Road Apples by Tim Sanders
July 4, 2011

How all this Yankee Doodling got started

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The July 4th weekend is here again, and again we celebrate, as proud Americans have for so many years, with music, parades, fireworks, and a wide variety of serious injuries. But why do we celebrate July 4th with such exuberant fanfare? Here’s one theory:

On July 4, 1872, Calvin Coolidge, 30th President of the United States, was born in Plymouth Notch, Vermont. Coolidge was known as ‘Silent Cal’ because of his ... silence. One story relates how renowned journalist and satirist Dorothy Parker attended a formal White House dinner, where she told Coolidge that she’d bet a man she could make the President say more than two words. He replied “You lose.” Later in the evening, however, he did say “Pass the salt,” and the other diners were astounded. It was one of his longest speeches, and Parker took credit for it because she was a renowned journalist, and that is what renowned journalists do. Many Coolidge jokes were told in the 1920s and ‘30s. But now, in these days of endless presidential press conferences and two-hour speeches full of grandiose political double talk, old Silent Cal looks pretty good to a majority of word weary Americans.

Of course the real reason for our July 4th celebration is that on that date in 1776 the Second Continental Congress met in Philadelphia’s Independence Hall, and, as congresses often do, voted itself a raise, a very generous pension plan, and then declared a recess for the July 4th holiday. The recess went splendidly. Benjamin Franklin flew his kite, Thomas Jefferson pushed his girlfriend Weezie on the swing, and John Hancock carved his name in exceptionally large letters into several trees. After the bell was rung and recess was declared over, the delegates went back inside the Hall to declare something else. A Congressional Subcommittee consisting of John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and two other guys you’ve probably never heard of, had already been appointed, on June 11, to put something on paper. The resulting document sparked lively debate, and led to nine raucous seminar sessions, fifteen quarrelsome focus groups, twelve impassioned floor speeches, three more from a staircase, and an eight-hour filibuster by delegate Weiner from New York. During these deliberations another recess was declared to allow the delegates from Virginia’s tobacco plantations to step outside for a cigarette break. In those days nobody wanted important political decisions being made in smoke-filled rooms. As John Adams himself once said, “Tis almost impossible to get the stench of a smoldering Camel butt out of your powdered wig.” Most historians agree he was talking about the cigarette brand, not the actual humped dromedary.

Finally, after hours of give and take, buttals and rebuttals, visions and revisions, they all agreed on the document which had been hand-written by Jefferson, who was the very best of the bunch when it came to sentence structure and punctuation. The delegates all agreed that they were sick and tired of plucking their eyebrows and going around wearing those silly knee breeches, white silk stockings, and powdered wigs, just because some British monarch, who carried a monkey around in a wicker basket, dressed that way. They were likewise sick and tired of following a set of arbitrary rules handed down from a bloated, inefficient, out-of-touch bureaucracy in Great Britain. They wanted arbitrary rules handed down by their very own bloated, inefficient, out-of-touch bureaucracy right here at home. Why should honest, hard working citizens pay exorbitant taxes to King George, when they could just as well be paying exorbitant taxes to their own government? Okay, so maybe the exorbitant tax idea is a more modern interpretation of independence, but at the time Jefferson’s document was just the ticket. Revolution was in the air above Philadelphia that day. Revolution and tobacco smoke.

The Declaration of Independence consists of five sections; the Preamble, the Declaration of Rights, the Bill of Indictment, the Statement of Independence., and, of course, the more recent textbook Thesaurus Addendum, which explains to modern students some of Jefferson’s most difficult words, including “rectitude, usurpation, dissolutions, consanguinity, cat and weasel.” Terms easily understood by today’s students, such as “outsourcing, downsizing,, revenue enhancements, earmarks, dude and peeps” are often substituted. (NOTE: In Jefferson’s day, “earmarks” would have been used only to describe a nasty skin condition.)

Nowadays we mainly remember those familiar first few lines in the Declaration, which many textbooks record this way in hopes of avoiding ACLU lawsuits:


We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men, women, livestock, plants, and earthen vases are created equal, that they are endowed by their single-celled primordial ancestors with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, the pursuit of Happiness, a Chicken in every pot, an Environmentally friendly Electric Car in every garage, free Day Care, Ethanol subsidies, Low interest, Federally Insured home Loans, and the right to Capitalize words at random.


They are moving, inspirational words, and they tend to bring tears to the eyes of all patriots, as do other lines of the Declaration, most of which we cannot print here due to Jefferson’s insistence on controversial phrases like “Divine Providence” and “sacred Honor.” The final lines, however, which are still etched on the blackboards of our childhood memories, clouded in mental chalk dust, are perhaps the most memorable:


One nation, under [POLITICALLY INCORRECT WORD OMITTED], indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. You may be seated, and NO CHEWING GUM IN CLASS!


After John Hancock put his enormous John Hancock on the original document on July 4, it was sent out to be dry cleaned. And depending on which version of history you read, the other fifty-five delegates signed the Declaration on either July 19, or August 2. Hancock then returned to Massachusetts and his fledgling insurance company, Geico.