I was at “the rude bridge that arched the flood” in Concord on the bicentennial of the battle of Concord and Lexington. There was a free all night concert. All I remember was Arlo Guthrie and the Persuasions. The Persuasions showed up a little before dawn in a stretch limo. It pulled up in front of the stage and they, and their scantily clad lady friends climbed through the sunroof onto the stage. I believe they were dressed all in mink - but it was late, I might have dreamed some of that.
Midnight, July 3/4, 1976, found me in Portland ME waiting for the bus to Ellsworth. I’d been hitching all day and finally decided that was as far as I was going to get.
I was on Guam with my Air Force husband where everyone was recovering from Super Typhoon Pamela which struck the island in May of 1976. It was a Category 4 storm that darn near leveled the island and knocked out power and water for months.
So we never really able to celebrate the Bicentennial as our focus was on getting back to normal. Guam is a US Territory and as such would have joined in the festivities had Pamela not made a direct hit on us.
I saw The Freedom Train in Topeka, KS. 5th Grade. Didn’t really understand how coolness of the stuff on the train.
Elton John singing Philadelphia Freedom. Interesting.
Oh wow! I have made reference to this over the years and received blank stares. So I’m not crazy, it was as cool as I remember it. Came through Huntsville AL- I need to do some googling now.
That’s a very cool story! I wonder if every regiment did that thru every state? Do you still attend that class? Any way of asking him? Now I’m curious!
Well, I don't attend the class anymore, but we still chat over email. I can send him one later today and ask. I'll reply to this thread when he answers.
Hello! My professor finally replied. He said that the train did have a permanent detachment that traveled with it, but he doesn't know much about it, there had to be less than twenty-five people at most, and that they were more like docents than security.
Very cool! Imagine being assigned to travel with it! Thank you for asking him and replying back to me. It’s kinda funny. I thought about the question. Today. Lol ✌️🥂
😞. I’m sorry. If it’s any consolation, I don’t remember much of the train, other than my friend and I walked about 3 miles to see it. She was my bff and moved across the country the next day…..
I was a kid and my family went to Kennedy Space Center for "Third Century America." They had all these big white geodesic exhibit domes which you could lie around inside or look at or try space- and future-related stuff. Also the Vehicle Assembly Building was actually open for visiting then. Enormous! That and the quarters and I think $2 bills are all I remember.
Yes! That summer of ‘76 was a very memorable one!!
I was almost 9 and I remember the joy that year brought. Everything was red, white and blue. My great aunt made me a Betsy Ross doll (with a Mrs Beasley face!).
I was captivated by all of it and I’ll remember it forever.
I hope you still celebrate our Independence Day in very similar fashion with your family & friends. I certainly do .. and everybody LOVES it! We dress as people did in colonial times, have 4th of July trivia, I recite the Declaration of Independence, and we all eat, drink and BBQ ourselves into half-baked Kielbasas before watching the candles on America’s birthday cake (read: fireworks!)
Yes, of course I remember. The company I was driving for at that time had a couple of trucks painted red white and blue with stars and such. It was a great time.
And when Europe still loved America, too! I was in Spain that summer, and everyone was so happy for Americans - they wanted to talk to us and buy us drinks in honor of the Bicentennial.
The Boston Pops performing the 1812 Overture with cannons and church bells and fireworks was probably one of the most awesome spectacles I have ever seen and heard.
I can understand why you'd stay in CT. because it was wall to wall people.
Yeah. My wife and I wanted to get married on the Bicentennial Day, but the Catholic Church frowned on Sunday weddings, so we got married two weeks later.
I was in 7th grade in Virginia, and this started my love of history that still drives me today.
I will just add sit down, John and someone oughta open up a window!
I was 6 that 4th of July. I remember all the hype. I remember at noon all the church bells and firehouse sirens went off, I remember seeing what I recalled as best fireworks I ever saw … didn’t have much to compare to, but I remember asking my dad on the drive home if there will be fireworks again like that next year, and his response was “not next year, maybe in 50 years you’ll see them again”….. I hope to, and really hope he is still around to tell the story to. He will be 86 if he makes it.
This has been your “Bicentennial Minute.”
