UNCLE SAM’S TWO-HUNDRED AND THIRTY-SEVENTH BIRTHDAY!

By Edwin Cooney

It never fails to grab Sam.  Here he sits every July Fourth for as far back as he can remember at an exceedingly long oaken picnic table.  Off to his left at one end of the table sits Father Time.  At the other end of the table sits George Washington.  Both sides of the huge table accommodate all but one of the rest of the 36 men, in addition to Washington, who have been President of the United States between 1789 and 1985.  At other tables sit men and women, the great and the near great, even a rogue or two like Aaron Burr and Spiro Agnew. “Is that really Frank Sinatra over there?” Uncle Sam wonders.

“Happy two-hundred and thirty-seventh birthday, Uncle Sam,” says Father Time off to Sam’s left.

“Thank you, sir,” responds Sam.

“Sam,” intones George Washington off to Sam’s right, “I know that I speak on behalf of our Creator and all of the American people when I profoundly offer you every kind and inspiring wish in gratitude for your past and hope for your future.

All Sam can think to do is what he does every year in the wake of President Washington’s pronouncements: he bows and salutes.

“It wasn’t as easy at the beginning as some of our school children have been taught, was it, Sam?” Ben Franklin’s voice came from behind Sam’s left shoulder.  Before Sam can respond, Martha Washington places a huge plate of potato salad, baked beans, corn on the cob, hotdogs, barbecued chicken and a hamburger in front of Sam.

“No, it wasn’t,” Sam replies “I’ve been told that just a day or two before I was born it was possible that the delegates to the Second Continental Congress from New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware and South Carolina might not have voted for Richard Henry Lee’s June 7^th Resolution for Independence.  If it hadn’t been for men like Caesar Rodney who rode almost nonstop from Delaware to Philadelphia, I might have been a late arrival or perhaps I might not have been born at all.”

“It really was a hell of a cliff hanger!” came the voice of Robert Livingston, one of the New York Colony’s delegates to the Second Continental Congress.  “I was for the resolution and sat on the drafting committee, but so strong was the opposition in New York that I was recalled before I could vote for it.” (Chancellor Livingston occupies a special place in Uncle Sam’s heart for two reasons: fourteen years later, as Chancellor of New York State, Livingston would swear in George Washington as America’s first president.  In 1803, Livingston, along with James Monroe, would successfully negotiate with Napoleon Bonaparte for the purchase of the Louisiana Territory.)

“I remember celebrating your first birthday in Philadelphia back in ’77 when the city was loaded with British troops,” commented Dr. Benjamin Rush.  "That was pretty dicey, indeed!”

“Adams and I had a wonderful time in ’78 celebrating your second birthday with royalty from all over Europe, didn’t we, John?” said Franklin to the country’s second president.

“I’m afraid you enjoyed it more than I did, Ben,” said Adams. “I worked at least as hard as you partied to get the French to fully commit to supporting us against Britain,” recalled the rotund New Englander.

“How do you like my baked beans?” came the little voice of Abigail Adams from behind Sam’s right ear.

“They're every bit as tasty as Betsy Ross’s blue hotdogs from last year! Betsy’s been putting food coloring on hotdogs so that there are red hots, white hots, and blue hots every year just like the flag,” said Uncle Sam.

“She only does that,” said Abigail, “because she’s still a little embarrassed by the story which was released by her grandson William Canby to the American History Society of Pennsylvania in 1870 that she’d made the first flag even though she didn’t. It was just in time for the 1876 Centennial celebration of your birthday. She and her first husband John Ross attended Christ Church in Philadelphia with General George and Martha Washington in 1776, but she didn’t make or present the flag to the General.  She only wishes she had,” Abigail added rather cattily.

Conversation throughout the picnic was a mixture of pride and regret as it was every year.  John Adams and Thomas Jefferson regretted all over again that their Federalist and Democratic-Republican followers had politicized the Fourth of July celebrations in the 1790s in Philadelphia, Boston and New York City turning them into partisan parades, parties, and occasional street brawls fueled by drink.

Puffing on his inevitable cigar, Ulysses S. Grant, from his seat next to Abe Lincoln, expressed sorrow that under his first administration in 1870 the Fourth of July became an official federal holiday, but there hadn’t been a clause in the legislation making it a paid holiday for federal workers.

 “I knew you were sorry about that General Grant. That’s why I saw to it that it was a paid holiday for federal workers in the 1938 legislation,” said FDR as he fit a smoke into his long ivory cigarette holder.

“I’ve always been sorry,” said Uncle Sam to John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, "that you both died on my fiftieth birthday.”

“Think nothing of it, Sam,” said Jefferson, “We were glad to do it.  It made us even more famous than we already were.  After all, we were politicians before we were statesmen, Remember, Sam, no one becomes a statesman without first being a politician!”

“Yah! said James Monroe, the only president to have been wounded in the Revolutionary War while fighting under Washington, "but how many people know I also died on July Fourth five years after you fellows did?"

"Well,” said President Warren Harding as he looked up from the card game he was playing with Presidents Martin Van Buren, Chester A. Arthur, Frank Pierce and Andrew Jackson.  “Cal Coolidge, my Vice President and the man who succeeded me upon my death in San Francisco’s Palace Hotel on August 2^nd, 1923, was actually born on the Fourth of July."

“I like to think I was! But I don’t know," replied Coolidge rather shyly as was “silent Cal’s” nature. “It was pretty close to midnight on Wednesday, July 3^rd 1872 when I was born.  Papa hinted once that upon hearing my first cry he might have nudged the hands forward just a bit on the big grandfather clock in our living room.

“Good,” said Uncle Sam, “it’s always nice to have company, especially presidential company."

Suddenly, Father Time, a giant of a man, taller and broader than George Washington and Abraham Lincoln with a remarkably calm manner, was on his feet. Uncle Sam’s birthday cake was on a huge tray.  Its thick frosting contained a facsimile of the autograph of every president and chief justice and a reproduction of the American flag.  Every first lady had contributed her time to baking, layering and decorating the cake.  Uncle Sam rose slowly to his feet, preparing to blow out the two hundred and thirty-seven candles – a task that was getting harder every year.

As he huffed and puffed, he made his annual wish.  Although in keeping with tradition his wish was a silent one, everyone there knew what it was.  It was Uncle Sam’s abiding wish for his fellow Americans: “May there forever be freedom and justice for all!”

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY