My wife and I decided to get a jump on the nation’s 250th birthday bash last November so we planned a trip to Independence Hall in Philadelphia. We wanted to be in the room where it all happened, to borrow a line from the “Hamilton” song.
The Declaration of Independence was adopted there in July 1776. Home of the Second Continental Congress. It’s the birthplace of the U.S. Constitution, for crying out loud. The Liberty Bell Center is just across the street from Independence Hall.
Someone bellow Ethel Merman’s “God Bless America,” mustard-up a hot dog on a bun and hand over a lit sparkler, galdurn it.
Right after I booked the flight and a hotel room in the heart of Philly, a government shutdown hit. The stoppage gummed up the works starting Oct. 1, 2025. That meant, among other things, all National Parks were closed.
Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell are part of the parks system. Uh-oh.
Surely, the Democrat and Republican nitwits in Congress in Washington, D.C., would quit squabbling by the first week in November in time to reopen the cradle of democracy during our Philadelphia pilgrimage. I mean it is their job keeping the government operating. Right?
A bicentennial moment
I am old enough to remember all the hoopla and hype surrounding the 1976 Bicentennial Celebration.
During the months building up to 1976 celebration, nearly everything involving home décor looked as if it came from Yee Ol’ Wally Mart in cosplay colonial Williamsburg, Va. Bedding sheets and pillowcases were covered with images of tricorn hats, muskets and marching drums. Electric desk lamps looked as if they burned whale oil. Curtains and couch covers were splattered with so many American flags from the late 1700s that even Betsy Ross would have tossed her cookies.
No one does excess better than North Americans.
Most of the fire hydrants in my small hometown of Marianna were painted red, white and blue. Others were gussied up to look like squatty-body Minutemen. Even water pressure in the Florida Panhandle got in on the patriotic fervor.
As I recall, the hydrants were brushed up in bicentennial get-ups in the early spring by members of a civic club from Marianna High School. The gallon cans of leftover paint and the brushes were stored in a closet in the school’s gymnasium.
Thanks to the spring season, high-school baseball was in full swing (so to speak). A visiting team from a different county parked its yellow school bus next to the gym so the players could use the locker room. I know the real name of the opponents, but I am going to call them The Nub City Stump Jumpers to protect identity.
While the Stump Jumpers were out on the nearby baseball diamond, some Marianna High football players on break from spring training decided the bus needed a spiffy bicentennial paint job. The players raided the rest of the flag-colored supplies and went to work on one side of the visiting school bus.
Turns out the Stump Jumpers weren’t feeling very patriotic when they saw what had been done. Neither was Nub City baseball coach, who blew a gasket. One bicentennial butt-whooping was ordered up by the Marianna High School principal.
For once, even though I was questioned because the bus stunt seemed like something I would have orchestrated, I walked free. God bless America.
Blown apart
July 4th fell on a Sunday in 1976.
My father was in a grumpy mood as the family cleared out of a rental house on Mexico Beach by noon and headed north to home.
Then it rained.
And then it rained a lot more.
That evening’s public fireworks got pushed back in Marianna.
For some reason, the Independence Day explosion display was held in a field at the back of The Boys School property.
Years later, the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys lock-up would become infamous for the torture that went on at the state-run hoosegow for juveniles during the Jim Crow era. Novelist Colson Whitehead wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning book “The Nickel Boys” about the abuse. “Nickel Boys” was adapted into an Oscar-nominated film in 2024. Dozier got shut down in 2011.
In 1976, though, we local teens had no clue about Dozier’s cruel past. Our main concern was that the reform-school boys would spit on us or toss ice chips from their perch in the guarded balcony of The Ritz Theatre. Every Friday night their ancient blue school bus (left unpainted) arrived at the Ritz. The juvies were marched upstairs to watch such cinema treasures as “Frogs,” “Love Story” and “The Thing with Two Heads.” The 1970s held a different kind of misery.
Oh, the fireworks.
As Aimee Mann sang in “4th of July” ballad: “And when they light up our town I just think/ What a waste of gunpowder and sky.”
Back in Philly
The 250th birthday is officially called the semiquincentennial. Yeah, it sounds like the name of some skin growth that is painful to remove at a doctor’s office.
By the time my wife and I arrived in Philadelphia on Nov. 4, the government had not budged one millimeter.
Democrats and Republicans blamed each other for the impasse as they pointed fingers. Airline passengers were sympathetic to non-paid NSA workers who still showed up for jobs at the airport. I witnessed a passenger pat an NSA agent on the back to comfort him. Yeah, that’s how bad the shutdown got.
Still, we had five days in Philly, so maybe the stalemate would come to an end. Although Philadelphia has a reputation of being a rude place that once pelted Santa Claus with snowballs, we found the locals friendly and funny. They certainly understood the irony that Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell were closed to the public.
We were stuck outside looking in.
The shutdown ended Nov. 13, five days after we got back to Tallahassee. Guess we’ll try again on the nation’s tricentennial.
Mark Hinson is a former senior writer at The Tallahassee Democrat. He can be reached at mark.hinson59@gmail.com
This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Oh, say can you see the cradle of democracy in Philadelphia?
Reporting by Mark Hinson, Guest columnist / Tallahassee Democrat
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By Mark Hinson, Guest columnist | USA TODAY Network