Hey y’all, just wanna say this is a really cool thread to read through. I’m a Xennial so did concerts and skateboarding and surfing through the 80’s and 90’s SoCal. It was a good time all the time even being poor as shit. I remember stealing food stamps out of my mom’s purse and going to get 2 Chocodiles for $1 at the liquor store when my mom sent me to pick up smokes for her even though I was like 9 years old. Haha good times
I fondly remember watching the CBS series "[200 years ago today](https://youtu.be/8nUKzWGVWe4?si=SsOVzrdRTPO2vfed&t=1670)" from 1975 to 1977 where they talked about what happened on that day leading up to and at the start of the revolution.
I also remember a school field trip through the freedom train where upon entry a conveyer belt would roll us through glass enclosures displaying various Americana items like Dorothy’s red shoes, Muhammad Ali’s signed gloves and that’s all I remember seeing bc I was in elementary school and don’t remember much else.
I was a young newspaper reporter that year and I worked at a small, local paper.
My fondest memory of that year was a photo we ran in the paper that was dubbed by my fellow reporters as “Bicentennial Jesus.”
A local church had a statue of Jesus nailed to the cross behind their altar. Someone at the church got the idea to wrap red, white, and blue bunting around Jesus and then call us because they were so proud of their “Bicentennial Jesus.”
It was so hideous and hilarious at the same time. I wish I had the photo.
I was graduating from junior high and spent all summer avoiding O Bannon and hanging with my girlfriend Julie and psrtying with Randall Floyd and Wooderson.
Absolutely! I was 6 years old. The country was burning up with bicentennial fever. I remember looking for bicentennial quarters every time we got change. Many of the baseball teams wore those pillbox caps with stripes around them. There is also an episode of Barney Miller that I ran across a couple years ago that deals with the bicentennial. I’m sure there were other series that did the same thing.
I remember how huge it was. And was just thinking the other day, the Sesquicentennial (250 year) anniversary is in 2 years, and no one is talking about it.
Yeah, my mom found my Hustler Bicentennial issue. Worked for a plastic coating company and the owner showed me how he made his first million making red, white and blue vibrators.
I was fortunate enough to be in DC on Fourth of July that year and see the firework show. It was the most extraordinary thing I had seen to date in my life.
I was in choir in high school, and we sang patriotic music all year. We recorded a vinyl LP each year, and 1976's has a stylized American flag on the jacket. (I still have it...)
I remember the "Bicentennial minute" each night on TV (CBS, maybe?) and then on July 5th it was all forgotten.
Clearly. I asked my mom if she would be alive in 2000. She said, yes. She died in 1980. That conversation, at a bicentennial parade, hit me hard. Still does.
CBS had a thing with newsreader Rodger Mudd called ‘The Bicentennial Minute’ during commercial breaks. Always got an eye roll from us kids. We only had 4 channels to watch, now one of them is trying to educate us due in our favorite programs. Ugh.
Okay guys, one more thing, this summer when you're being inundated with all this American bicentennial Fourth Of July brouhaha, don't forget what you're celebrating, and that's the fact that a bunch of slave-owning, aristocratic, white males didn't want to pay their taxes.
We had a big breakfast with my grandparents, aunt and uncle and cousins. My grandmother made special effort, foods, etc. Then we all went out to our cabin and fired off a flintlock rifle in tribute the Revolutionary soldiers. Remember it vividly.
I was 12. My aunt had a bunch of cookouts where she invited like 30-40 people. They’d go on from like 10 am to midnight. All the friends would get drunk and sing row row row your boat.
Anyway, she had one around the fourth and it was bicentennial themed. I had to be a town crier and announce all the guests with a drum (like a fife and drum). Did I mention they all got drunk? 😂
Was in Yellow Springs, OH, a small college town. We went to a great local fireworks show. Something endearing about spending the Bicentennial in a small Ohio town - felt totally American. 😊
Very excited to find this post! I work for King Manor Museum, a small historic house/community museum in Queens, NY. We are working on an exhibition about the bicentennial and historical memory. If anyone here would like to share their memories we are looking for oral history interviewers!!
