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The Rockets' Red Glare

AMERICA

But are my objections so great that I would break the law to demonstrate my displeasure? That is the dilemma I, and countless others, now face. And it threatens to take the sparkle out of this Fourth of July, which, for me at least, is more a day of reflection than of celebration.   --B.F.J.

THE IMMIGRATION department has a word for me: "alien." 'I prefer "Canadian." Funny that, while I've been embroiled for two years in a futile effort to get an American social security number, most of my friends now wish they didn't have one. Or at least, wish they didn't have to surrender it to the menacingly acronymed SSS.

Ah, irony. Although I hope Ronald Reagan will stop hinting at a "North American union," I still extend best birthday wishes to my southern neighbors--in the hope that reason, against mounting odds, will prevail.

But I remain cynical. While I have faith that the nicks on the face of America are not scars but scratches--and that scabs heal unless irritated--I wonder at the wisdom that will make many 19- and 20-year-olds "aliens" in their own country. President Carter's appeal to the Fatherland for his legitimacy evokes historic appeals to the Motherland. It's too bad you have to fight irony with irony.   --L.S.G.

RON KOVIC was born on the Fourth of July, 1946. When he was twenty-one, a Vietnamese thirty-caliber slug tore through his right shoulder, blasted through his lung and smashed his spinal cord to pieces.

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He had been born on the Fourth of July, he had been their Yankee Doodle Dandy, their all-American boy. He had given them almost his whole being in the war and now, after all that, they weren't satisfied with three quarters being gone, they wanted to take the rest of him. It was crazy but he knew that's what they wanted. They wanted his head and his mind, the numb legs and the wheelchair, they wanted everything. It had all been one big dirty trick and he didn't know what to think anymore.

In August, 1972, Kovic and many other Vietnam Veterans Against the War arrived in Miami to protest the war and their treatment upon return to this country. On the night of Nixon's acceptance speech; Roger Mudd interviewed Kovic on the Republican convention floor. "If you can't believe the veteran who fought the war and was wounded in the war, who can you believe?" Kovic asked America.

We'd eat lots of ice cream and watermelon and I'd open up all the presents and blow out the candles on the big red, white, and blue birthday cake and then we'd all sing "Happy Birthday" and "I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy." At night everyone would pile into Bobby's mother's old car and we'd go down to the drive-in, where we'd watch the fireworks display. Before the movie started, we'd all get out and sit up on the roof of the car with our blankets wrapped around us watching the rockets and Roman candles going up and exploding into fountains of rainbow colors, and later after Mrs. Zimmer dropped me off, I'd lie on my bed feeling a little sad that it all had to end so soon. As I closed my eyes I could still hear strings of firecrackers and cherry bombs going off all over the neighborhood.

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