A SOUTHWESTERN SMALL TOWN 4TH OF JULY

I heard the splash before I felt the droplets. I turned to see my friend Patty and her children armed and ready. A steady stream erupted from yet another fire truck. Patty was fairly soaked by the larger stream of water emitted from the fire fighters bravely manning their stations. She was plainly outgunned. Her fault, really, being armed with her small single-stream water pistol; she was David in a losing battle with a Goliath armed a water bazooka hooked to a hose which lead to a tank of water.

Oh well, it’s the Fourth of July in Patagonia and veteran parade goers (I am one) know you best wear quick-dry clothes if you are right on the street during Patagonia’s 4^th of July Parade and Festival. Patagonia is a pretty little village nestled between the Patagonia and the Santa Rita Mountains, along Sonoita Creek. It is basically a two main street affair. A row of artsy shops and yummy restaurants in addition to its only general store sits along the north road and a large historic hotel, its local craft store, more yummy restaurants, a coffee shop and a beautiful church line the south road.

Patagonia is now a place people move to get away from the big city (the biggest nearby being the millionopolis of Tucson) or ranch lands that have been in families for generations. There are organic farms along the verdant Sonoita Creek bed and Spiritual Retreat Centers in the hills above the town.

There are several mining ghost towns on the dirt roads up in the Patagonia Mountains, quiet reminders of a booming industry that left a train station turned into Civic Center on a generous patch of park that stretches the two long blocks between its two main streets. It’s a place where neighbor absolutely knows neighbor and with that comes the civility of having to live next door to people you might not exactly agree with. It’s one of my favorite places to be on the 4^th in these United States.

Patagonia’s 4^th festivities are pretty downhome. Families arrive plenty early to stake out their canopy spots on the grounds of Patagonia’s generous central park. The Senior Center’s volunteers arrive early to organize the brat and root beer float concession in the Center’s spotless cafeteria. The Tombstone Vigilantes drive up in their colorful period costumes and noisy pistol replicas.

Sonoita horse ranchers show up with their horse trailers and their best-looking and calmest steeds for the Parade. The floats, fire engines and trucks, a flotilla of historic and really cool looking Model T’s and A’s and whatever else there are line up behind them and somewhere near the middle those adorable 4H kids tote the flag and sometimes drag their fairly well-behaved goat or dog or other 4H project turned life-long friend along. On July 4^th, Patagonia is a western Norman Rockwell painting.

Patty, her two children, my own grown son Daniel and I got there an hour later than usual but there was still plenty of spaces down the block in the Post Office lot. It was Patty’s first time but she had done her research (she is part of my adventure group and we all tend to do research before we head somewhere – it’s just what we do). We both had our snacks and our drinks. We had a camp chair for each of us. Patty and her kids had three water pistols plus a gallon of water for recharging the ammo. We all had sun screen which we forgot because that’s what one does in Arizona when the clouds provide some cover and your skin is not broiling from the sun.

We walked up the north road and started hunting ‘our spot’ along the long line of revelers already waiting in polite lines all the way down the three-block northern part of the loop around the City Park. In front of a beautiful villa-style stone house, I spotted an unattended sidewalk space big enough for our raucous group of five. The lone gentleman sitting on one of a row of patio chairs assured me it was just waiting for my group to come along. His name was Eric and he and his wife were LA transplants, migrating to Patagonia to escape the overwhelming busyness of the big city. It was his second Patagonia Parade. I could tell from his constant stream of visitors that he had already embraced the small town friendliness that comes with living in Patagonia.

To protect our ‘spot’ I added a couple of our own camp chairs to the line barricading the vehicle parking lane and got down to business of waiting for the parade to start. The other four, this being their first time in Patagonia, explored the Park where Dan investigated the many tasty food options at the Festival grounds on the other side of the Senior Center. Mexican foods are naturally a big favorite here in this village that might have been around since before it was even part of the United States.

Finally, we could hear before we could see the Parade color guards marching down the street. Then came the Parade Marshall followed by fire trucks and engines from pretty much all the volunteer and professional fire departments

in a 50-mile radius. A Navajo Hot Shot crew walked in front of the trucks carrying their pulaskis, picks and shovels. Firefighting is an honored tradition in these dusty hills and mountains and every year, and to thank them, these firefighters are given the special honor of being one of the first groups to lead the parade.

