The Fourth of July Cookout
As with many holidays, the 4th of July celebration includes food, drink and the realization of how fortunate we are as a nation.

More than 66 million
Number of Americans who said they have taken part in a barbecue during the previous year. It's probably safe to assume a large number of these events took place on the Fourth.
http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/2003/cb03-32.html

Although we do not have a fixed menu for the celebration of the Fourth, you can almost count on traditional favorites such as hamburgers and hot dogs, chicken, ribs, garden salads, potato salad, chips and watermelon. Following is a summary of where these foods come from:
    * There's a 1-in-6 chance the beef on your backyard grill came from Texas. The Lone Star State was the leader in the production of cattle and calves, accounting for 7.2 billion pounds of the nation's total production of 42.2 billion pounds last year.
    * There's a 1-in-4 chance your hot dogs and ribs originated in Iowa. The Hawkeye State had a total inventory of 14.9 million hogs and pigs as of March 1, 2003 — about one-fourth of the nation's total.
    * The chicken on your barbecue grill probably came from one of the top broiler-producing states: Georgia, Arkansas, Alabama, North Carolina and Mississippi. The value of production in each of these states exceeded $1 billion in 2002. These states combined for well over half of the nation's broiler production.
    * The lettuce in your salad or on your hamburger probably was grown in California, which accounted for nearly three-quarters of lettuce production in 2002.
    * The fresh tomatoes in your salad most likely came from Florida or California, which, combined, produced more than two-thirds of U.S. tomatoes in 2002. The ketchup on your hamburger or hot dog probably came from California, which accounted for 95 percent of processed tomato production last year.
    * There's a 1-in-3 chance the beans in your side dish of baked beans or pork and beans came from North Dakota, which produced more than one-third of the dry, edible beans in 2002.
    * As to potato salad or potato chips or fries, Idaho and Washington produced about one-half of the nation's spuds in 2002.
    * For dessert, six states — California, Florida, Texas, Georgia, Arizona and Indiana — combined to produce about 80 percent of watermelons last year. http://www.usda.gov/nass/ 

Fireworks & Fourth of July Events
$128.8 million
The value of fireworks imported from China, representing the bulk of all U.S. fireworks imports ($135.6 million) in 2002. U.S. exports of fireworks, by comparison, amounted to $13.5 million, with Germany purchasing more than any other single country ($5.0 million). http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/www/

Imports of U.S. Flags
$7.9 million
The dollar value of U.S. imports of American flags in 2002; more than half of this amount ($5.2 million) was for U.S. flags made in China. This was down from the 2001 dollar value of U.S. flag imports ($51.7 million), but still considerably higher than the total for 2000 ($747,800). That was the last full year prior to Sept. 11. 
$646,452
Dollar value of exports of U.S. flags in 2002. Japan was the leading customer, purchasing $86,189 worth. 
125,000
Number of U.S. flags flown over the U.S. Capitol last year at the request of House and Senate members. On July 4 alone, 1,200 were flown at our nation's capitol. (From the U.S. Capitol Flag Room.)
$272 million
Annual dollar value of shipments of fabricated flags, banners and similar emblems by the nation's manufacturers, according to the latest economic census (1997) for which there is published data. http://www.census.gov/prod/ec97/97m3149e.pdf

Coming to America
32.5 million
The number of foreign-born residents in the United States in 2002; they accounted for 11.5 percent of the nation's total population. http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/2003/cb03-42.html
    * More than 1-in-3 foreign-born residents were naturalized U.S. citizens.
    * Six states had estimated foreign-born populations of 1 million or more: California (8.8 million), New York (3.6 million), Florida (2.8 million), Texas (2.4 million), New Jersey (1.2 million) and Illinois (1.2 million). 
    * Among the foreign-born population, 52 percent were born in Latin America, 26 percent in Asia, 14 percent in Europe and the remaining 8 percent in other regions of the world, such as Africa and Oceania. 

Food poisoning is one good reason.  After a few hours in the sun, ordinary potato salad can develop bacteria the size of raccoons.  But don't let the threat of agonizingly painful death prevent you from celebrating the birth of our nation, just as Americans have been doing ever since that historic first July Fourth when our Founding Fathers --
George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Bob Dole and Tony Bennett -- landed on Plymouth Rock.

Step one in planning your picnic is to decide on a menu.  Martha Stewart has loads of innovative suggestions for unique, imaginative and tasty summer meals.  So you can forget about her.  "If Martha Stewart comes anywhere near my picnic, she's risking a barbecue fork to the eyeball"
should be your patriotic motto.  Because you're having a traditional Fourth of July picnic, and that means a menu of hot dogs charred into cylinders of industrial-grade carbon, and hamburgers so undercooked that when people try to eat them, they leap off the plate and frolic on the lawn like otters.

Dad should be in charge of the cooking, because only Dad, being a male of the masculine gender, has the mechanical "know-how" to operate a piece of technology as complex as a barbecue grill.  To be truly traditional, the grill should be constructed of the following materials:

-- 4 percent "rust-resistant" steel;
-- 58 percent rust;
-- 23 percent hardened black grill scunge from food cooked as far back as 1987 (the scunge should never be scraped off, because it is what is actually holding the grill together);
-- 15 percent spiders.

If the grill uses charcoal as a fuel, Dad should remember to start lighting the fire early (no later than April 10) because charcoal, in accordance with federal safety regulations, is a mineral that does not burn.  The spiders get a huge kick out of watching Dad attempt to ignite it; they emit hearty spider chuckles and slap themselves on all eight knees.  This is why many dads prefer the modern gas grill, which ignites at the press of a button and burns with a steady, even flame until you put food on it, at which time it runs out of gas.

