The United States of America is 250 years old! What an amazing milestone for this glorious country. For “We the People”¹the fireworks,² flyovers, picnics, barbeques and parades have come to an end although our memories will last a lifetime. Well, more than a lifetime really. In the age of digital records, generations will be able to enjoy photos and videos that capture our fellow citizens immersed in celebration of our 250th birthday. That’s pretty cool! Heck, my grandchildren will be able to watch me flip burgers and rotate hot dogs in my stars and stripes ensemble! I guess they might prefer watching videos of what will surely be ancient aircraft like the Air Force’s B-2 and B-1 bombers swooping out of the clouds surrounded by F-15s, F-16s, F-22s and F-35s.³ And let’s not forget the Navy’s premier flight exhibition team, the Blue Angels, tearing through the sky in their Boeing F/A-18 Super Hornets, or the Air Force demonstration team, The Thunderbirds, in their F-16C Fighting Falcons! Arkansans of the future might be particularly interested in the many videos of the Arkansas Air and Army National Guard’s C-130 Hercules⁴ planes and Black Hawk⁵ helicopters as they crisscrossed The Natural State in early July. That’s a lot to choose from! Good memories on all fronts. Who knows, by the time my grandchildren are looking at the “historical” records showing aircraft flyovers on July 4, 2026, they might be using a teleporter of sorts like those in “Star Trek.” “Beam me up Scotty! Energize!”⁶

Many of you sent me photos and videos of your local celebrations.⁷ Wow! Y’all threw some incredible birthday parties! Here are a few that sent me information or that I saw on social media:

Batesville held America’s 250 Block Party, and it was a major success! They had grills fired up, iced-down drinks, drawings for gifts and fire trucks for kids to clamor over! The animal shelter had kittens and pups ready for adoption. It was all topped off with a spectacular Celebrate America fireworks show!

Greenwood’s Freedom Fest is a decades-old Fourth of July party, but this year was beyond incredible in celebrating America’s 250th birthday. Or as 20-somethings say, the festival was bangin’, baller and totally LIT!

Celebrate America’s 250th was the theme for Springdale. That party featured several locales and numerous events including a pancake breakfast, bingo, a rodeo, a parade, a concert and The Field Fireworks Spectacular! As one League staffer often says, it was amazeballs!

The Mulberry Fire Department puts on a top-notch Fourth of July celebration, and this year’s Anniversary of Independence was over the top with water slides and bounce houses, arts, crafts, food vendors, a car show and a spectacular fireworks display! Added bonus: The fireworks show was super safe, but what else would you expect from a great fire department like the Mulberry F. D.!

Cave City is well known for its Watermelon Festival, but this year’s 21st annual Celebrate Freedom fireworks and festival were terrific! Even if you couldn’t make the show in person, the city livestreamed it with its weathercam. A true indoor/outdoor experience!

Not only did the city of Berryville celebrate America’s 250th with a fireworks display titled Fire on the Mountain, but the city is also celebrating its 150th year in existence! 250 and 150! Four hundred years of greatness!

As the title indicates, a 94-year birthday has also occurred, or it will have occurred by the time you read this. Mother Hayes turns 94 on July 16. I’ve written about her before, but suffice it to say she’s been the anchor of this family since Day One. My brother and I learned many good things from her including manners, kindness, compassion, hard work and patriotism to name but a few. She loves the USA ,and no matter how bleak things may periodically seem, she always sees the positive in each of us and in our country. That’s a lesson we all need right now. Let’s not forget the many travails she and others of her generation faced, yet they remained faithful to democracy and this republic. They doubled down with grit, tenacity and a can-do attitude. The rule was, get back up no matter how many times you get knocked down. In failure there are lessons for success. As she often tells me and I do the same with my kids: “Life isn’t fair. Get over it. Put a smile on your face and move to the next challenge. That’s the only way you’ll get ahead in this world.” She speaks from experience.

Mom was born in 1932 in Columbia, South Carolina, right smack in the midst of one of this country’s darkest hours. The Great Depression lasted a decade, from 1929 to 1939. It’s hard to believe, even after living through the COVID pandemic, that the Great Depression was as bad as it was. Here are few facts that I find startling. In 1932 unemployment reached 25.6% of American workers. In contrast, the unemployment rate in 2020 was 14.7%. Additionally, the entire stock market crashed. Not slumped but crashed. On Black Monday, October 28, 1929, the Dow Jones declined 13% in one day and that was only the beginning. By 1932, Mother Hayes’ birth year, public companies had lost 89% of their value! In 1930, severe drought hit the Midwest and the southern Great Plains. That drought caused massive dust storms in 1931 and, like the drought, those continued for many more years. By 1934 the results were more than devastating with approximately 35 million acres of farmland no longer sustainable and another 125 million acres rapidly losing topsoil. Astonishingly, topsoil from Texas was blown as far east as New York City and often coated ships in the Atlantic. Dust clouds often stayed for days, and the result was essentially like large snowstorms. Shovels were often needed to dig out the doorways and to make a path to the neighbor’s house.⁸

