They promised the fireworks would start at 9.09pm and in the dusk, thousands scanned their watches and phones like fussy train commuters to satisfy themselves, even as the show began just as promised with a symphonic opening.
This was down on the National Mall, right in front of Lincoln Memorial, which is backlit in the evening time so you can see Abe himself, at ease on his chair. Since 1922, it has been the most famous memorial in the United States and on some nights, when it is cold and Washington DC is indoors, the place is so deserted that you can have a private counsel with Uncle Abe – as Lisa Simpson did all those years ago during a dark night of the soul.
But on this July 4th, it was as though Lincoln had all of the US gathered around his chair. With a quick glance, you could imagine the old buck was smiling. One of features of American summers is that night-time falls like a drape. For the countless who grew up in the west of Ireland before heading to the States, whether on coffin ships or J1 visas, and who were used to June and July light hanging in the sky until after midnight, the suddenness of US nightfall can never fail to surprise.
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In the 20 minutes it took me to walk down to the mall, the skyline to the west of the city had changed from a seriously psychedelic orange to a dark velvet that draped itself over the monuments and the city’s spread of anonymous bureaucratic buildings. The sky was busy with aircraft – commercial planes on their way to Reagan and the low-flying military choppers that are always about – and also with mosquitoes who floated just above the masses of humanity in murderous gangs, their leaders wearing shades and stars ‘n’ stripes bandannas.
It was the Fourth of July, after all, and patriotism was in the air. It was the day when the US downs tools, hits the beach, the mountain trails, the back yard, dons summer wear and wrestles with the barbecue. The day when the US convinces itself that Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest is a good idea, arranges reunions with friends and family, watches marching bands, and sooner or later, turns its gaze skywards to watch the fireworks and reflect on what Barack Obama described as a celebration of “the big, bold inclusive experiment that is our American democracy”.
Philadelphia got in first with the fireworks to mark this day, way back in 1777, on the City Commons. A year later, George Washington gave his troops a double ration of rum to mark the day. But a year or two after that, he cancelled what he called “steamboat” parties taking place on the lawns of his Mount Vernon estate, whether out of alarm at the revelry or his deteriorating supply of hooch. But the revelling has continued through the centuries into the extravaganza it is today, with the presidential barbecue in the White House and the celebrity band performances – The Killers, Reo Speedwagon – scattered across the country and the non-stop coverage of firework displays like the one that took place in the capital.
The Fourth has thoroughly infiltrated culture. It’s the source of Oscar-winning films and at least one heartbreaking song. The Fourth of July celebration in Jaws is one of the great set pieces in American cinema: all that surface sunshine and brass music and lazing by the beach, all that submerged menace. And on what other day could The Wonder Years, the coming of age show whose combination of relentless good humour and killer soundtrack was capable of breaking the will of the sturdiest cynic, choose for its very closing scene, broadcast 30 years ago.
“It was the Fourth of July in that little suburban town but somehow things were different,” the narrator remembers.
“Our past was here but our future was somewhere else. And we both knew that sooner or later, we had to go. It was the last July I ever spent in that town.”
For all of its sweetness, The Wonder Years seldom allowed more than 15 minutes to elapse without reminders that life would bring stinging disappointments and challenges. And there are few neater summations of the probable shortfall of the American dream than the moment when Kevin Arnold asks his father Jack to describe his typical week for a school project. The face, never slow to darken, turns stormy.
“Monday to Saturday, I work. Sunday, I pay my taxes.”
Dan Lauria, who played Mr Arnold, had known it all: a New Yorker who went to university on a football scholarship, fought in Vietnam and returned to build a career as a fine character actor. An epic life, in its own way.
“It was good,” Dan Arnold nods as he sits late at night with his son at the kitchen table in the last moment of the show, nodding in satisfaction at how the day had gone.
“It was a good Fourth.”
Down at the National Mall, the fireworks lasted 20 minutes. As people chatted and laughed, nobody mentioned Donald Trump, and nobody mentioned Joe Biden. The Fourth is a temporary suspension of normality. After it ended, the crowd scattered quickly through the silent streets downtown of Washington.