My pal Jerry sings. It is not that he is a whistle-blower- that role is reserved for someone else in the Choral Arts Society, but this was his view from the riser where the choir sits of the big 4th of July celebration on the National Mall:

He has been doing this for sixteen years, and he and his Society are quite good at it. They have traveled all over the world to perform, and it seems like a good alternative to what most people have to do to live in the zoo of Washington.

You can pick them out down here in the country. I was picking up some mushrooms at the Martin’s mega-market (Croftburn Farms does not have a big enough selection of local produce to reliably stock the larder for salads) and Carol-the-Receptionist from my dentist’s office tapped me on the shoulder, saying “They will let anyone in here, won’t they.”

The last time I was tapped on the shoulder in a supermarket was…well, maybe a decade ago in the condiment aisle of the Fort Myer Commissary, arguably the most influential aisle in the most influential outlet of the worldwide Defense Commissary System. I once saw the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff selecting pickles there.

There is a small-town feel to Culpeper that is quite appealing, though town was packed yesterday. As part of the renaissance of the city, civic leaders founded a celebration of antique cars on Davis Street, and it is pretty impressive. The cars are parked nose-out on both sides of the road, from Main Street right down to the Depot.

This year’s theme was “American Graffiti,” and cars that had been featured in the iconic film were given places of prominence right in front of the station. The film itself was being screened in the recently refurbished State Theater on Main, for only $4 bucks a seat.

I kicked myself for not getting the World’s Fastest production Pickup truck detailed so I could waste the day sitting in a folding chair in the shade with the other proud owners.

There were cool cars everywhere- I saw a Dodge Charger 440RT of the same model in which I received my first speeding ticket on Woodward Avenue in suburban Detroit- 120 in a 50 zone. Ah, those were the days. I wandered the street taking pictures of the street rods- noting that the police in person did not look nearly so friendly as they did in the story in the Clarion-Bugle last week.

I sated my appetite for high-performance autos and got turned around trying to get out of town, winding up on The Wrong Side of the Tracks from the Depot, which actually means something here.

I stopped at the antiques mall on the way back to the farm to look for a corner hutch to complete the Great Room, which is a room, but limited in scale.

That was about it for the civic component of the holiday. My big scheme was to watch the Capital Fourth show on the television and see how Jerry and his group did. There were fireworks in the park, but given the old-style street grid, traffic was going to be a thicket, and I did not flee the imperial city’s gridlock to confront it again in small-town scale.

The Russians decided to host an informal cocktail party in the field behind their rambling 1910-era farmhouse, and Sasha the Russian princess eventually recovered from her bout of food poisoning (though she carried a bucket with her, just in case).

One of Natasha’s coworkers- or about to be ex-coworkers- showed up with some new targets to help Mattski’s daughter sight-in her new Glock-17. I earnestly hope she does not have to produce to convince her stalker ex-boyfriend that “No” really means “No.”

The dark came on as the level of vodka lowered in the stadium cup, and Mattski produced some pretty decent ground-based fireworks. The earth is still saturated from the heavy rain on Friday, so there was no danger of torching the complex, and Sasha’s recovery was aided by the antics of Biscuit The Wonder Spaniel in a perverse game of Frisbee catch, in which the humans had to go get the disc.

The prospect of some fireworks made everyone merry, and as the country darkness came on full, Sasha organized the adults in turn to light the fuses on the fireworks.

It was a minor spectacle on a major holiday- small town and quite uniquely American, considering some of us were from Yalta and Moscow.

Piloting the Panzer back down the farm lane to go home and tune in Jerry’s performance on satellite TV, I thought it was kind of funny. The Egyptians had done on the 4th of July just exactly what those 52 Dead White Guys had done with their signatures in 1776. “When in the course of human affairs…” and all that.

I shut down the technologically-advanced engine on the car, wistfully thinking of the engines of the past. The celebration on the Mall, when I got to it, looked pretty good. I was happy not to be there.

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com