The Fourth of July

Son: Mom, do we have a Fourth of July in our small country on the sunny shores of the Eastern Mediterranean?

Mom: Of course we do! It's the day between the Third and the Fifth.

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To all of our friends in the land of the free and the home of the brave: Happy 4th!

Today also marks the 31st anniversary of the daring raid on Entebbe. Want to relive it? Click on this link to the BBC, and you can see the actual video of the news from that day:

Link to the BBC - Click Here

So here's the thing: The world began to learn of the rescue by 8:00 PM New York time on Saturday July 3rd, 1976. I imagine that it was on the front page of the New York Daily News on Sunday morning. I recall following the drama as it unfolded during the previous week, just as I had followed the Massacre at the Munich Olympics in '72, but in the case of Entebbe, my visual database is missing an entry. If anyone out there happens to have a copy of the Daily News from that day, I would love to see it.

I do remember getting up early on that Sunday July 4th morning and taking a ride on my bicycle along a good length of the Belt Parkway. The highway was closed in the vicinity of the Verrazano Bridge so that spectators could stand and view the tall ships sailing in New York Harbor for the Bicentennial "Operation Sail".

Later that day, we had a family outing to lower Manhattan, where we took an early evening stroll past Federal Hall and made our way down to the tip of Battery Park to see the spectacular fireworks.

I had just turned 16 and would be entering my senior year of high school that fall. Up until that day, some of the major events that probably shaped my young, mostly empty mind were:

• Summer 1973 - My Bar-Mitzvah (aka Emancipation from Hebrew school)
• Fall 1973 - Yom Kippur War (where the heck is the Suez Canal anyway?)
• Spring 1974 - Arab Oil Embargo (Dad and I wait in line to buy gas)
• Summer 1974 - Nixon resigns (watched the hearings all day long, didn't understand a thing)
• Spring 1975 - Saigon falls, end of war in Vietnam (didn't want to be in the army anyway)
• Summer 1975 - The movie Jaws kept me off the beach
• Winter 1975 - Spanish dictator Francisco Franco dies (as reported weekly on Saturday Night Live)
• Summer 1976 - American Bicentennial
• Fall 1976 - Jimmy Carter elected President

I know that my Dad remembers his 16th birthday well. The US had dropped two atomic bombs on Japan, thus officially ending World War II. He was making his way from Brighton 6th Street to Abraham Lincoln High School every day, just like I would be doing 30 years later.

I do remember feeling particularly patriotic that summer. I remember a family summer vacation to Washington D.C. around that time (was it also '76? I don't remember).

Well that was some mighty fine reminiscing, eh? Have a good one!