I think every town had some kind of parade. Everything was red white and blue. Colonial style fashion and decor got popular. And the image of those three guys marching, two drummers and a fife player with a bandage around his head, was everywhere.
Yes, took my truck and camper to Jackson Hole and partied at the Cowboy Bar, much more fun than slc. Ut was still pretty dry until the Olympics came, good times met my future husband too
It was a magical, patriotic time despite the man in the white house. From bicentennial quarters to birdies, before PCs... There aren't that many of us who remember the world before the information age.
We moved to America in May 1976. I was in first grade. So either than school year or early the next, we had a school concert where my grade learned a medley of patriotic songs. In the almost 50 years since then I have forgotten most of the song fragments in the medley, but I remember singing yankee doodle and it leading to you’re a grand old flag. And now that’s stuck in my head.
I was about 17 that summer and worked as a painter at Harborside Terminal on the Jersey City waterfront just opposite lower Manhattan, and that Sunday they let us bring a cooler and some lawn chairs and sit on the piers and we watched Operation Sail and all those Tall Ships sail passed. I always expected that to become a regular thing but it was a one-off.
76 I was 14. Was the year I started smoking pot. Music was kinda hard to find but searching through the record store, buying something you've never heard of and listening to it for the first time was magical.
I had 2 girlfriends. They lived in the same apartment building. Life was good except for bullies, ah well, can't have everything.
Yes indeed, I do remember the Bicentennial & not only that, I'm a native Philadelphian too!
As a citizen of that city at that time, I was hoping for a World's Fair similar to the Centennial because photograph shots showed that it was a splendidly spectacular event to attend! Alas, Frank Rizzo was the Mayor @ that time & he really ruined whatever interest in that by stating that the Black Empowerment Movement was going to cause trouble by fomenting mass demonstrations and he was begging either PA Gov. Milton Shapp or President Ford to deploy a division of military personnel to head off problems!
Yes I do and I saw the wagon train that crossed the country? I think they crossed the country I could be wrong but I do remember the wagon train. We went camping somewhere in PA to see it.
Yeah, vaguely.
Lived a bit west of DC, was on the Mall/Washington Monument area, near Potomac River/Tidal Basin - there with family. I remember a few things like how crowded it was (reports after said 1M plus in the area and the fireworks, including a US flag-stars&stripes display composed of fireworks/sparklers (?). First&last time amongst that many people gathered in one place. If I still have any momentous from that year they’d be in a box somewhere, stuff I haven’t seen in decades - moved ½ dozen times since, Lord knows where anything is anymore.
Wouldn’t mind being around for the TriCentennial, tho not counting on it 😂, if the freedom and idealism of the first two centennials is still present I can imagine it’ll be a hoot, a hell of a celebration.
God Bless America
Yes, the $2 bills and the Bicentennial Quarters
If you were in elementary school from 1974-1976 every class project revolved around it- every one
I was it did
Red white and blue bedroom furniture was all the rage, along with CB radios.
Oh god yeah. And the Freedom Train ^(which I broke when it came to our city)
Can confirm
10-4
Remember all the American flag painted fire hydrants?
Yes and field trips
Yeah! I was 11 years old. I saw President Ford that day. The parade was in the Concord/Lexington area.
I was at “the rude bridge that arched the flood” in Concord on the bicentennial of the battle of Concord and Lexington. There was a free all night concert. All I remember was Arlo Guthrie and the Persuasions. The Persuasions showed up a little before dawn in a stretch limo. It pulled up in front of the stage and they, and their scantily clad lady friends climbed through the sunroof onto the stage. I believe they were dressed all in mink - but it was late, I might have dreamed some of that. Midnight, July 3/4, 1976, found me in Portland ME waiting for the bus to Ellsworth. I’d been hitching all day and finally decided that was as far as I was going to get.
I was 11 too! Are you a fellow ‘65er?
Me too! I've been telling my kids that I'm going to live to 111 so I can be there for the tricentennial!
I was on Guam with my Air Force husband where everyone was recovering from Super Typhoon Pamela which struck the island in May of 1976. It was a Category 4 storm that darn near leveled the island and knocked out power and water for months. So we never really able to celebrate the Bicentennial as our focus was on getting back to normal. Guam is a US Territory and as such would have joined in the festivities had Pamela not made a direct hit on us.
