A solo fireworked Fourth

Wildcat File Photo Arizona Summer Wildcat Zach Thomas

I really hadn't been feeling very American lately - that is, until a small boy yelled, "THE HIGHER THEY GO, THE BIGGER THEY GET."

Right in my left ear.

And the fireworks had hardly started.

I instinctively looked around for a bottle of bourbon to drown the yell. And for someone to pour it down my throat like in that Hitchcock film, "North By Northwest."

But it's somewhat hard to come by liquor atop the Main Gate garage with fireworks in the foreground, gunshots in the distance and M-80s bursting somewhere near frat row.

And in retrospect, it's a good thing my instincts were wrong, because I found a motley scene during my brief glance across the garage rooftop. An American cross-section of sorts was perched on lawn chairs, sprawled in a VW pop-top, and dangling over the retaining walls. Choruses of young sisters belted out "Happy Fourth of July" like clockwork every four minutes and the balding guy to my right was giving running play-by-play. "That's a big one. I like it when they explode together," he would say - three times in a row.

It was the sort of scene you take for granted on the Fourth. It was the sort of scene folks expect, which makes it all the more significant because, somehow, the Fourth of July helps mark time better than any other holiday.

More than your birthday.

More than Christmas or Hanukkah.

More than Groundhog's Day, if you're keeping track.

Dollar to a doughnut says you can remember where you were last year on the Fourth. Maybe sipping martinis on a balcony or barbecuing pork chops with buddies. I was covering unruly brush fires and roadway collisions for the Las Vegas morning paper. Year before that I remember lounging on the state capitol lawn in Montpelier, Vt.

The list goes on, and after a while it gets a little hazy, but you still remember the biggies - that great show on the Capitol mall in Washington, D.C., or maybe you made it to Manhattan for the Macy's fireworks spectacular set to the 1812 Overture.

I've wandered a bit and seen 'em on the shores of Lake Nebagamon, Wis.; from the hood of a Chevy in Joplin, Mo.; in a small cove on the Green Bay side of Door County, Wis.; at a Houston country club; from a strip mall in Phoenix; and now from a garage rooftop in Tucson.

This year, there was even one that seemed like a chili pepper - I looked.

The explosions are all the same, and they get better every year you see them, but the crowds vary from locale to locale and that's part of what makes it special.

Fireworks and the Fourth are somehow unifying factors in this mixing bowl of a country that at times appears more politically correct than real. And that's not to say social problems disappear and politicians suddenly become honest during a half hour of colorful explosions, but their power is temporarily dimmed when the rockets begin to explode and eyes turn skyward.

This year, there were some out in Marana. There were a couple launch zones in the foothills. Some southeast of town; and a big one launched from "A" Mountain.

Each was aimed at a certain community; a certain demographic group. And each was beautiful just the same.

This year was the first time I've ever watched them alone. I think the singular perspective was worth the solitude, because I woke up and saw myself not as a disgruntled college student, but as an American again.

And I looked and found that the small boy was right. Indeed, the higher they go, the bigger they get. A nice analogy to American society - the harder you try, the more you can achieve.

Zach Thomas is a journalism and international studies senior. He is editor in chief of the Arizona Summer Wildcat.