The Spirit of '76

Before dumpster diving was called dumpster diving, my brother and I dove into dumpsters to collect cans. Shut up, we were kids. Not like the folks today who drive their seatless SUVs all over suburbia on recycling day, wasting more nickels on gas than they’ll ever make at the 5¢-a-pop supermarket compactor. No, we were scavengers on a treasure hunt. There was a period in the mid-1970s when the junkyard was a buffet. We’d come across the occasional girly mag that we’d stash and map for our friends, but we were there rummaging for Coke and Pepsi bottle caps. You remember. They had a rubbery plastic seal/disc wedged inside that, I suppose, kept the bubbles bubbly, but also, when picked out, revealed a printed message upon them. Sometimes it would be a marketing slogan that added life. Sometimes just a logo. But every tenth or twelfth cap had a disc that was a 10¢ or even a FREE coupon for your next bottle of pop (nod to you freaks who call soda pop just pop). We got really good at prrry…ing them…out. Our cuticles were permanently calloused and bloody, but we kept going back for more. The scars remain.

The biggest prize, however, was not a free bottle of soda. We were after the Bicentennial 7UP Uncle Sam cans. Remember that? It was a brilliant and wholly patriotic celebration of the USA’s 200^th birthday. Fifty individual state cans. 12-ounce steel-and-aluminum containers of caffeine-free, lemon-lime education emblazoned with the state name and year admitted to the Union, which number of the 50 states it was, its capital, and its nickname — with a brand-red silhouette upon a brand-green background and United We Stand on one side, and a random pattern of small 7UPs on the other. That side looked like a printing error. But together, all 50 cans, properly alphabetically stacked in the prescribed pyramid created a remarkable image of Uncle Sam. We were obsessed. When the stores within biking distance didn’t have the states we needed, we hit the junk yard bins.

“Look! I got Idaho!” Probably also got tetanus rifling around the rusted bins of broken glass and razor-sharp cans. No matter. Now we just needed Kentucky and Maine to finish that row!

It was a 3-dimensional, vertical puzzle that combined our shared nerd love of geography and of country. 7UP advertised collecting the cans as a way to, “Get into the spirit,” and an opportunity to “…satisfy your thirst for knowledge in a stately fashion.” So, “March down to your grocer where you’ll find plenty of the special 7UP Bicentennial cans. Then start a stack, and see why 7UP says, ‘United we stand.’”

Clever copywriting but more importantly, a sign of that time.

In 1976, everyone and everything was Red, White, and Blue. Every home and business flew the Stars and Stripes, Little Leaguers all had variations of the same special uniform. In school, every day still started with the Pledge of Allegiance. Under God. Lesson plans all focused on our two amazing American centuries. Actual, patriotic, objective American history, sins and all. Not the re-written propaganda versions so popular now. No one cared that the president was Republican Gerald Ford. So much so that in November of ’76, the grown-ups elected Democrat Jimmy Carter. You could say America was celebrating her birthday by being America. The word Bicentennial was printed and spoken more than you see and hear threat to democracy today. Imagine. Everyone — children, teens, young adults and on up to folks remaining from the Centennial celebration — was a flag-waving patriot, looking forward to July 4, 1976 as if it were their own birthday, Christmas, the World Series, and another Christmas all wrapped up into one.

Newsreaders read historical documents. Preachers preached our Judeo-Christian founding that our Founders found to be the source of our natural, inalienable rights. Teachers taught the same faith-based teachings and instilled organic, wide-eyed amazement and gratitude for the generations that fought and came before us, for us.

We didn’t need a war or a common enemy or some natural disaster to bring us together in button-popping patriotic pride. We all were just all in. And it was glorious.

As the Zen philosopher Chevy said, “We were all whistling Zippity Doo Dah out our…”

United we stood, indeed.

Yeah. Past tense.

The melting pot that America is set up to be was at a steady simmer in ‘76, operating as intended, where every citizen no matter where they were born, here or there or anywhere, was American first, hand-in-hand-in-hand identity. E Plurubus Unum. Flags were put up and lit up. Today, not so much. Today we have statues and monuments being defaced, Stars and Stripes being desecrated, and flags of the preferred nation or cause of the week being flown in well-financed, non-permitted, fully sanctioned, un-American tantrums. It sucks.

2026 should be 1976 2.0. But the usual suspects will not be allowed to be.

Thirty years prior to 1976, America had just led the way in ridding the world of actual fascism. Thirty years back from today was 1996. Think about that, how fast things have gone sideways and backwards and upside-down and inside-out. Our boys and men born in the Roaring ‘20s were butchered for the cause of keeping the freedom-loving world free — and they would never see the happy days of the 1950s. They were slaughtered overseas in the 1940s. They deserve our undivided attention today and always.

Today we have factions following idols, bathing in algorithms, honestly fearfully believing Americans have become the fascists, all while basking in the freedom won and protected for them by men they call evil for doing so. Terrible.

It would be amazing to see the same level of American spirit throughout 2026, but I have very little confidence in coexist when so many people exist to resist anything and everything ‘murican. And that’s a new phenomenon. In 1976, if you had issues with America, you weren’t violent. You weren’t subversive. If you weren’t down with the Bicentennial, you just quietly got stoned and didn’t celebrate.

So as the majority of us are celebrating the nation’s difficult-to-pronounce Semiquintennial / Sestercentennial / Bisesquicentennial throughout 2026 — let’s just go with America250 — we will endure countless new pointless No Kings protests by patchouli-bathed, mostly geriatric hippies re-living their 1960s glory days, mugging for media, puking talking points, and heading safely back at home to catch themselves on the 5 o’clock news. It’s inevitable. People are all lathered up and it’s their ironic right to protest. And they continue even though the two previous No Kings efforts clearly worked! Look…no king. Good job. It will also be interesting to see what is allowed to be celebrated in places like New York City where new leadership has expressed the same organized, contagious disdain.

I guarantee you, everyone, as I sit here clacking the keys recalling 1976 and anticipating 2026 that it is going to be, again, wonderful — if you want it to be. But there will be protests. There will be anger. Worst of all, there will be violence. The real kind. The innocent people get hurt and killed type of violence. Not the ridiculous and righteous silence is violence variety from ‘Nam that was dusted off and sloganeered in the Summer of Love. Resistance to America250 celebrations will be amplified far beyond its actual size and impact by the usual presstitutes. No one knows what the organized resistance has in store but whatever they devise, the nation has seen and endured more perilous fights over 250 years. Happy Birthday. To the Republic.

No one need give up their heartfelt convictions, but everyone should ask themselves — is acting on those convictions respectful of law and order and of others who may disagree with you, or are they based on emotion and rooted in media manipulation?

Ignore the media. Join the party. Get out and celebrate. Protest legally and respectfully if that’s your jam. Lobby. Vote. Be American. Re-set. We are not, never have been, and never will be perfect. But as fractured as we are now, we’re farther from that impossible goal than ever. Yeah, we have work to do. And a year-long party to attend. For America250, I’m Good Time Charlie. I choose baseball, hot dogs, apple pie, and Chevrolet. I’ll call balls and strikes honestly. See you at the parades. See you on the beach. Cold beer in the cooler, just ask. We can make a stack.

God Bless America.