5 JUL 07: FOURTH WE GO

"Happy Fourth of July!" my neighbor yelled Wednesday toward someone on the street I couldn't see. "And I hope next year you have a full head of hair on your head." Only in America could someone see the need for a product like Rogaine....

That was one of several unusual sights I noticed in the downtown area on Independence Day 2007. It was a great day for me to leave the car parked and walk to places - thus declaring my independence from high-priced gas, if only for a couple of extra days.

I did my civic Columbus duty Wednesday afternoon, and walked to the Dillingham Street Bridge. Of course, that was the site of the big annual Independence Day celebration - you know, the one WRBL tries to avoid mentioning at all costs....

Space was a bit restricted at last year's "Thunder on the Hooch," because Columbus State University's RiverArts campus was under construction. This year the work was finished - well, maybe. Orange plastic fencing was still up on the Tenth Street side. And for some reason, the arts students didn't hang any portraits there to sell.

There's a large open area near the Dillingham Street Bridge, where the RiverArts construction equipment once sat. But that area was downright dangerous for walking, as hidden metal poles were scattered around in the dirt. It's supposed to be GREEN-space, not rusty brownspace.

The usual vendors were scattered around the grounds at Thunder on the Hooch, selling everything from T-shirts to funnel cakes. But was it only a coincidence that the Dixie Outfitters table was on the Phenix City side of the bridge?

While some tables sold bottled water for two dollars, one actually offered FREE water to people who passed by. These Christian ministries can be such show-offs....

Then there was the surprise in the parking lot of the Phenix City Amphitheater - where a restaurant sold traditional Thai food on U.S. Independence Day. I shudder to think how many conservatives went up to their booth, and demanded to see green cards first.

I thought I heard an organizer of Thunder on the Hooch say no one was allowed to hand out pamphlets or literature there. Yet I found two men on the Dillingham Street Bridge offering Columbus Catfish pocket baseball schedules. For all I know, the one who handed out the most might have been the starting pitcher Wednesday night.

That rule about pamphlet distribution may explain why one booth was all by itself, more than two blocks from Thunder on the Hooch. A petition drive for a "Fair Tax" (a.k.a. national sales tax) was set up south of the Space Science Center - which from what I could tell wasn't even open. Is the proposal considered THAT far "out of this world?"

I'm not really a "people-watching" person, but one man stood out to me as I strolled around Thunder on the Hooch. He wore an Orlando Magic basketball jersey with the name and number of Anfernee "Penny" Hardaway. Hardaway retired from the N.B.A. a year ago - and after the trouble Tim Hardaway caused with his mouth, he might have changed his last name.

There was one other thing we wanted to check, in the middle of Thunder on the Hooch. The "Millennium Clock" at Tenth Street and Bay Avenue still isn't working properly, on any of its four sides. Once Uptown Columbus is finished with all those adjustments on Broadway, it needs to find 50 bucks to put up a few atomic clocks.

The evening brought the big fireworks show - along with a couple of small preliminaries. If you're shooting rockets above the trees along the river in Phenix City, you're simply asking for police officers downtown to test their radios.

But the biggest challenge for fireworks watchers may have come after the show, as they tried to leave downtown Columbus. A car passed me on one-way Fourth Street near Broadway, going the wrong direction. Either he was an out-of-towner who was confused, or someone who had too many beers at a Broadway bar.

A few other things made news around the area on Independence Day....

+ Valley, Alabama switched from holiday fireworks to a laser light show, primarily to avoid sparking a brushfire. One child told WRBL it was "extremely important" to her that fireworks were shot - as if her ears needed a certain minimum amount of deafness.

+ The Lee County Fraternal Order of Police held a holiday fund-raiser, by cooking about 700 chickens. Hopefully they handled this in a humane way - by not using stun guns on any of the chickens, or assigning them names of jail inmates.

+ A runner from Kenya won Atlanta's Peachtree Road Race, for what my mom would have called the "umpteenth year" in a row. The Kenyans have become so dominant that there's a special cash prize for the top U.S. runner - so we hope Zell Miller doesn't mind if they wear running shorts resembling the U.S. flag.

+ Instant Message to the three people I saw having a picnic at the old amphitheater above the Columbus Riverwalk: That's a good shady spot you found. Hopefully you left before the homeless people showed up to eat your scraps, then sleep on the wooden bleachers.

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