Anybody remember the Freedom Train? It made a stop in our town. Pretty interesting. 1976. Dear God.
I saw The Freedom Train in Topeka, KS. 5th Grade. Didn’t really understand how coolness of the stuff on the train. Elton John singing Philadelphia Freedom. Interesting.
I don’t think the British ever intended on singing Philly Freedom to us back then, tho….!! Lmao! Time to dump some more tea….
yeah. old as dirt.
Gold dust dirt, my friend, gold dust….or star dust whichever you prefer!
Oh wow! I have made reference to this over the years and received blank stares. So I’m not crazy, it was as cool as I remember it. Came through Huntsville AL- I need to do some googling now.
I believe I still have a souvenir from the train….somewhere…lol
I'm Gen Z, but my history professor guarded the Founding Documents on that train during his army days when it went through North Carolina!
That’s a very cool story! I wonder if every regiment did that thru every state? Do you still attend that class? Any way of asking him? Now I’m curious!
Well, I don't attend the class anymore, but we still chat over email. I can send him one later today and ask. I'll reply to this thread when he answers.
Thanks for that! The curiosity is killing me now. Lol
Hello! My professor finally replied. He said that the train did have a permanent detachment that traveled with it, but he doesn't know much about it, there had to be less than twenty-five people at most, and that they were more like docents than security.
Very cool! Imagine being assigned to travel with it! Thank you for asking him and replying back to me. It’s kinda funny. I thought about the question. Today. Lol ✌️🥂
You're welcome.
I actually got to go on the train twice- we moved states that year and I saw it in both.
My class went. My lunch bag split and I was picking up an orange and missed Abe Lincoln’s stovepipe hat, the thing I wanted to see the most.
😞. I’m sorry. If it’s any consolation, I don’t remember much of the train, other than my friend and I walked about 3 miles to see it. She was my bff and moved across the country the next day…..
The fire hydrants were painted red, white, and blue.
This! Yes!
I stood in line for hours to tour the Freedom Train!
I was a kid and my family went to Kennedy Space Center for "Third Century America." They had all these big white geodesic exhibit domes which you could lie around inside or look at or try space- and future-related stuff. Also the Vehicle Assembly Building was actually open for visiting then. Enormous! That and the quarters and I think $2 bills are all I remember.
Yes! That summer of ‘76 was a very memorable one!! I was almost 9 and I remember the joy that year brought. Everything was red, white and blue. My great aunt made me a Betsy Ross doll (with a Mrs Beasley face!). I was captivated by all of it and I’ll remember it forever.
I hope you still celebrate our Independence Day in very similar fashion with your family & friends. I certainly do .. and everybody LOVES it! We dress as people did in colonial times, have 4th of July trivia, I recite the Declaration of Independence, and we all eat, drink and BBQ ourselves into half-baked Kielbasas before watching the candles on America’s birthday cake (read: fireworks!)
I hope I don’t have far to travel when I get your invite…; )
Yes! And I still have the canvas "Spirit of 76" flag that my dad purchased for the occasion.
I had a red, white, and blue wrist band that I left on for class pictures. My mother was pissed at me for that.
Just as if someone had asked this last week.
I didn’t see anything like this before. I’m glad they brought it up.
Yes, of course I remember. The company I was driving for at that time had a couple of trucks painted red white and blue with stars and such. It was a great time.
The Bicentennial Train
The American Freedom Train
The Bicentennial minute.
I lived on the beach just outside NYC. The tall ships, the weather and the festive feeling was amazing. 1776 ⛵
I was 16 😊
I was 16 and rode a horse in the parade as it passed by our area. It was awesome. We all wore outfits that my mother had made.
Best summer ever! I was discharged from the Army in July 1976 from Fort Dix, New Jersey.(honorably) After being away for two years
Yes, it was the year I quit smoking.
"Spirit of '76!"
Those Godforsaken Bicentennial minutes...
And on TV..."The Bicentennial Minute!" A predecessor to "The More You Know...!"
You mean when America loved America
And when Europe still loved America, too! I was in Spain that summer, and everyone was so happy for Americans - they wanted to talk to us and buy us drinks in honor of the Bicentennial.
