Independence Day 1990 - 6 July 1990

The newspaper arrives very early in the morning. It's not a paper I take regularly since it's published in Paris. The front page stories are such as would appear, but only since last September, in newspapers from Edinburgh to Vladivostok: Mr Gorbachev attacks his critics, East Berliners get their new marks, President Bush urges Nato to change strategy on nuclear response.

It's odd this. A quite new experience. I mean, finding the same lead stories on the front page of papers in London, New York, Warsaw, Prague, Paris. It seems that whether we like it or not, America and all of Europe are suddenly reunited by the things that we know now are of common concern to all of us.

However on an inside page of this unfamiliar paper, I'm struck by a three-column headline. It says, "Fourth of July Parties." Twelve of them advertised in separate boxes. I should say that this was the paper dated Tuesday July 3rd. I've never seen a public invitation to a 4th July party before. Certainly not 12 of them. Should be fun. Listen! "Café Rosa, traditional 4th atmosphere, exotic cocktails." I wonder what a traditional exotic 4th July cocktail is? No matter. It promises, "special Independence Day evening".

And then there's Kitty's: "Fourth July celebration begins at 5 o'clock. Barbecue. Spare ribs. Baked potatoes. Jazz and Irish music".

Conway's offers: "Fourth July spare ribs dinner. All you can eat".

But my favourite is one called "Coin de Bastille", Bastille Corner. "Restaurant Tex-mex at the Bastille. Country music. Special Independence cocktail".

Now all these goodies, you'll have gathered, were available in Paris. And I'm sorry I wasn't there. I was spending the 4th in Glasgow where there was no sentimental nonsense about American Independence, in fact, nowhere, in public or in private, was there a mention of Independence Day. For the first time since I can remember, I forgot it was the 4th, which was a nice change. If I'd been, as usual, in our house at the end of Long Island, I should have wakened a little yawny and red-eyed because of the neighbours having spent most of the previous night giving a fair imitation of the invasion of Normandy, with whizzing howitzers and the banging and crackling of fireworks. They're illegal, of course. But the only time anybody gets prosecuted is when one of the fire crackers injures the child of a neighbour.

The illegality of fireworks is in line with several other similar features of American life. In New York, for instance, on every other corner of Fifth Avenue, from 110th Street way downtown for what 4/5 miles, there's a large, printed, permanent sign, "No commercial traffic." Every day, past our apartment house, trucks and vans go bowling along, 40/50 blocks, paying no attention whatsoever. I don't remember ever seeing one of them get a ticket. And on ferry boats a typical sight is of a couple of young men lounging and puffing away against an enormous sign, painted on the ship, which says "No smoking." When I was young and innocent, I asked an American friend about this sort of thing and he said: "Well sure we're a nation of lawyers but that doesn't mean we have to be fusspots about abiding by the law". Now as for 4th July, Independence Day is a national holiday, observed in all 50 States and, what used to be called, inland territories: Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, the relics of Teddy Roosevelt's dream of empire.

You may like to know what are the traditional observances which these gallant Parisian restaurants were so eager to follow. Well, apart from the fireworks and picnics everywhere, there's nothing particularly traditional about it. And there is, in spite of the protestations or offerings of Kitty O'Shea's and Conway's, no traditional meal or dish, unlike Thanksgiving. Spare ribs seem to be something that the French think of as typically American, with or without traditional country music. And the canny Parisians must have discovered long ago that Americans away from home can be trusted to go for spare ribs at any time of the year.

As for the special Independence Day cocktail, only the Parisian bartenders can tell you what that is. A century ago, more, as late as the middle of the 19th century, a cocktail of any sort was an exotic to Europeans. Dickens had one and described it with a hyphen. As a cock-tail. The tail of the cock that nipped you. To be taken first thing in the morning. And it remained more or less of a mystery in Europe throughout the 19th century. Mark Twain walked into a bar in Paris and asked for a Sazerac, a New Orleans concoction to this day which was originally made with lime juice, Cointreau and a strong dash of absinthe, later, after absinthe was made illegal, Pernod. I don't know what Mark Twain was served but he remarked that this bartender: "though an amiable and intelligent man, who spoke several languages, was nevertheless a bonehead. He not only couldn't make a sazerac, he couldn't spell it".