While Dad is saying traditional bad words to the barbecue grill, Mom can organize the kids for a fun activity: making old-fashioned ice cream by hand, the way our grandparents' generation did.  You'll need a hand-cranked ice-cream maker, which you can pick up at any antique store for $1,875.  All you do is put in the ingredients, and start cranking!
It makes no difference what specific ingredients you put in, because --
I speak from bitter experience here -- no matter how long you crank them, they will never, ever turn into ice cream.  Scientists laugh at the very concept.  "Ice cream is not formed by cranking," they point out.  "Ice cream is formed by freezers." Our grandparents' generation wasted millions of man-hours trying to produce ice cream by hand; this is what caused the Great Depression.

When the kids get tired of trying to make ice cream (allow about 25 seconds for this) it's time to play some traditional July Fourth games.
One of the most popular is the "sack race." All you need is a bunch of old-fashioned burlap sacks, which you can obtain from the J.  Peterman catalog for $227.50 apiece.  Call the kids outside, have them line up on the lawn and give each one a sack to climb into; then shout "GO!" and watch the hilarious antics begin as, one by one, the kids sneak back indoors and resume trying to locate pornography on the Internet.

Come nightfall, though, everybody will be drawn back outside by the sound of loud, traditional Fourth of July explosions coming from all around the neighborhood.  These are caused by the fact that various dads, after consuming a number of traditionally fermented beverages, have given up on conventional charcoal-lighting products and escalated to gasoline.  As the spectacular pyrotechnic show lights up the night sky, you begin to truly appreciate the patriotic meaning of the words to The Star-Spangled Banner, written by Francis Scott Key to commemorate the fledgling nation's first barbecue:

And the grill parts' red glare; Flaming spiders in air; Someone call 911; There's burning scunge in Dad's hair After the traditional visit to the hospital emergency room, it's time to gather 'round and watch Uncle Bill set off the fireworks that he purchased from a roadside stand operated by people who spend way more on tattoos than dental hygiene.  As Uncle Bill lights the firework fuse and scurries away, everybody is on pins and needles until, suddenly and dramatically, the fuse goes out.  So Uncle Bill re-lights the fuse and scurries away again, and the fuse goes out again, and so on, with Uncle Bill scurrying back and forth with his Bic lighter like a deranged Olympic torchbearer until, finally, the fuse burns all the way down, and the firework, emitting a smoke puff the size of a grapefruit, makes a noise -- "phut" -- like a squirrel passing gas.  Wow!  What a fitting climax for your traditional old-fashioned July Fourth picnic!

Next year you'll go out for Chinese food.

HONESTY   My son Zachary, 4, came screaming out of the bathroom to tell me he'd dropped his toothbrush in the toilet. So I fished it out and threw it in the garbage. Zachary stood there thinking for a moment, then ran to my bathroom and came out with my toothbrush. He held it up and said with a charming little smile, "We better throw this one out too then, 'cause it fell in the toilet a few days ago.

OPINIONS   On the first day of school, a first-grader handed his teacher a Note from his mother. The note read, "The opinions expressed by this child are not necessarily those of his parents."

KETCHUP   A woman was trying hard to get the ketchup to come out of the jar. During her struggle the phone rang so she asked her 4-year-old daughter to answer the phone. "It's the minister, Mommy," the child said to her mother. Then she added, "Mommy can't come to the phone to talk to you right now. She's hitting the bottle."

ELDERLY   While working for an organization that delivers lunches to elderly shut-ins, I used to take my 4- year-old daughter on my afternoon rounds. The various appliances of old age, particularly the canes, walkers and wheelchairs, unfailingly intrigued her. One day I found her staring at a pair of false teeth soaking in a glass. As I braced myself for the inevitable barrage of questions, she merely turned and whispered, "The tooth fairy will never believe this!"

DRESS-UP   A little girl was watching her parents dress for a party. When she saw her dad donning his tuxedo, she warned, "Daddy, you shouldn't wear that suit." "And why not, darling?" "You know that it always gives you a headache the next morning."

DEATH   While walking along the sidewalk in front of his church, our minister heard the intoning of a prayer that nearly made his collar wilt. Apparently, his 5-year-old son and his playmates had found a dead robin. Feeling that proper burial should be performed, they had secured a small box and cotton batting, then dug a hole and made ready for the disposal of the deceased. The minister's son was chosen to say the appropriate prayer and with sonorous dignity intoned his version of what he thought his Father always said: "Glory be unto the Faaaather, and unto the Sonnn .. and into the hole he gooooes."

SCHOOL   A little girl had just finished her first week of school. "I'm just wasting my time," she said to her mother. "I can't read, I can't write and they won't let me talk!"

BIBLE   A little boy opened the big family bible. He was fascinated as he fingered through the old pages. Suddenly, something fell out of the Bible. He picked up the object and looked at it. What he saw was an old leaf that had been pressed in between the pages. "Mama, look what I found", the boy called out." What have you got there, dear?" With astonishment in the young boy's voice, he answered, "I think it's Adam's underwear!"

My Favorite of the bunch:
MORE NUDITY   A little boy got lost at the YMCA and found himself in the women's locker room... When he was spotted, the room burst into shrieks, with ladies grabbing towels and running for cover. The little boy watched in amazement and then asked, "What's the matter, haven't you ever seen a little boy before?"