July 2026 Dispatch: The Spirit of '76

Semiquincentennial doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue as easily as bicentennial, but just as I’m getting accustomed to writing it out and using it with confidence in conversation, its expiration date looms with this Saturday’s July Fourth celebration of America’s 250th anniversary.

I won’t spill too much ink or time here with a sidebar about the current State of America and wonder what, or if there is even anything, worth celebrating about such an occasion. National pride is nice to have, even if its reserved for chants of “U.S.A! U.S.A!” while watching the USMNT World Cup match later tonight, but it has taken on more sinister symbolism in our current divided nation.

I may be the only person who has never purchased a now classic Old Navy Flag t-shirt that has become a Fourth of July mainstay, but I do have a small American flag stick-pin that was once belonged to my father, a former U.S. Navy veteran and a proud member of the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign War, that I keep in an ashtray on my dresser, just as he once did, that’s primarily home to loose coins, affixing it to the lapel of my sport coat when the occasion calls for it.

Unlike most LAST CALL readers, I was actually around for the 1976 bicentennial still have some flashes of memories from that Central New York summer when I was seven years old and, as a proud member of Generation X, spent my days roaming around the neighborhood putting miles on my banana seat bicycle (my beloved yellow-and-blue Huffy BMX bike would be a few years away) with my pack of young friends playing baseball, swimming at the pool at the Palmer’s house, talking about movies and TV shows, and getting into good-natured mischief.

My brother Scott had already taken me to see Jaws on opening weekend that June and we closed out my ‘76 film school education that December with King Kong and Rocky. That next summer would bring us Star Wars (then just Star Wars and not Star Wars—Episode IV: A New Hope) which blew my mind and remains a pop-culture touchstone for me. Two years later in the summer of ‘79 when I was 10, I was hanging out at the Palmer’s pool when I found out about my parents’ separation and eventual divorce when my mother and my future stepfather pulled up in our familiar blue-and-white Oldsmobile and had me climb into the backseat, my wavy red hair wet still slick from swimming. My destination was unknown, as a pin was put in the map of my childhood marking the moment where I would begin to navigate this new chapter of my young life.

The build-up to the bicentennial celebration over the Summer of ‘76 may have been focused on New York City—which back then I only experienced through a perspective driven by popular culture and WPIX—with Operation Sail and the Parade of Ships and a fireworks display for the ages centered around the Statue of Liberty. But even upstate in Canastota, that summer was spent in anticipation of the bicentennial.

While I have no photographic proof available to illustrate this, I spent a lot of time that summer at the Canastota Public Library, a historic two-story Carnegie library built in 1902 that remains one of my favorite hometown landmarks. I can’t recall the frequency, but my mother enrolled me in some kind of activity program held on the second floor to keep me occupied during the day.