America Celebrates Fourth of July
July 5 -- New Yorkers have a way of picking out tourists: anyone looking up.
But when 150 tons of fireworks are exploding overhead, even the most jaded longtime city dwellers were forced to look toward the sky.
“This is the biggest fireworks show in the world, ever,” exclaimed Jean McFaddin, director of the Macy’s Fireworks 2000 extravaganza.
More than 60,000 shells — three times the number last year — were shot into the air from fourlocations in the city’s waterways. And hundreds of thousands of people turned out to watch the red, white and blue rockets pop from 13 barges in New York Harbor. Each barge represented one of the original colonies.
But the show wasn’t just in the sky the fireworks capped off the daylong OpSail parade of tall ships and naval vessels.
A Show for the Gods
Accompanying the pyrotechnics was a soundtrack including Aaron Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man,” patriotic standards like “Stars and Stripes Forever” and awhimsical section that includes the noises of whistles, birds andbees.
The show, run from a command site at the midtown Water Club on the East River, ended in a fiery tribute to the Statue of Liberty from two barges in the Verrazano Narrows between Staten Island and Brooklyn. A third barge by Lady Liberty herself delivered a thunderous six-minute salute.
Because the show was staged from so many different locations, no one on the ground could see all the pyrotechnics.
“The person who will see best is God,” McFaddin said. “Only the heavens will see the whole show.”
Jostling for a Spot
Elsewhere around the nation and around the world, Americans celebrated their independence with less hubris — but just as much gusto.
Many set off their own fireworks, disregarding safety warnings and realizing John Adams’ 18th-century fantasy.
The founding father wrote to his wife Abigail that the Declaration of Independence “ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forevermore.”
