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the sun set, it would conclude its part in the ceremonies by marching briskly behind the strains of “It’s a Grand Old Flag” till both band and flag left the park and were out of sight.
    I was in awe of my father’s uniform, especially the shiny tin hat I was allowed to fondle, as much as I was of the photographs that showed him in his professional baseball stripes. They were memories for him, symbols for me, full of mystery, for he had been in a world I never knew and fought his war in advance of mine—an improbability that became reasonable only when I pushed my way out of my own past, fleeing my memories as if I had already been in battle a few times before I got decked out as an ensign by Saks Fifth Avenue and wore my one and only tailor-mades on leave, hoping to appear a person of accomplishment.
    The Fourth was more military and more masculine than Memorial Day. Memorial Day was for moms and old men, but on the Fourth we rattled our ceremonial sabers and shot off our toy gunsand proclaimed our might and main, resolving to resolve. I eventually learned that such festivities rarely meant a great deal. The holiday was as much about our nation’s independence as Christmas was about Christ. On such occasions we were to spend money and have a good time.
    The first Fourth following Pearl Harbor I remember as too serious to be noisy. The Japanese had attacked our fleet as it lay asleep on a sunny Sunday before church. By the time Independence Day arrived we were at war in the full sense, already making many sacrifices, mobilizing our forces, our resources, and suffering humiliating losses every day. I remember being as shocked when Singapore fell as I was about the destruction at Pearl Harbor. The families of the sailors who died received the thanks of a grateful nation, but these sons had been sailors, after all, not civilians, and had signed a contract that endangered them. Still, when we were drafted we were insured for $ 10 , 000 apiece—a policy that I haven’t permitted to be cashed yet.
    People stayed on their porches that Fourth. There were gas-rationing regulations and rubber tire conservation rules that warned folks from the roads; trains were occupied by soldiers and their freight; and no one gave a thought to planes. Kids were sent to summer camps, though, because so many moms wanted to be near their husbands while the army bases could still be visited. Miniature golf got popular again, and Manhattanites sailed ’round their island on slow boats or bicycled in packs through startled parks. You had to put a lid on fireworks along the coast, because who knew when a bomb burst might be real and the beginning of a German or a Jap attack. Of course, we held parades and waved flags. The war had broken the Depression’s drought. There were quarters, not pennies, in our pockets. And more of them stayed in those pockets, because there was less to be bought. The war forced Sears Roebuck to drop antifreeze and accordions from its catalog, along with alarm clocks, wheelbarrows, sheets and pillowcases. Books were a popular item, though soon restrictions on paper would lessen their life span. Inmost cities the best seller was Wendell Wilkie’s
One World
, with 1,700,000 copies purchased, except in St. Louis, where
The Joy of Cooking
, by the city’s own Irma Rombauer, led the list, and would eventually circle
One World
’s sales several times.
    The Japanese had blown up warships at a naval base because warships were what you fought a war with and they didn’t want us to have ours, but the usurping passengers who were piloting their first aircraft that other dreadful morning had symbols as their targets and were borne aloft by the names United and American toward twin towers that stood for World Trade on a day that would be written “911” in unintended irony. They may have hoped, but they could not have counted on, a photographic coverage so vivid and complete it would bring dismay to a nation and joy to their