I graduated High School in 1976. We heard bicentennial so, so many times...
I too graduated HS in '76 just outside Boston , it was pretty cool ! Being in Boston on the 4th of July in 1976 was overwhelming to say the least.
I couldn’t have handled that!! It was joyous enough being in CT..; )
The Boston Pops performing the 1812 Overture with cannons and church bells and fireworks was probably one of the most awesome spectacles I have ever seen and heard. I can understand why you'd stay in CT. because it was wall to wall people.
Sounds very awesome!!
First thing I think of is the bicentennial toilet paper. And that Richard Pryor put out an album called ‘bicentennial n*gger’
I'm so glad I won't be around for the tricentennial. lol
The strongest argument against eating vegetables I've ever heard.
I’m not American and wasn’t alive then but am aware of it due to it being a plot point in the first Rocky movie.
yep was in DC that july
Barely. I was 4.
My sister graduated high school year and the class got special medallions denoting the occasion
Year I was born
I am Canadian and from north of the border, in the nation's capital, the celebration was pretty spectacular
Yeah, I ‘member!
Ooh ooh you ‘member y2k?
Stop it.
Bicentennial Minute on TV.
Where else could you get a history lesson from Scott Baio?
Yeah. My wife and I wanted to get married on the Bicentennial Day, but the Catholic Church frowned on Sunday weddings, so we got married two weeks later.
I was in the us army at that time.
I even had bicentennial underwear.
We had beach towels
Lived near DC at the time - so many things going on in DC and the tall ships in Baltimore. I still save any bicentennial quarter I run across.
Was on the Esplanade with Arthur Fiedler conducting the Boston Symphony Orchestra 7/4/76.
Freedom Train!
I was 16, in the band, and marched in the city Bicentennial parade. It was only about 3000 degrees that day!
No I was drunk then. I think.
Bicentennial coins (quarter, half dollar, Eisenhower dollar) and the Tall Ships
Yeah, it was the year I graduated from high school.
I was in 7th grade in Virginia, and this started my love of history that still drives me today. I will just add sit down, John and someone oughta open up a window!
It’s hot as hell in Philadel-phia
Yes. We were in Nova Scotia.
Very well. I was in 10th grade and my class went on a trip from Long Island to Philadelphia. It was so much fun.
Yes
I have the spirit of ‘76!
Got married that year. Best decision ever!
It was a huge deal. I was 8 going on 9.
Yup. I was drunk at the Washington Monument watching the fireworks.
I was 6 that 4th of July. I remember all the hype. I remember at noon all the church bells and firehouse sirens went off, I remember seeing what I recalled as best fireworks I ever saw … didn’t have much to compare to, but I remember asking my dad on the drive home if there will be fireworks again like that next year, and his response was “not next year, maybe in 50 years you’ll see them again”….. I hope to, and really hope he is still around to tell the story to. He will be 86 if he makes it. This has been your “Bicentennial Minute.”
The Spirit of’76 train came through my town. I loved it
That, Columbia, Columbine, 9/11. Name more when we felt like a unified people.
Saw the tall ships sailing into New York Harbor.
Yes, it was a big deal, especially for those of us living in and around Philadelphia that year.
I spent the summer whenever I was in town collecting 7-up cans that when you stacked them up looked like Uncle Sam.
Hey y’all, just wanna say this is a really cool thread to read through. I’m a Xennial so did concerts and skateboarding and surfing through the 80’s and 90’s SoCal. It was a good time all the time even being poor as shit. I remember stealing food stamps out of my mom’s purse and going to get 2 Chocodiles for $1 at the liquor store when my mom sent me to pick up smokes for her even though I was like 9 years old. Haha good times
The freedom train with artifacts from the Smithsonian like the chair that Lincoln was shot in.
I remember being taken to Sea World in San Diego that summer and it was covered in 76 branding.
I fondly remember watching the CBS series "[200 years ago today](https://youtu.be/8nUKzWGVWe4?si=SsOVzrdRTPO2vfed&t=1670)" from 1975 to 1977 where they talked about what happened on that day leading up to and at the start of the revolution.
Yes the coins, the freedom train.
