How did we ever survive the U.S. Bicentennial?
Tyrades! by Danny Tyree
As we approach the country’s 250th birthday, I find my mind drifting back to its 200th.
Yes, a weary nation looked to the Bicentennial to lift our spirits from the lingering effects of the Vietnam War, Watergate and OPEC muscle-flexing. We desperately needed to be able to sing “Yankee Doodle” heartily and unironically, although in 2026 someone who puts a feather in his cap and calls it macaroni is a prime candidate to push strangers in front of a New York City subway train.
For instance, in sophomore English, I wrote an essay expressing my earnest wish that I could magically be a few years older so I could legally vote in the historic 1976 election.
In retrospect, it would have made more sense to wish the eligibility requirements be relaxed. As a red-blooded teenager, I guess I was more laser-focused on lowering necklines than lowering the voting age.
Another memory: my mother had a souvenir cookie jar shaped like the Liberty Bell and started a decades-long hobby of hoarding every commemorative “drummer boy” quarter she found. Of course the coins lost out to inflation, but they were Mom’s little piece of “life, liberty and the pursuit of change handed to me by the clerk whose third marriage ended mysteriously.”
I can’t recall if I worked the daytime or evening shift, but I know I was on my feet at the convenience market on July 4, 1976 because I always worked holidays. (“These are the times that try men’s soles,” as Thomas Paine observed.)
I managed to excuse teenage procrastination by paraphrasing my distant relative John Paul Jones. (“I have not yet begun to restock the drink cooler.”) Customers were in sync with the “No taxation without representation” mantra of the Founding Fathers, but they weren’t thrilled about taxation WITH representation, either. (“Sixty cents for a pack of Lucky Strike? Here are my unfiltered comments for Congress…”)
As a comic-book collector, I got warm, fuzzy feelings because Jack Kirby (who co-created Captain America in 1940) was back on the Marvel title in time for a Bicentennial storyline. (I got “cold shower” feelings when girls said, “A higher neckline it is, pervy nerd.”)
Although the endeavor started before 1976 and continued for years afterward, my parents, my brother and I considered it our Bicentennial Project to dismantle, transport and reassemble a vintage log cabin.
It took time away from my hobbies and required a lot of hard work, but I did not grumble. I didn’t want to trigger a response of “As long as you live under my roof, you’ll live by my rules -- or at least have to watch out for rattlesnakes slithering down from the rafters.” Good times.
Most of us Of A Certain Age folks remember the nightly “Bicentennial Minutes” on CBS. Celebrities narrated a 60-second history segment – without sharing their political beliefs with us!
America really needed those history lessons. A majority of poll respondents thought the Intolerable Acts were the ones that couldn’t make it onto “The Gong Show.”
If only I had a time machine! I could return to 1976 and enlighten my younger self about a few things.
Well, no I couldn’t. I wouldn’t be able to find the keys… because the punk made me prematurely old.
*Sigh* Three cheers for the red, white and…what was that other color?
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Copyright 2026 Danny Tyree, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.
Danny Tyree welcomes email responses at tyreetyrades@aol.com and visits to his Facebook fan page “Tyree’s Tyrades.”
Copyright 2026 Danny Tyree, All Rights Reserved. Credit: Cagle.com
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