America Was Falling Apart. Patriots Celebrated Anyway.

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My memories of the summer of 1976 are those of an eight-year-old. Fifty years later, a few things might be hazy in my brain and in my soul, but, as a trained historian, I think I have a pretty good grasp of what happened then.

I do remember that there were plenty of things to be unpatriotic about. There was serious inflation (I even wrote a letter to President Gerald Ford complaining about this) and serious unemployment. We were also in the middle of an energy crisis, though the gas lines had subsided. Most importantly, though, we had been solidly defeated, politically, if not militarily, in Vietnam.  Some of my earliest political and world memories revolve around, first, Watergate, my mother, a Goldwater Republican, was deeply upset, and, second, by the evacuation of Saigon. Etched in my memory are the American helicopters fleeing the city as the VC and NVA closed in. Women were literally throwing their babies into the departing aircraft. To this day, I have nightmares about April 30, 1975. It was truly the very image of defeat and desperation. Had we ever looked so bad on the world stage? I’m not sure. That’s a lot for a seven-year old to process.

Though I had been born in Great Bend, Kansas, in 1967, we had moved to the extremely middle-class and comfortable town of Hutchinson, Kansas, in the summer of 1974. Hutch, as we all called it, was famous for two things. First, we had the world’s second longest grain elevator, at just over a half mile (featured in the famous movie, Picnic). The Soviets, damn them, had built one a few inches longer, just to spite us. Second, we had some of the largest salt mines in the world. If memory serves, there are bigger ones in Ontario, but the Hutch mines are huge.

What I remember most, though, is that we spent 1976 celebrating in the most beautiful ways. It was glorious. Indeed, my memories of the patriotism of that summer in Hutchinson are so strong that they almost wipe out the memories of Watergate and the Fall of Saigon. As I just mentioned, Hutch was a very comfortable and middle-class town. It was also deeply conservative and anti-Communist. While I have no doubt there were Democrats in town, most folks were Republicans or Libertarians.

I must also note that my town seemed to have been filled with World War II and Korean War veterans. My older brothers and I had a lawn mowing business, and it seemed that all of our clients had proudly served. Though the vets were modest about their service, we kids would beg the vets to show us their wounds from the war, and, the vets, somewhat surprisingly, complied. I remember, especially, Mr. Bruce Huey, who had taken machine gun fire all across his back. Of course, as a kid, I loved it. I also remember Mr. Reinhard, one of the most dignified men I ever knew, who had been stationed in Hiroshima after the dropping of the bomb. He fought cancer three times after, finally succumbing at age 94. It’s hard for us in 2026 to understand or envision, but almost every male community leader had served. They shaped our very neighborhoods and communities, and they did so with a calm and stoic dignity.

My memory is that we Kansans simply didn’t care if America was experiencing economic problems, corruption in Washington, D.C., or a failure abroad. What we cared about was that America had given us shelter to have a meaningful and true community. For all intents and purposes, that summer, Hutch was a little city-state, a proud member of the American republic. We wanted to celebrate that.

Three things stick out in my memory. First, we kids got to paint all of the town’s fire hydrants as our favorite patriots. I was already a huge fan of Ben Franklin, because of the book “Ben and Me”, but my older brother, Todd, and I decided to paint our local hydrant as Betsy Ross. For some reason, we chose to paint her in a yellow dress. I can see it so well in my mind’s eye.

Second, I remember our neighborhood, known in our town as “Countryside West”, had days and days of celebration. It was a little festival in our neighborhood, with neighbors dressed as patriots and as Uncle Sam. One neighbor, the father of a beloved friend, even walked around reciting the Declaration of Independence. So, we had hot dogs, fireworks, and spontaneous orations. If any of this sounds corny, we certainly didn’t think so. We were doing our best to thank those who had come before us, and we were dedicating ourselves to a future based on the principles of the Declaration. After all, what nation can claim its origin with these words: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” This wasn’t cheesy or corny. This was something that gave us immense pride, and we felt the need to express our deep patriotism.

Third, Hutch is the home of the Kansas State Fair. I’ll never forget the firework display that year. The town and the fair had always gone a bit overboard every Fourth of July, but this one was simply over the top. We took our blankets, lay down on the fair ground lawn, and listened to the loud speakers, blaring “Song for America” by our native sons, the band Kansas, and “Suite Madame Blue” by Styx. Interestingly enough, the Kansas song is somewhat anti-patriotic, but we didn’t know that at the time. We just knew it was about America, and we loved it.

As we approach America 250, I worry profoundly about the future of America. Neither major party is exactly in a leadership position, and we’re more polarized as an American people than we have ever been in our history, outside of 1861-1865. Our so-called political leaders can’t even regulate their own lives, and they’re certainly not models of moral clarity and integrity, and yet, when it comes to power, they’re each imperialist, greedy, and abusive. Truly, to look to the political realm is to be depressed. Then, add in the immense debt burden, and, perhaps even more tragically, the outrageous level of fraud, upwards of $500 billion a year by the government’s own accounting. Plus, with calls to pack the Supreme Court and undo the Electoral College, we should be immensely worried about the future of the republic.

And, yet. And, yet…“we hold these truths” is still the greatest sentence ever written, outside of Scripture. The American republic still exists after 250 years, surviving wars at home and abroad. I am reminded of the brilliant Anglo-Irish statesman, Edmund Burke, who told us: “We are therefore never authorized to abandon our country to its fate, or to act or advise as if it had no resource. There is no reason to apprehend, because ordinary means threaten to fail, that no others can spring up. Whilst our heart is whole, it will find means, or make them. The heart of the citizen is a perennial spring of energy to the state. Because the pulse seems to intermit, we must not presume that it will cease instantly to beat. The public must never be regarded as incurable.” (Emphasis added.)

Amen. And, happy 250th birthday, America. Maybe 1976 and Hutchinson, Kansas, still provide us with sound lessons for what to do, what to celebrate, and how to be unembarrassed patriots.

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Bradley J. Birzer is the Russell Amos Kirk chair in American studies and a professor of history at Hillsdale College. He is the author of 13 books, including his most recent book, “The Declaration of Independence: A Radical Experiment in Liberty.”