Float after float came drifting by. Many of them had water-soaking bandits hiding out in the interiors or on the decorated buckboards. Water, another of the village’s precious commodities, came raining from both the spectators and participants alike. Patagonia knows how to throw a really good water fight.

It didn’t take Patty and her kids long to realize blasts from their small streams of water usually was followed by perhaps a larger response from the parade participants but that was quickly followed up by the traditional wrapped candies now so ‘not allowed’ in other parades across the country. Patagonia trusts its neighbors to deliver safe candy and to stick around to pick up the mess.

Finally, the last float drifted by and the crowd began to collectively move toward the Festival grounds. A side trip back to our parked cars to stow our camp chairs made us a little late getting to the ‘hanging’, a skit with volunteers from the crowd being ‘tried’ by a judge from the Tombstone Vigilantes with trumped up charges being attested to by a ‘sheriff’ intent on having justice served. With ice cream if possible. After the hanging, we were treated to the music and dancing by the Redhouse family, proud Navajo traditional dancers Lenny and Tony with their musical sister Mary. Mary sings, chants, drums and plays the Native flute while her brothers celebrate Navajo culture with ritual dances.

 

As the festivities continued, our group headed to the cars and to the Patagonia-Sonoita Creek Preserve, a beautiful 873 acres of the richest riparian habitat left in Southern Arizona which is home to the first 2 miles of the permanently flowing Sonoita Creek. The kids (even my 25-year-old who might just be more of a kid than Patty’s tween boy) hunted crayfish in the meandering stream and watched the four indigenous and tiny fish species play out the ancient circle of life with the crayfish. Barefoot and bareheaded, it could have been a scene from Huckleberry Finn’s days.

Everything about Patagonia and that day remind me of what’s best of the United States – friendly and patriotic people willing to lend a hand to the community, happy people offering thanks for their freedoms and gratefulness for their families.

On our way back to Tucson, Dan and I saw a fountain burst somewhere near “A” Mountain, the official firing site for the Tucson 4^th of July firework display. Heading toward the parking garages at the University of Arizona, we parked and hiked up four levels to the top where an entirely different group of Americans waited patiently on the camp chairs with their coolers, dogs and kids for the traditional explosion of patriotic feeling we call the 4^th Fireworks. It’s tradition. It’s what we Americans do to celebrate ‘the bombs bursting in air (that) gave proof through the night that the flag was still there.”

I hope I continue to do something like this every Fourth – get away to a small town holding a celebration of being able to do small town things, then meet up with friends who come from all parts of the country and even other countries to view the 4^th of July fireworks. I hope I never lose the magic of patriotic music and flags and 4H kids with goats. I believe in what America has come to stand for and the reason so many people from other countries (including my own forefathers and mothers) float, fly, drive and even walk into this country.

The United States of America’s freedom is disorderly. Often my freedom impinges on someone else’s. But in the United States, our traditions would have us settling these disputes in legislatures and courts rather than by bullets. Of course, we Americans have the right, which we so often and deeply rely on, to disagree on how we want to live. And sometimes the far left or the far right act in ways which, although sometimes fueled by honest and heart-felt beliefs, take their resistance way too far into violence like the recent shooting in Charleston. But I don’t see a system out there that has been able to manage the great Melting Pot in the same way we have. Freedoms for one to be extended to all has meaning. Even just this past week our freedoms were expanded as gay couples finally were given the green light by the freedom arbitrator of our country – our Supreme Court - to marry who they love and with whom they want to be celebrating their 4th of Julys.

Freedom has a forward trajectory in our country. We are a messy and loud bunch of people where the beliefs might not all be the same but the love of freedom is constant. Living under our flag means being able to sew it on a pocket of my jeans in college just so I could sit on it as a protest against what I thought was wrong with these United States. Even then, I viewed the flag as important and I treat it with respect, but I’m glad I can live in a country that does not require me to think of it as a sacred icon, one that would wave at me as I hobbled to the jailhouse because I had a different way of believing than others. Long live these United States and its community celebration called the 4^th of July.