Reflecting on July 4th celebrations never included a question of “Should we grill,” but rather, “What shall we grill?” Something on the BBQ long ago became as Independence Day American as sparklers.
Perhaps sparklers and snakes rank as “old school.” Today’s ability to buy and burn the “hard stuff” made it unnecessary for Angelkeep to travel to see a momentous fireworks display. Neighborhood enthusiastic holiday incendiary arsonists had enough buying power and lighting nerve to produce ample free viewing of heavenly bursts of brightly colored sparks.
During the 1950s, rolls of caps produced for cap guns but unrolled onto the sidewalk, received a smack with a hammer to make the bangs and pungent smoke smell associated with July Fourth. Survivors of the Revolutionary War would have thought that too modest. They put match to an artillery piece that survived the skirmish with the British motherland.
On a political level, both political and personal, what would a Revolutionary Veteran have thought of a new American getting involved in a romantic relationship with a Brit, or Tory as they had been renamed by the opposition? Tory, Loyalist, Royalist, or King’s Men, all meant the same when “spit out” in a public house pub around 1776, give or take a few years. Tar and feathers for all might have been the outcome had such a mixed political couple appeared at any Independence Day celebration in the latter 1770s.
Speaking of feathers.
The puzzlement of potential political problems of propagating pairs preceded pondering pedigree possibilities pertaining to particular plumed populations of Angelkeep.
While dining on an Independence Day grilled brat, smothered in grill-steamed peppers and onions slathered with mustard, a cowbird appeared to dine near Angelkeep’s patio. Perhaps it stopped to thank the griller for sticking with pork, no fowl, nor even cow meat. Angelkeep’s thoughts moved oddly awkward after that second 4th-of-July brat on a baguette.
Cowbirds appear oddly colored, like a dip into the genetic pool failed to get a good mix. The cowbird head appeared brown with the remainder of the body blackish-blue and iridescent.
Grackles also visit Angelkeep. Grackles displayed a fondness for suet, a bird food as greasy as a July Fourth brats. Grackles shine with an iridescent head of predominately delightful blue, representing one of three holiday colors. These heads can turn green in the right lighting. Its body plumage was said to be more of a bronze sheen.
A mass collective of grackles, such as might have occurred at a neighborhood fireworks display, were named a “plague.” Follow Angelkeep for more insignificant holiday trivia.
The brown-headed cowbird had first been described in America in 1775 by the French naturalist Georges Louis Leclerc, later Count of Buffon. Buffon, not Bluffton. He literally bought Buffon town. For that trivia, you’re welcome.
Buffon’s “Needle Theory,” or mathematical probability theory, became the world’s earliest problem in geometric probability. What’s the probability of a dropped needle landing on a floor with boards in parallel lines, but ending up across a line, not in a crack?
Angelkeep’s July Fourth Brat Theory: What’s the chances of a dropped brat hitting the grill grate perpendicular or parallel with the grate’s rods? Mathematicians thrive on this stuff. Not Angelkeep.
Full disclosure: Angelkeep brats displayed perpendicular grill burn marks.
What’s the chances, as pondered genetically on America’s Birthday, if a grackle mated with a cowbird? Would offspring receive a cowbird black eye or a grackle yellow eye? Or possibly, a yellow right, left with a black eye? Would the head/body colors reflect the brown/black-blue (cowbird,) or blue/bronze (grackle)? Could an all-iridescent blue bird evolve in such a marriage? What would a grilled grackle-cowbird taste like smothered in peppers and onion?
Having a July 4th holiday free from writing an Angelkeep Journals’ column sure produced plentiful ponderings, pursuant to peculiar plumbed population portions paused, perched prior-to, and post-brats’, partaking overload.
Mr. Daugherty is a Wells County resident who, along with his wife Gwen, enjoy their backyard and have named it “Angelkeep.”