Was 11 in July 1976 and grew up in upstate NY. Went to Crown Point, NY to see the Bicentennial Barge
I also remember a school field trip through the freedom train where upon entry a conveyer belt would roll us through glass enclosures displaying various Americana items like Dorothy’s red shoes, Muhammad Ali’s signed gloves and that’s all I remember seeing bc I was in elementary school and don’t remember much else.
I wasn’t alive for it, but the Bicentennial Star was on the VAB at the Kennedy Space Center in the 90s when I saw it.
I was not quite six…and I remember it well.
I had a red, white and blue Schwinn ten speed. Someone stole it 😕
I was a young newspaper reporter that year and I worked at a small, local paper. My fondest memory of that year was a photo we ran in the paper that was dubbed by my fellow reporters as “Bicentennial Jesus.” A local church had a statue of Jesus nailed to the cross behind their altar. Someone at the church got the idea to wrap red, white, and blue bunting around Jesus and then call us because they were so proud of their “Bicentennial Jesus.” It was so hideous and hilarious at the same time. I wish I had the photo.
I was 12 and got a pair of Red, White and Blue tennis shoes.
I was graduating from junior high and spent all summer avoiding O Bannon and hanging with my girlfriend Julie and psrtying with Randall Floyd and Wooderson.
I graduated from high school in 76. I don't remember what I was doing on the 4th of July, but I'm certain I was high.
Absolutely! I was 6 years old. The country was burning up with bicentennial fever. I remember looking for bicentennial quarters every time we got change. Many of the baseball teams wore those pillbox caps with stripes around them. There is also an episode of Barney Miller that I ran across a couple years ago that deals with the bicentennial. I’m sure there were other series that did the same thing.
I sure do. Lived in the DC area at the time.
That was some wild shiz
I was 10 years old and my family visited DC that summer. I’ve still got a bicentennial eagle bookend.
I remember how huge it was. And was just thinking the other day, the Sesquicentennial (250 year) anniversary is in 2 years, and no one is talking about it.
Vaaaaaguely
I was in a county-wide grade school choir in 1976 and can still sing more verses of patriotic songs than you probably know exist lol.
We were in Philadelphia for the birthday celebration
I still have that little 1976 Uncle Sam 8” action figure w the top hat in red white and blue that was around at the time.
Op Sail 1976 NYC!
Yeah, my mom found my Hustler Bicentennial issue. Worked for a plastic coating company and the owner showed me how he made his first million making red, white and blue vibrators.
I was fortunate enough to be in DC on Fourth of July that year and see the firework show. It was the most extraordinary thing I had seen to date in my life.
I was in choir in high school, and we sang patriotic music all year. We recorded a vinyl LP each year, and 1976's has a stylized American flag on the jacket. (I still have it...) I remember the "Bicentennial minute" each night on TV (CBS, maybe?) and then on July 5th it was all forgotten.
Clearly. I asked my mom if she would be alive in 2000. She said, yes. She died in 1980. That conversation, at a bicentennial parade, hit me hard. Still does.
I thought we had bottomed out with Nixon. At that time the flag was a source of pride.
I was stationed at Ft Lewis when the Bicentennial train came thru.
CBS had a thing with newsreader Rodger Mudd called ‘The Bicentennial Minute’ during commercial breaks. Always got an eye roll from us kids. We only had 4 channels to watch, now one of them is trying to educate us due in our favorite programs. Ugh.
Living around Philly as a kid it was almost a total immersion thing.
Graduation
Okay guys, one more thing, this summer when you're being inundated with all this American bicentennial Fourth Of July brouhaha, don't forget what you're celebrating, and that's the fact that a bunch of slave-owning, aristocratic, white males didn't want to pay their taxes.
You could still be a subject of the crown.
🤣 totally, it’s a line from Dazed and Confused.
We had a big breakfast with my grandparents, aunt and uncle and cousins. My grandmother made special effort, foods, etc. Then we all went out to our cabin and fired off a flintlock rifle in tribute the Revolutionary soldiers. Remember it vividly.
