The U.S. Begins Its Birthday Bash

One, if by land, and two, if by sea; And I on the opposite shore will be, Ready to ride and spread the alarm Through every Middlesex village and farm, For the countryfolk to be up and to arm.

--Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1860

This week in Boston retired Contractor Dino Di Carlo, 61, will don colonial-style breeches, waistcoat and peruke. Then he will mount a horse and head northwestward through suburban Middlesex County, re-enacting Paul Revere's ride 200 years earlier to warn Lexington and Concord that British troops were coming to seize the colonists' military supplies. Di Carlo's trip will be the first major commemorative event since the U.S. Bicentennial celebration officially began on March 1. It promises to be a gigantic birthday bash that will involve millions of Americans, from the largest cities to the tiniest hamlets, and spawn thousands of speeches, parades, pageants, school plays, fairs, exhibitions, TV shows, postage stamps, buttons, T shirts and Jefferson knows what else before the party officially ends on Dec. 31, 1976.

Grinder and Beer. As closely as possible, Di Carlo will follow Revere's route. But the passage of two centuries and the organizers' desire to accommodate spectators have substantially altered conditions. The ride will begin at 9 a.m. on April 19 instead of the previous night, and originate from the Old North Church in Boston rather than from Charlestown. Instead of passing through Longfellow's "meadows brown" and "village street," Di Carlo will ride through a typical 20th century urban sprawl (see map). If he wished, he could stop for a grinder at Mamma Lisa's Pizza House, a beer at Moriarty's Bar, a pound of chopped chicken liver at Levine's Kosher Meat Market or lunch at the China Bo Restaurant. He could wash his horse blanket at Launderland or even trade in his steed for something with more horsepower at any of half a dozen automobile dealerships along the way. But Di Carlo will be spurred on by a schedule that permits no dallying, not even at the Paul Revere Liquor Mart.

When he arrives in Lexington, by about 1 p.m., he will find that the battle began at 6 a.m. and ended long before he left Boston. On the Lexington Green, residents acting as the British redcoats will have routed neighbors dressed as Minutemen and marched off to participate in Concord's parade to the old North Bridge, the site of the second skirmish. Residents of both Lexington and Concord regard the hordes of tourists--up to 500,000 are expected--as the real enemy and are suitably prepared. There will be 200 portable toilets, 60 lunch stands, 19 Red Cross stations and 400 National Guardsmen standing by in case of trouble.

So it will go in communities across the country for the next 20 months, as the East and the South re-enact the major and some minor events of the Revolutionary period and the Middle West and Far West commemorate their regional history.

There will be no single national Bicentennial observance. A federal commission, which was later abolished by Congress for ineptitude, spent 6 1/2 years arguing over an appropriate national celebration and finally recommended that there be none. To coordinate and stimulate state and local Bicentennial events, Congress set up the American Revolution Bicentennial Administration on Dec. 11, 1973. Its partial listing of nationwide activities fills a book about twice as thick as the Washington, D.C., telephone directory.

The U.S. Travel Service expects anniversary activities in cities and towns across the country to draw 30 million foreign visitors and untold numbers of Americans. During the summer of 1976, Washington, D.C., alone expects more than 330,000 overnight visitors each day v. the normal average of 200,000. Among the capital's Bicentennial attractions will be the National Gallery of Art's show of paintings, sketches and other items from the life of Thomas Jefferson, an amusement park planned for an island in the Anacostia River and the Smithsonian Institution's American Folklife Festival.

Uncle Sam Statues. Some activities are already under way. The American Freedom Train, carrying historic documents and artifacts in 24 cars, is making an 80-stop, cross-country tour. Hundreds of U.S. businesses are profitably joining the celebration with products using Bicentennial themes. Among other things, Americans can now buy red-white-and-blue toilet seats, mailboxes decorated with stars and stripes, liquor in commemorative bottles, even commemorative 1776 locomotives for model train layouts, a bronze replica of the Liberty Bell and a $25,000, 100-ft. statue of Uncle Sam made of hard rubber. In Rhode Island, Bicentennial Chairman George F. McDonald was convicted of soliciting a bribe from a firm that wanted his commission's endorsement of a design for jewelry.

For the most part, however, Americans have reacted in the spirit of the patriotic occasion, usually with pizazz and gusto and often with imagination. A region-by-region sampling of representative Bicentennial activities:

THE EAST: The shots at Lexington and Concord are only the first in a series of historical re-enactments of Revolutionary War battles in the East. In the pre-dawn hours of May 10, 85 descendants of Benedict Arnold and Ethan Allen and his followers, the Green Mountain Boys, will raft across Lake Champlain from Hands Cove, Vt., to retake Fort Ticonderoga.

For the sake of late-sleeping tourists, the group will stage the capture twice more during the day. Boston-area groups will refight the battle of Bunker Hill on June 14. New Jersey will carefully restage a series of battles this winter, including George Washington's crossing of the Delaware River on Christmas night 1776 to attack the Hessians at Trenton and his victory at Princeton on Jan. 3, 1777.

Philadelphia will put on one of the biggest anniversary wingdings of them all: 200 special events costing $200 million and 58 public-works projects costing $172.4 million. The city expects nearly 60 million visitors in 1976. The major exhibit will open next year. It is a $13 million Living History Center that depicts 200 years of U.S. history through a series of world's fair-style exhibits and films. In addition, the National Park Service is renovating the area around Independence Hah1, building a pavilion for the Liberty Bell and painstakingly reconstructing five houses once owned by Benjamin Franklin.

