Happy Fourth of July, the day we Americans set aside each summer to scare the bejeebers out of our house pets with explosives.
Also known as “Independents Day” — this was before there were Republicans and Democrats — or “The Original Brexit,” Americans have been celebrating the holiday for 243 years.
OK, so maybe there wasn’t much celebrating those first fours years since the Americans of that day spent most of that time slogging around barefoot in the snow trying not to get shot or hanged. Add to that, war fighting was very frustrating, given the primitive weaponry of the day. It was all “Stop or I’ll shoot! Eventually.”
But once the war ended, it was all “We beat the Russian hockey team” giddiness for the Americans while the Brits went back home and busied themselves with not making great advances in dentistry.
Every year, American columnists and pundits try to come up with new perspectives on this most American of holidays. Me? I prefer to let somebody else take a crack at it.
That’s why I tracked down a bloke by the name of Andrew Grandfield.
Grandfield is 58 years old and has lived in Starkville for the past nine years with his wife, Laura, and the youngest of their three sons, who is just home from National Guard deployment in the Middle East. Andrew is the Golden Triangle sales rep for Dallas Printing out of Jackson.
He is also a native of London, England, the son of a print shop owner. You can hardly get more British than that.
So, over lunch at the Veranda on Tuesday, I was eager to hear Andrew’s take on Independence Day.
I’ll give credit where it is due here: I did not sense even the residue of ancestral bitterness over his being on the losing side of one of the big upsets in war history.
Upset seems a mild description. At the time of the American Revolution, Britain was the world’s superpower. The sun never set on the British Empire, the saying went. Colonial America, meanwhile, was about as prepared for a war as I am for a Ninja Warrior competition.
But the British, despite having much cooler uniforms (they wore the Nike of the day) didn’t account for the home-field advantage, which in sports and sometimes in wars, can count for a lot, as we would find out for ourselves in Vietnam.
My plan was to penetrate Grandfield’s cordial veneer and expose the latent, yet still smoldering, resentment commonly associated with those who have suffered so great a loss. I wanted to lay bare the pitiful excuses and rationalizations often used to explain the loss: “We got caught looking ahead to the French. They’re our REAL rivals” or “It really came down to who had the better George” or, predictably, “Your side cheated, what with the incessant shooting from behind bushes and the like. Poor form!”
Yet in the face of this withering line of questioning, Grandfield remained suspiciously pleasant. He offered no excuse. Stiff upper lip, and all that, you know.
“We didn’t even study the American Revolution in school,” he said. “Of course, I don’t think kids today even know their own history, let alone British history.”
American kids can’t escape knowing about the Revolution, though.
In big cities and tiny hamlets, towns and villages, Americans spend the holiday in a red, white and blue orgy of barbecue smoke and Chinese fireworks — either watching staged fireworks shows or purchasing their own pyrotechnics on the side of the highway from a vendor who has set up shop under a tent — Gunpowder Gypsies, essentially. (Pro tip: The guy with only one hand and no eyebrows always sells the best stuff).
Brits, on the other hand, remain true to their understated nature, where this holiday is commonly known as “Thursday.”
Not Grandfield, though.
“I like the holiday,” he professed. “I like the day off, the food. We spent our first Fourth of July when we moved here on the beach in Florida. It was perfect.”
As we enjoyed lunch, I realized Grandfield has employed a common means of escaping the inherited humiliation of losing a war: He switched teams.
Grandfield met his wife in London — Laura was the teenage daughter of a Marine who was stationed there. By the time her folks were sent back stateside, settling in her father’s hometown of Starkville, Andrew and Laura had married and started their own family in London.
For 30 years, they made trips to the U.S. to visit Laura’s family and their two eldest sons, who had immigrated to the U.S. After selling the print shop he inherited from his father, Andrew and Laura moved to Starkville in 2010.
Four years later, Andrew became a U.S. citizen, although he still swears unwavering allegiance to the British Pubs he misses and, of course, English soccer, the outcome of Tuesday’s Women’s World Cup semifinal not withstanding. The USA beat England, 2-1 in that one.
Apart from that, Starkville and the U.S. feel very much like home.
“Really, I can’t say I’ve missed London much at all,” he said. “My wife missed it far more than I did, especially that first year.”
While Brits can be a bit stand-offish, Andrew found the people in the U.S., and in Mississippi in particular, to be warm, inviting and helpful. He loves the vastness of the country and the natural beauty he has seen in Mississippi and on vacation trips to California, New Mexico, Arizona and Florida.
“I could never have imagined this life,” he said.
He rightly considers himself a citizen of both nations, kind of like being the kid of a bitter divorce long since resolved, I suppose.
“I do get a bit of ribbing around July the 4th,” he admitted. “Aside from that, the subject rarely comes up. The Royal Family, now that’s a different story. That’s what everyone seems to want to ask about.”
God save the Queen, Andrew.
And Happy Fourth of July, if you don’t mind me saying so.
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
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