It’s
Independence Day Weekend here in Philadelphia.
What a fine time to be in the city.
Block
parties and live music, barbecues and picnics, burgers and ice cream, sparklers
and fireworks, road-blocks and detours, this city truly lives up to the
standards and expectations of Founding Farmer John Adams, who once wrote that Independence Day ought to be solemnized
with pomp and parade…
…with shows,
games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations, from one end of this
continent to the other, from this time forward forever more.
Well, actually, he always thought it should be celebrated on the Second of July.
Sorry, old man.
In
the Fourth we trust…a celebration of the tried and true totems of American
history: the bald eagle and the buffalo, Yankee Doodle and Uncle Sam and Lady
Liberty…
…the
light bulb and the television and the arcade game, the steamship and the
automobile and the space shuttle, the pioneer and the cowboy and the rock star…
…and
that Old Glory herself…
…that
grand old flag we call the Stars and Stripes.
In
the spirit of Independence Day, I made a quick pit-stop to pay my respects to
our most famous seamstress, Betsy Ross.
She’s
buried, right there in Olde City, at 2nd and Old Sassafras Streets, underneath that
monumental American elm…
…rocketing
over the colonial courtyard, bursting with heavy branches high up in the muggy Coyote sky.
Or,
at least, we’re told that she’s buried here.
It
turns out that Betsy Ross’s funeral was held on 5th Street. Twenty years later, her body was exhumed and
moved to the now abandoned Mount Moriah Cemetery near Cobbs Creek in West
Philly…
…and
then, just in time for the Bicentennial of 1976, her body was moved again to
this half-museum-half-gift-shop restoration, to be closer to the parade of her
colonial brothers and sisters.
Or
was she?
Rumor
has it that, back in 1975, her gravediggers found no bodily remains under her
tombstone there in Mount Moriah.
Only
a few bones, found elsewhere in the family plot, were hastily authenticated as
Betsy Ross’s and moved to this courtyard…
...just
in time for the opening of the Betsy Ross Bridge in 1976.
It
doesn’t matter.
Fiddle-de-dee.
Like
we say here in America, when the legend
becomes fact, print the legend.
And
so the legend stands.
She’s
buried here, First Seamstress of the United States, the beautiful and noble
widow who made, with her own blistered hands, the very first version of the
American Flag.
Or
did she?
