Growing up in Waterville, Vermont meant I celebrated Independence Day in Jeffersonville. The town of 600 makes Eden Prairie look like Shibuya City by comparison, with a main drag distinguished by little more than a two-story general store and a library. The town livens up when Lamoille County broodmothers don their most patriotic T-shirts, depicting kittens waving American flags and such, gather up their kin, and claim small plots alongside Route 108 in anticipation of the 4th of July parade.
Jeffersonville’s parade always began with the WWII veterans, more wizened and fewer in number with each passing year. Then came the Vietnam veterans, then the National Guard, and finally a phalanx of boy scouts with squinting eyes and kerchiefs trailing in the breeze. Ladies of the Rotary and Eagles and Elks Clubs puttered past in their husbands’ antique cars, throwing candies that cracked like glass on the hot asphalt.
Roughly ninety percent of Vermont’s local economy is maintaining the roads, so a flotilla of Ford F-350s towing massive machines came next. Tractors that began rusting during the Hoover administration followed to belch thick smoke on the toddlers attempting to pull Tootsie Rolls out from in between their wheels. Fire trucks, ambulances, local politicians, store owners, church congregations, and more filed down the street in a saucy display of pride and community. The parade ended with the march of a few Jeffersonville women who owned dogs. They indicated that festivities were moving to the schoolyard.
If it wasn’t fun, it wasn’t to be found by the banks of Brewster River on the 4th of July. The fair had a frog jumping contest, yard sales, corn on the cob, not one but two quilt raffles, and noise nearly identifiable as music courtesy of college students reeking of patchouli. The main event was cow bingo, where a well fed bovine was allowed to poke around an enclosed grid until nature took its course. If you predicted which section nature would take its course on, you won serious money. A child with an especially lively frog could also take home money that day. The fair had once featured a waxed telephone pole with a twenty dollar bill stapled to its pinnacle, but the tradition ceased after one unfortunate local fell from too high.
Charming as Jeffersonville might be, a shining light of the civilized world such as Eden Prairie must necessarily have a bigger to-do in honor of our great country’s autonomy. The 4th of July Hometown Celebration at Round Lake Park has always been a rollicking party.
The celebration begins with athletics. The day opens to the cracking of paddles, a pickleball tournament that will determine who in Eden Prairie is best at pickleball not once and for all, but for a year at least. Runners so enlightened that they can manage to do it at nine in the morning run the Optimist Club 5K. If you don’t have baseball at your 4th of July festival, you may as well substitute the fireworks with a live reading of The Communist Manifesto. Fortunately Eden Prairie has the Baseball Association’s Firecracker Classic.
At the BMX demonstration people who must not comprehend what gravity can do to human bones do things that were never meant to be done on bicycles. If you prefer competition that you don’t have to sweat or concuss for, you can enter the karaoke contest. Give your fellow patriots a rendition of “Livin’ on a Prayer” that will change their lives forever.
As an adult you would only paint your face to go to a football game. It is good that Vikings and Packers fans can still bond over sharing half of their face paint with each other. Kids, on the other hand, will happily mark any occasion by painting their faces. You can see dozens of snakes and tigers and Spider-Men marking the 4th of July in Eden Prairie. They bounce down giant inflatable playthings and repave the park in colorful chalk drawings. They laugh, and they petition their grandmothers for money to spend at food stands. Kids learn the easiest touch in their family early on.
Eden Prairie puts Jeffersonville’s corn cobs to shame. Having honed their culinary skills at the country’s greatest state fair, the celebration’s food vendors serve only the finest corn dogs and footlongs. They bale the fluffiest cotton candy, and scoop the ideal ice cream to let drip down your fingers on an 80 degree day. Minn. Stat. Ann. § 42.72 forbids gatherings greater than ten people in our state without at least one mini donut stand present. It is criminal not to eat mini donuts at a fair.
The fête is special for featuring a robotics demonstration. There people far smarter than you showcase what they can do with computer chips and servos, but hopefully not so quickly that they will soon obsolete us all. Will robots ever become able to write general interest magazine articles? Pray technology will eventually reveal its limits.
The air cools as mother night tucks Eden Prairie in. A single firework finally streaks upward, telling all to take their places. The show is about to begin.
“Once those fireworks start going, I almost wonder if it isn’t a grand finale all the way through,” says Jay Lotthammer, Parks and Recreation director of the City of Eden Prairie. “In terms of local community fireworks, I hear Eden Prairie’s are among the best around. They’re synchronized to music, all old marches and patriotic songs like ‘God Bless America’ and ‘Born in the USA.’ Everyone is simply in awe. And when you look around after the lights have come back on, you can’t believe how many other people joined you in that experience. It’s the strongest sense of community you’ll feel all year.”
This year’s 4th of July Hometown Celebration, which would have marked the United States’ 244th birthday, has been modified to an online virtual experience sans festival or fireworks. There is no longer a need to explain why. This terrible thing has already taken far more than our celebrations away from us. But, as Jay reminds us, it needn’t take everything.
“People will still have access to our parks, where we only ask them to practice responsible social distancing. We hope they make full use of their lawns and decks, where they can grill and drink with friends and family. The City of Eden Prairie is still fleshing out our plan for the night, but we will take advantage of hashtags, our social media, and the community cable channel to create some greater sense of community. We hope to put on a little bit of an online show. At a certain time during the evening we would like everyone to stand outside and sing together, like in those touching videos that came out of Italy during the start of the pandemic.
“And hopefully there will be fireworks again next year.”
Please follow the City of Eden Prairie on social media for updates on their plans for the 4th of July, as well as other important goings on about town.
Facebook
@CityofEdenPrairie
@EdenPrairiePolice
Instagram
CityofEdenPrairie
EdenPrairiePD
Twitter
@CityofEP
@EdenPrairiePD
@EdenPrairieFD