Uncle Sam hugs the birthday girl, feet dangling, high off the boards (the Duchess struggles, smiling gamely, to keep her skirt from rucking up over her knees, while out in the crowd, the Duke squirms uncomfortably among his whooping and hollering in-laws), then sets her down, roughs up her hair playfully, and presents her with one of Betty Crocker’s giant angelfood birthday cakes. Amid the huzzahs and many happy returns, Uncle Sam spots the British Prime Minister, Sir Winston Churchill — he coaxes Winnie, who is often confused in the American imagination with W. C. Fields, into coming up on the stage to belt out a few boomers from the Golden Age of the Finest Hour. The P.M. squares his shoulders, winks puckishly, ducks his fat chin in his chest, snorts like a bull, paws the ground with his spatted hooves, jumps up once and cracks his heels together, and with the dignity of pink-cheeked greatness about him commences to bellow like a bona fide blueblood: “Cor blimey! the crisis is upon us, an iron curtain has descended on the broad sunlit uplands, and like the Mississippi, it just keeps rolling along beyond the soft underbelly of space and time! In the past we have a light which flickered, in the present”—here he raps the chair with his walking stick and whips out a new cigar—“we have a light that flames, so do not let us speak of — darker days, death and sorrow, the quivering, precarious sinews of peace, blood, toil, tears, and bloody ‘ell, God save the Queen, upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization! DREAD NOUGHT! When you have to kill a man it costs nothing to be polite, short words are best! Now this is not the end, everyone has his day and some days last longer than others, it is not even the beginning of the end…”
But while he’s blustering like that, Uncle Sam is filling the stage behind him and secret corners of the VIP section with Minutemen and Green Mountain Boys — suddenly they leap out and point their muskets at Winnie: “We hold these truths to be self-evident,’” they cry, spitting tobacco juice and flourishing buckets of tar and feathers, “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government!”
“What? What?” roars Churchill. He puts two fingers in his mouth and lets rip a deafening whistle. People hear troops marching, singing “Yankee Doodle”—they open up to let them pass through — but wait! they’re not Americans after all, they’re Redcoats! A Patriot comes loping up ahead of them, slapping his thigh, hippety-hopping as though galloping in on an imaginary horse: it’s Paul Revere! He warns the Minutemen, and they fall into defensive formations against the attackers. “Stand your ground! Don’t fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war let it begin here!” There’s musket fire! Screams! Eight Minutemen drop dead! The Redcoats march on into the center, led by the likes of Hair-Buyer Hamilton, Gentleman Johnny Burgoyne, and Lord Cornwallis, strutting like peacocks! George Washington organizes his forces and a full-scale free-for-all breaks out! Rhetoric is flying through the air like musket fire: “The die is now cast,” bellows Churchill, popping his buttons with excitement and looking for all the world like John Bull himself, “the Colonies must either submit or triumph!”
“There’s something absurd in supposin’ a Continent to be perpetually governed by an island!” snorts Uncle Sam. “Come on, boys! From the East to the West blow the trumpet to treason and make the most of it! Now is the seedtime of Continental union, faith and the clash of resounding arms, the original Merrycunt Revilusion! I know not what chorus others may take, but as for me, stick a feather in your girl and call her Maggie Rooney! Whee-oo! I must fight somethin’ or I’ll ketch the dry rot — burnt brandy won’t save me! C’mon, you varmints, the harder the conflict, the more glorious the massacree! Laxation without intoxification is tyranny, so give me Molly Stark or liberty sleeps a widder!”
Blood is splattering everywhere. Washington’s tattered troops shrink to a shivering handful. But the old vestryman of Truro Parish gathers them into a make-believe ark and, invoking Divine Providence, they paddle across one of the aisles in the VIP section and take the wassailing intruders by surprise. “A race of convicts — a pack of rascals, sir!” storms Churchill. “They are a set of tatterdemalions, there is hardly a whole pair of breeches in an entire regiment! Bugger the lot!” But it’s not to be: the swamp foxes and backwoodsmen scatter through the forest of VIP seats and pick off the Redcoats like sleeping coons, teaching Burgoyne and Cornwallis with buckshot to their retreating rears the fundamentals of guerrilla warfare. “All right, then,” says the P.M., reaching inside his siren suit to scratch his distinguished ballocks, “we have been subdued.”
Cheers erupt through the Square and beyond as Uncle Sam unveils the stone tablets of the Constitution, said to be the same ones that George Washington brought down off Bunkum Hill. All the “dead” soldiers get up and sing “Yankee Doodle” together, then step back to help guard the perimeter of the VIP area. Winston Churchill and Uncle Sam pick each other’s pockets clean, and Winnie is sent off, amid wild cheering, Uncle Sam’s Dr. T beanie on his head, its yellow rubber fingers flashing his famous V-for-Victory sign.
Then George Washington, the American Fabius, so-called, brushes himself off and leads out all the other Presidents: His Rotundity the Machiavelli of Massachusetts, Long Tom the Sage of Monticello, Withered Little Apple-John, the Last of the Cocked Hats, Old Man Eloquent, King Andrew, Little Van the Red Fox of Kinderhook, Old Tippecanoe and Turncoat Tyler, too, Young Hickory the Sly, Old Rough and Ready, the American Louis Philippe, Yankee Purse, Old Buck the Bachelor, the Illinois Baboon, Sir Veto, the Butcher, the Fraud of ‘77 and his wife Lemonade Lucy, the Evangelist, the Gentleman Boss, the Stuffed Prophet, Cold Ben, Prosperity’s Advance Agent, Tiddy the Bull Moose, High-Tariffs Fats, Dr. God-on-the-Mountain, the Mainstreeter with the Soft Heart, the American Primitive, the Great Humanitarian, Old Again and Again and Again, and Give ’em Hell Harry. As they emerge, wearing their shiny papier-mâché heads modeled from official portraits, they’re accompanied by iconic figures from the epochs they represent: Pilgrims, Pirates, Planters and Pioneers, Boston Merchants, Virginia Orators, Inventors, Southern Gentlemen and their Darkies, Canal Boatmen, Land Speculators, Powder Monkeys and Brave Engineers, Pony Express Riders, Bible Belters, Village Blacksmiths and Forty-Niners, Raftsmen and Dirt Farmers, Roving Gamblers, Lumberjacks, Johnny Rebs and Damyankees, Sheepherders and Cattle Kings, River Boat Captains, Desert Rats, Millionaires, Whalers, Cowboys and Indians and the U.S. Cavalry, Carpetbaggers and Ku Klux Klansmen, Country Fiddlers, Coalminers, Oil Barons and Outlaws, Bluebloods and Rednecks, Wall Streeters, Suffragettes, Rough Riders, Motorists, Movie Stars and Moonshiners, Stockbrokers, Shortstops and Traveling Salesmen, Gangbusters, Quarterbacks, Songwriters, Private Eyes, Self-Made Men, and more, all doing skits, singing songs, dancing in chorus lines, miming the high drama of building a nation and taking over the world. A lot of the performers are as stiff-kneed and self-conscious as those of any home-town centennial pageant — many of them are Secret Service agents in disguise and ambitious amateurs with influential relatives — but the acts flow in and over one another so fast there’s no time to notice, all watched over by a ceaselessly inventive and unpredictable Uncle Sam, who’s out there stirring up a veritable feast of Train Robberies, Famous Debates, Lynchings, Brawls, and Dust Storms, and carrying on his running patter of Yankee proverbs and prophecies, the Singing Saints humming gospel songs in the background.