Other Eastern states have restoration projects but on a much smaller scale. The National Park Service is rebuilding Fort Stanwix at Rome, N.Y., where American forces in August 1777 repulsed a British invasion. New York City is restoring nine blocks of 18th and 19th century buildings near the South Street Seaport Museum, which exhibits ships dating from the late 19th century. Joining them by July 4, 1976, will be a number of sailing ships from a fleet of about 60 that will leave Plymouth, England, on May 2, 1976, and stop at Portugal, the Canary Islands, Bermuda and Newport, R.I.

Among other Eastern activities:

Rome, N.Y., is building a tomb to house the bones of eight unknown Revolutionary War soldiers whose remains were unearthed during a sewer construction project.

THE SOUTH: The Georgia State Chamber of Commerce has been urging people to "stay and see America in Georgia." In the same spirit, many of the region's Bicentennial activities are intended to emphasize that the South's contribution to colonial and Revolutionary America was just as important as the North's. On June 28, 1976, Charleston will mark the battle of Fort Sullivan, one of the first major colonial victories. North Carolina is rewriting its eighth-and ninth-grade history textbooks, using as major source materials the Halifax Resolve, in favor of independence, which its provincial assembly voted on April 12, 1776, and other historical state documents.

Virginia plans special exhibits at Thomas Jefferson's Monticello, George Washington's Mount Vernon, and Williamsburg, which was the colonial cap ital. In addition, the state has established historical centers at Alexandria, Charlottesville and Yorktown, where a victorious Washington accepted the final British surrender.

New Orleans is restoring five buildings in the market area of the city's 18th century French Quarter. New Orleans and St. Louis are sponsoring a paddle-wheel steamboat that will take theatrical productions to small towns along the Mississippi River; it will arrive at New Orleans in time for a July 4, 1976, Bicentennial ceremony. Alabama has laid out a 2,000-mile route that will take visitors to 200 historical sites, including the George Washington Carver Museum in Tuskegee and the capital of the Confederacy in Montgomery.

THE MIDDLE WEST: One of a handful of the region's communities that date from the 18th century, Detroit will re-enact on July 24 the 1701 landing of its founder, French Explorer Antoine Laumet la Mothe Cadillac. But many Midwestern communities that want to emphasize regional history in their Bicentennial celebrations have had to draw on the events of a century after the Revolution. In Indianapolis, the state museum is constructing a diorama portraying the exploits of Frontiersman George Rogers Clark. A group in Chicago is restoring several turn-of-the-century mansions that were once owned by such business giants as Merchant Marshall Field and Railroad Car Manufacturer George Pullman. Downstate Illinois is threatened with a surfeit of Lincolnania. About 25 communities plan to commemorate Lincoln, including Springfield, where the state is setting up a lavish $600,000 sound-and-light show in the Old State Capitol Building that will recount key events in his life.

Other Midwesterners have found ways to give a local twist to Revolutionary themes. Bedford, Ind., has commissioned a 21-ft.-long statue, to be made from its famed limestone, of George Washington crossing the Delaware. Explorer Scouts in Topeka plan to pilot an airplane along the perimeter of the U.S., ending in Philadelphia on July 4, 1976. Civic groups in Libertyville, Ill., are painting about 50 fireplugs to represent Revolutionary War heroes.

Nebraska has commissioned a dozen American artists to create pieces of outdoor sculpture at rest stops along an interstate highway. About 1,000 elementary schoolchildren from suburban Kettering, Ohio, will dress in red, white and blue clothing on July 4,1976, to re-create the human flag that welcomed the Wright brothers home in 1909.

THE WEST: Washington State plans to buy a private collector's life mask of George Washington, one of three in existence, for about $375,000 and display it in the state capital, Olympia, by July 4, 1976. But most Bicentennial projects in the West are drawn from the region's own history and heritage. Alaskans are rebuilding the Tlingit and Haida tribal houses in Angoon and restoring a log headquarters built in 1793 by Russian fur traders in Kodiak. Hawaiians are constructing a 60-ft., double-hulled sailing canoe in which a crew of 24 will leave on April 1, 1976, for a month-long voyage to Tahiti and back to demonstrate how the Polynesians discovered the Hawaiian Islands.

Some mainland projects are based on the West's Spanish heritage. Sponsored by Arizona and California, some 240 men, women and children will leave Horcasitas, Mexico, on Sept. 25 for a nine-month trek by horse and wagon to re-enact the 1775-76 expedition that settled the San Francisco Bay area and established Mission Dolores and the Presidio. Along the way, the wagons will stop for Bicentennial celebrations in several Southwestern cities. San Jose is recreating a 19th century ambience in six square blocks and twelve buildings, including a firehouse, hardware store and bank. Los Angeles has lined up Comedians Dick and Tom Smothers, former Astronaut Scott Carpenter, former Professional Football Star Roosevelt Grier and a dozen others to design and sew a Bicentennial Celebrity Quilt.

But the West has not overlooked its heritage from the East. On June 8,1975, a Conestoga-style covered-wagon train will leave Elaine, Wash., for a crosscountry trek along routes that the pioneers used to migrate West. The wagons will join others in Valley Forge, Pa., on July 3, in time for the Bicentennial's climactic moment in Philadelphia: a parade with units from all 50 states and a massive fireworks show that will mark the 200th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

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