July 5th: A Forgotten History

Sure, the Fourth of July is a wonderful day, perfect for remembering what is great about these United States and idly wondering why all those things have been put up against a wall and shot to make room for another photo of Britney’s floppy vagina. But, don’t forget, there is also drinking. And whether you are drinking to dull the pain of watching a once proud nation spiral down the shitter, or merely to forget your many traumatizing childhood memories, one thing you are most definitely not doing is writing a coherent blog post. And so, since the result of me touching a keyboard yesterday would have been little more than a string of gibberish peppered with colorful racial slurs which I found funny at the time and rambling demands for more Smirnoff Ices, I have decided to write to you today on the 5th of July, when all I have hindering me is a gigantic hangover. Yes, dear readers, the 5th of July, that oft neglected day, should be a time of remembrance, not of what happened on the 4th of July, 1776, when I believe a document of some sort was signed guaranteeing that the British had to act mincing and effeminate, but rather what great and nation-defining events occurred a mere 24 hours later; events that would forever shape our nation in powerful, and hopefully amusing, ways.

Notable events of July 5th, 1776:

• Thomas Jefferson, primary framer of the Declaration, unwinds from a tough week of declaring at his home in Monticello by rewarding himself with some “Hot Chocolate,” his way of referring to the rape of a female slave named Tambika, whom the Jeffersons renamed Chocolate Abigail Jefferson upon her purchase.



• John Adams, having helped free America from the burden of a Colonial Patriarch, bets brother and brewer Sam that he will forever be remembered as America’s favorite Adams. Sam Adams takes the bet, although he quickly forgets about the wager, which was made during the early morning following a wicked Independence Day kegger and brat grill.



• Despite popular belief, King George III’s diary entry on July 4th, 1776 did not read “Nothing of importance happened today.” This was in fact his diary entry for July 5th. His diary entry for July 4th read: “I’m thinking of getting some of my guys to design a crown with another crown on it, like a double crown. Also, Queene Anne let out the biggest fart at lunch today, you wouldn’t believe it. I think I threw up a little in my mouth.”



• George Washington, having finally received the powdered wig set he ordered some months prior, spends most of the day modeling it in front of his mirror. He reportedly calls it, “my new look,” to which wife Martha responds with skepticism and frigidity.



• John Hancock visits his family doctor following noticeable difficulty in signing the Declaration at a reasonable size. He is informed, sadly, that his giantism, long thought cured, has returned. Doomed to grow larger by the day, Hancock bids farewell to his family and sets out across the great plains of the Midwest, leaving lake-sized footprints, hair trailing clouds, to see what lays beyond the mysterious Western frontier. Though he is never heard from again, the legend of the Fifty-foot Founder lives on to this day.



• Two unknown members of Congress decide to purposely start the myth that the Declaration of Independence was written on hemp paper after one of them makes a joke about being “Fresh out of ye olde zigzags.” They might not have gone through with the prank, had not both been blitzed out of their minds on opium at the time.



• Hosiah W. Bush, a delegate from Maryland who was asked not to sign the declaration after running several shipbuilding firms into the ground, vows a sacred oath that even if it should take two centuries or more, it will be a member of his line who finally puts an end to the Founders’ ridiculous “democracy.”



• The colonial-era musical 1776, then simply entitled Stuff Happening Now, has its first performance at the Pittsfield Theater. It goes over well, despite some glaring historical inaccuracies due to it’s being put together in a single evening. Delaware representative Donald McKean complains that, contrary to his portrayal in the piece, he is not in fact a time-traveling cyborg intent on destroying the fledgling America and founding a man-boy love empire.



• Connecticut debutante and notable harlot Penitence Hilton is arrested for bathing a child on Sunday, a law even people of the 18th century found obscure and ludicrous. Town Crier coverage of her resultant trial and four days spent in the stocks easily overwhelms all news regarding America’s Independence, which most newspeople of the era refer to as “some political ballyhoo, wot wot.”



• Despite the fact that July 4th was not made an official United States holiday for many years, puzzled citizens awake on the 5th to find the streets mysteriously littered with empty cardboard tubes, shattered beer bottles, spent sparkler sticks, and soiled bunting.



• Late on the evening of the 5th, Sam Adams becomes the first Independence Day Drunk Driver, accidentally steering his horse Archibald into the face of a small child, ruining both. He subsequently covers up the scandal by releasing a new kind of "Superbeer," which we know today as Whiskey.



• Roger Sherman, a delegate who served on the committee which framed the Declaration, gives a stirring commencement speech at the University of Connecticut in which he predicts that Independence Day “will become a day so hallowed in the annals of American history, it will inspire a magically motive light-picture concerning the arrival on Earth of alien entities, and our subsequent and violent expulsion of those nefarious interlopers.” The occasion does in fact go on to inspire such a film, although Sherman is not given a story credit.



• Ben Franklin stumbles upon a young farmhand named Richard who has penned a collection of country aphorisms, beats the man to death with a kite, and publishes the tome himself. He gains wide praise and earns the farmhand the nickname “Poor Richard.” Later the same afternoon, Franklin accidentally invents the world’s only quadrafocal, but destroys it for fear humanity is not yet ready for such a technology.



• An oft-forgot footnote is added to the declaration clarifying that “we the people” in fact refers to nineteen individual men. Though this dream of a hereditary oligarchy is eventually overturned in favor of Representative Democracy, the footnote still entitles any descendent of one of the “Council of Nineteen” to a free dinner at any Sizzler’s restaurant up to once every calendar year.