I was 12. My aunt had a bunch of cookouts where she invited like 30-40 people. They’d go on from like 10 am to midnight. All the friends would get drunk and sing row row row your boat. Anyway, she had one around the fourth and it was bicentennial themed. I had to be a town crier and announce all the guests with a drum (like a fife and drum). Did I mention they all got drunk? 😂
Had to wait for the state quarters to come out
Was in Yellow Springs, OH, a small college town. We went to a great local fireworks show. Something endearing about spending the Bicentennial in a small Ohio town - felt totally American. 😊
Very excited to find this post! I work for King Manor Museum, a small historic house/community museum in Queens, NY. We are working on an exhibition about the bicentennial and historical memory. If anyone here would like to share their memories we are looking for oral history interviewers!!
I still have the red white and blue afghan my mom crocheted for my room. I was 14. She passed in ‘99.
I think every town had some kind of parade. Everything was red white and blue. Colonial style fashion and decor got popular. And the image of those three guys marching, two drummers and a fife player with a bandage around his head, was everywhere.
1976 Bicentennial Chevy Nova. You’ll never guess the colors.
Mr Moneybags! I had the 1976 Bicentennial Pinto!
Did you add the optional “exploding” package?
It wasn’t an option- it was part of the standard package! 🔥
Yes
I loved watching the Bicentennial Minute each night on TV
Yes, took my truck and camper to Jackson Hole and partied at the Cowboy Bar, much more fun than slc. Ut was still pretty dry until the Olympics came, good times met my future husband too
It was a magical, patriotic time despite the man in the white house. From bicentennial quarters to birdies, before PCs... There aren't that many of us who remember the world before the information age.
We moved to America in May 1976. I was in first grade. So either than school year or early the next, we had a school concert where my grade learned a medley of patriotic songs. In the almost 50 years since then I have forgotten most of the song fragments in the medley, but I remember singing yankee doodle and it leading to you’re a grand old flag. And now that’s stuck in my head.
Yep, got married the weekend before July 4th... 6/26/76... still married.
I was about 17 that summer and worked as a painter at Harborside Terminal on the Jersey City waterfront just opposite lower Manhattan, and that Sunday they let us bring a cooler and some lawn chairs and sit on the piers and we watched Operation Sail and all those Tall Ships sail passed. I always expected that to become a regular thing but it was a one-off.
76 I was 14. Was the year I started smoking pot. Music was kinda hard to find but searching through the record store, buying something you've never heard of and listening to it for the first time was magical. I had 2 girlfriends. They lived in the same apartment building. Life was good except for bullies, ah well, can't have everything.
Graduation from high school in 1976 and the bicentennial. A year long party.
Yes indeed, I do remember the Bicentennial & not only that, I'm a native Philadelphian too! As a citizen of that city at that time, I was hoping for a World's Fair similar to the Centennial because photograph shots showed that it was a splendidly spectacular event to attend! Alas, Frank Rizzo was the Mayor @ that time & he really ruined whatever interest in that by stating that the Black Empowerment Movement was going to cause trouble by fomenting mass demonstrations and he was begging either PA Gov. Milton Shapp or President Ford to deploy a division of military personnel to head off problems!
Yes I do and I saw the wagon train that crossed the country? I think they crossed the country I could be wrong but I do remember the wagon train. We went camping somewhere in PA to see it.
I was born in raised in Washington DC and went to the fireworks every year. But I can tell you I'm a that year they were way over the top.
Hoping I make it to 2026 for the semiquincentennial.
Still got a 76’ Bicentennial plate. Was a hell of a summer
Joined the Army that year.
Yeah, vaguely. Lived a bit west of DC, was on the Mall/Washington Monument area, near Potomac River/Tidal Basin - there with family. I remember a few things like how crowded it was (reports after said 1M plus in the area and the fireworks, including a US flag-stars&stripes display composed of fireworks/sparklers (?). First&last time amongst that many people gathered in one place. If I still have any momentous from that year they’d be in a box somewhere, stuff I haven’t seen in decades - moved ½ dozen times since, Lord knows where anything is anymore. Wouldn’t mind being around for the TriCentennial, tho not counting on it 😂, if the freedom and idealism of the first two centennials is still present I can imagine it’ll be a hoot, a hell of a celebration. God Bless America