Life certainly isn’t fair nor is it for the faint of heart. As soon as the Dust Bowl wound down, World War II started. It remains the largest and deadliest war in human history. An estimated 60 to 80 million people died in that span of six years from 1939 to 1945. At home in South Carolina, as well as virtually every place in the United States, mom’s family dealt with the rationing of food, gas and clothing to name a few. During those years many Americans, including my grandfather, planted “victory gardens” to feed themselves and their families. Approximately 20 million gardens were in existence by the end of the war and, get this, those gardens accounted for nearly 40% of all vegetables consumed in the country! My mom remembers that garden and several others. She also recalls the various drives conducted for scrap metal, rubber, aluminum and other items used to produce weaponry. Her family, like many on or near the east or west coast, were fearful of an attack. In her case, news of German submarines, known as U-boats, spread like wildfire and heightened an already nervous community fearing an invasion. She recalls patriotism being at an all-time high. It was apparent in music, movies, parades and in everyday conversation.⁹

To speed this process along and to get to the point as I’m being instructed to do, here are a few additional things both my mother and father lived through:

The Korean War from 1950 to 1953. My dad was in the Army but didn’t go to Korea.
The Vietnam War, from the perspective that we as a country were directly involved, 1965 to 1973.
The 1970s energy crisis, including the 1972 gas shortage.¹⁰
The Watergate scandal, 1972 to 1974.
The AIDS crisis of the 1980s.
The Challenger disaster in 1986.
The upswing of terrorism in the 1980s including the bombing in Beirut and the explosion of Pan Am Flight 103.¹¹

Well, I think you get the idea. My parents lived through a great deal of hardship, but so have all of us. Let’s turn ourselves to the positive. In the 20th and 21st centuries we’ve seen and experienced things that have enhanced our lives in too many ways to fully list. Great discoveries like penicillin and the Dead Sea Scrolls to name but two. There is so much more, however, like the growth of commercial aviation, the establishment of civil rights laws, the internet, cell phones, flat screen TVs, rechargeable flashlights (and pretty much any other electronic device), digital everything, news anytime, laptops, tablets, air conditioning, dog parks, texting, social media, leaf blowers, Bluetooth speakers, electric vehicles and, as noted, this list could go on forever.

Guess what? Municipal government hasn’t been left out of the loop! The public safety world now has real-time intelligence centers, body-worn cameras, automatic license plate readers, drones, biosensor patches and vests, smart helmets, robots and virtual reality training. Public works, parks and other municipal services benefit from geographic information systems, Wi-Fi, virtual monitoring and tours, online registration, 3-D asphalt paving machines, AI, smart metering, smart sensors, cybersecurity measures, ultrasonic algae suppression, telematics and routing programs, backup cameras, automated compacting and hydraulic arms on garbage trucks, predictive analytics and…okay, I’ll stop. Again, I think you get the point.

That point being that in 250 years our country, our cities and towns and their residents have seen incredible changes. You, the municipal officials and employees of Arkansas’ cities and towns, do remarkable work often with little to no kudos. Yet, at the end of the day you know you’ve done your part to make your community a better place to live and work in. You’ve been doing that for as long as our country has had cities and towns and you’ll continue to do so for many decades in the future. As Mother Hayes notes, you may get knocked down occasionally, but you always get up. Always! Because when you do, cities and towns stay great and so does Arkansas! Happy Birthday, America, and you too, Mother Hayes!

Until next time, peace. mrh

1
The preamble to the Constitution of the United States reads in full: “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” Very powerful, and a perfect introduction to the Constitution as a whole. armuni.org/4fexWES ↩︎
2
According to the American Pyrotechnics Association (yes that actually exists), historians generally agree that fireworks were originally developed in the second century B.C. in Liuyang, China. The first such boom and sparks came from bamboo stalks being thrown into a fire and exploding. The explosion is caused from the hollow air pockets in bamboo overheating. Somewhere between 600-900 AD, it seems that a Chinese alchemist or two mixed some things together and created gunpowder. As you know, gunpowder is very explosive. See what I did there?! armuni.org/4bkUGSk ↩︎
3
In order, here are the names and a few comments regarding each aircraft. I note here that The Local Controller is not particularly happy with my decision to go forward with this trivial information! The Northrop B-2 Spirit is a stealth bomber, like most of my dad jokes. The Rockwell B-1 Lancer (not the wine our parents used to drink) is a supersonic variable sweep wing heavy bomber. The McDonnel Douglas (now part of Boeing) F-15 Eagle is a twin-engine all-weather fighter. The cool sounding and newest version is the F-15EX Eagle II! The General Dynamics (now Lockheed Martin) F-16 Fighting Falcon is a single seat and engine fighter. It is affectionally known by its pilots as Viper! L.C. says move along so here’s a two-fer. Lockheed Martin’s F-22 Raptor and F-35 Lightning II are supersonic stealth fighters and stand as the premier fighter aircraft in the U.S. military. ↩︎
4
Another Lockheed product that was first used by the military in 1957! Older than me! And just like that several staffers and L.C. chime in: Nothing’s older than you! ↩︎
5
A Sikorsky product that was introduced in 1979. Fun fact: The League’s very own Drew Webb used to fly Black Hawks while serving in the military. Swing by his office and you can take a peek at his helmet, a wooden model of the chopper and a large schematic poster of the machine. ↩︎
6
armuni.org/4bnqN3M ↩︎
7
I know, I know, I know, I didn’t include all our fantastic cities’ and towns’ Fourth of July celebrations, but the editors of City & Town, and my at-home editor, aka The Local Controller, have made it clear that I’ve already babbled on paper a tad too much for their liking. ↩︎
8
armuni.org/4f2pQ3j The Dust Bowl states: Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma ↩︎
9
Memories from Mother Hayes armuni.org/4fyhdh0 ↩︎
10
I was 12 and we didn’t go on a vacation that year! ↩︎
11
armuni.org/4fdKyvH ↩︎