As late as the 1930s I remember one or two fashionable London hotels had what they called, and posted as, American bar meaning that they served something other than sherry, gin and ice and a warm whisky and soda. The Paris ads only go to show vividly again that the more nations get to know each other the more confusing becomes the reality of the other's life. It's easier to spot a stereotype and hold onto it. The truth, say, about national customs, foods, habits, whatever, tends to get more and more baffling and contradictory the better you know them. So the Parisians have decided that a barbecue and spare ribs are the thing for the 4th July, whether or not Americans eat them then.

I recall, long ago, the editor of the Radio Times wanted to do a little piece about me to trail a series of broadcasts I was about to do from and about New York City. He wrote to me and asked me if I could send him a photograph for publication. The only prescription he made was "doing something typically American". I didn't spend time pondering what that might be. The handiest photo I had was one a friend had taken of me on the south shore of Long Island, one hot September dawn surf casting for striped bass into the ocean. It was a happy, sharp picture and I thought it was just the thing. What could be more American than casting for stripers? It duly appeared in the Radio Times with a caption, "Cooke fishing in Florida." Now the editor was a rollicking and affable Irishman and a good friend of mine, and I wrote to him and told him first the picture was printed the wrong way round – somehow he'd turned the negative into the positive – secondly I wasn't in Florida, but on Long Island. He wrote back:

"Don't fret! We knew what we were doing! The English have a very clear picture of America. Florida is where you fish. Long Island is yachts and the Great Gatsby. California is oranges and movie stars. Let's not upset our readers by having you go on about weird things like striped bass and doing the right thing in the wrong place!"

It may occur to some of you that I happen to have spent my life, certainly the past 40-odd years of it, trying to replace these stereotypes with the confusing truth. The half page of ads in the Paris newspaper has convinced me that it's been a lifetime wasted. Love's labour's lost, ah, well! Perhaps in the age of the jet airplane when more millions see more of the world than their grandfathers ever dreamt, it's better for everybody's peace of mind that the airlines and the hotels and the other caterers to the flying traveller should make things simple for him. By actually concentrating on the stereotypes. Playing them up. Glorifying them. Never mind that more Americans have season tickets to symphony concerts than have season tickets to baseball games. When you go to America, see at least one baseball game. Go to Florida for Disneyland. Going west now means a compulsory visit to perhaps the most un-western, the most A-typical city of the West, Las Vegas. The advertising copywriters have won out over all the roving journalists alive.

I have a friend who is, I imagine, not unique but he's something very rare these days. He's more of a traveller than a tourist. By which I mean he's not put off by the stereotypes. He'll go to see them when they're overpowering and true. Thus I took him once to the Grand Canyon because though millions of people have said it's unique and wonderful, they happen to be right. This man is shortly going to undertake another American trip and, at my suggestion, he's doing something that not one foreign tourist in a thousand ever plans. He's going to do a motor tour of New York State. It is a beautiful and rewarding enterprise. New York State is after all, exactly the size of England, 55,000 square miles, I believe. It has impressive, well wooded mountains, rolling pastureland, hundreds of lakes, waterfalls, caves, wildlife refuges, a range of animals, excellent freshwater fishing, a 100 mile trip up the noble Hudson which Lord Bryce thought as impressive, in its way, as the Rhine. It has something incomparable, the so-called "Thousand Islands" region. Actually there are 1,800 of them.

And at the beginning of the trip, bang in the middle of New York City, you can stand on the west side of Manhattan and look across the Hudson, just north of the George Washington Bridge, and see the New Jersey Palisades. A natural marvel that geologists from all around the world come to New York, simply to gape at. And at the end of the trip, on the northern border of the State, there is... well, yes, a stereotype, but I have to admit I can't wriggle out of it. It's the only feature that most tourists ever go north from New York City to see. Niagara.

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