post-2507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-the-old-buzzard-had-it-coming"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2H58s-Er","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.doniscasey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.doniscasey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.doniscasey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.doniscasey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.doniscasey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2507"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.doniscasey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2507\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2509,"href":"https:\/\/www.doniscasey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2507\/revisions\/2509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.doniscasey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.doniscasey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.doniscasey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}