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Hello and happy Independence Day! I was a toddler during the summer of 1976—old enough to remember the bicentennial happened but too young to remember more than scant details, like a festival in the small downtown area of my hometown.
Downtown Alliance, Ohio, was—and is today—a few blocks long. In the 1970s it was home to the local paper, a bank, a couple restaurants and bars, and—most important to me—my grandfather’s menswear shop. It occupied a narrow storefront, was crowded with suits and ties and shirts, and smelled overwhelmingly of coffee, as there was always a pot on in the upstairs office.
None of us knew it then—especially my toddler self—but Main Street was on its way to decline. Alliance was a steel town, and times were changing. Factories went idle, neighbors lost jobs. My grandfather would eventually move his business to a “better part of town.” The mid-1970s were not a great time for America—war fatigue, political scandals, oil crises, and inflation—and yet the bicentennial was a big deal, a recognition that America was special, or at least worth throwing a big party for.
