Memories, not fireworks, are the Fourth’s magic

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93 days ago: There’s still perfect harmony in the air

On Independence Day, the road before me — whether I’m cruising Hennepin in Minneapolis or Highway 61 in Leland, Mississippi — turns to memory lane. I hear my mother singing “Bye, Bye Blackbird” by the light of the dashboard and see the faces of dead friends and relatives shimmering in the haze above the summertime asphalt.

When the Fourth of July arrives, I remember childhood trips to Bill Miller’s shore in Edgemere, a little bit of the Deep South in the shadow of the rusting Bethlehem Steel plant in Sparrows Point.

Mr. Bill worked with my father on the Thames Street tugboats. Every summer weekend, people would go to his house to drink beer, play cards, eat crabs and listen to the Orioles on the radio. The house, where he and his wife Dorothy raised six children, was destroyed by Hurricane Isabel in 2003.

The Miller kids rebuilt it, and Mr. Bill and Miss Dottie are still there. But the Summer of 1963 and the fireworks launched from the end of the pier have faded to pastel and gray.

We'd climb into my family’s 1960 robin’s-egg blue Pontiac Ventura, leave our green-shingled house on Daisy Avenue in Lansdowne and follow this pre-Interstate-95 route: Daisy Avenue to Annapolis Road, through Westport and into the city via Russell Street, when Ridgely’s Delight was a slum.

East on Lombard before they switched the one-way routes of Pratt and Lombard streets and through the warren of old forges and rope shops in what is now Inner Harbor East.

Pop always called it the “scenic route,” and it was along this path, looking out the car window at the neon Fallsway Spring sign, that I first started making up stories in my head. We’d pick up Broening Highway off of Holabird Avenue and cruise into Edgemere and Mr. Bill's house on Chesapeake Drive.

I can still smell the dry, volcanic gravel of his driveway, the pier beyond it, where the Miller kids tied up boats the way we parked our bikes. They had a good life and invited others to share it.

Fireworks are overrated, forgotten until the next barrage. But memories of being down the shore when your parents were young and the biggest decision was whether to eat a hamburger or a hot dog, that never goes away.

Rafael Alvarez can be reached at outboard@alvarezfiction.com

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93 days ago: There’s still perfect harmony in the air