Various small museums were opened by many local communities.
Murfreesboro, Tennessee still has one, Cannonsburg, a “historical village” in which small buildings resembling period structures contain museum displays.
Over in this corner is a PRIZE of a song by Loretta Lynn. Commissioned by some arm of the govt., if memory serves.
A few lines:
I’m red white and blue a-oo, a-oo, a-oo
A-oo, a-oo, a-oo and I’m proud of it too
I’m a blue-eyed Indian squaw every body calls me a half breed
That’s what you get when you sew a little red and a white seed
The white man said he’d marry me he lied cause babies do a-oo
That leaves me a mixed up breed of red, white and blue
There’s more lines, but you don’t want to know. Really.
I was 16, a high school sophmore, living in a small town in northwestern Washington state. I was also very active in the church I (then) belonged to.
I did like the fire hydrants very much. They were quite creative and festive. It wasn’t just a red, white, and blue paint job, they were artistic creations. Perhaps that was only in my home town, but I doubt it.
The church I (then) belonged to liked to be involved in the community, so we built and donated a gazebo in a city park located in the dead center of town. On the 4th of July we put on a performance upon said gazebo consisting of patriotically themed songs while dressed in costumes of the 1770’s, which, of course, we made ourselves.
July. Hot. Muggy. Ankle length, long sleeved, high necked dresses. And bonnets.
Big parade down State Street. Home made root beer, lemonade, and ice cream. Snuggling and kissy facing with my steady guy while we watched the fireworks from a hill behind the cemetary.
I still hang on to the quarters when I notice them, but they generally get handed off to the kids when they want an ice cream.
Thanks for the topic, OP that was a nice stroll down memory lane!
I remember there was a huge group that came through our town on horseback and covered wagons. They were pioneer reenactors commemmorating the bicentennial by traveling from New York to Los Angeles (or somewhere) as the original pioneer settlers of the west did during the 19th. century. Pretty cool, I remember they set up camp in our park.
I remember the Australian bicentenary in '88 as being very tacky indeed, if that helps. Lot’s of tall ships and fireworks. Those were okay, but the bicentennial branding on every bloody thing I saw was a bit much (especially as it was a revolting logo - even for the 80s!).
Also, there’s something just a little sinister about the government telling you to have a good time. The subtle undertone of propaganda weirded me out a bit. I am much more at home with the govt. as party-poopers.
There was a sign on the door of a local Irish pub which said something along the lines of, “By the way, while you’re celebrating 200 years, Dublin is quietly celebrating a thousand. Come in and have a pint with us”. So I did. Several times. 
Some of my best childhood memories were of the Bicentennial. My parents were both history teachers and we drove north to be in Philadelphia for the Fourth. It was absolutely mobbed of course- since I was 9 I got to sit on a podium for kids and thus was the only member of my family able to see Independence Hall (where the president spoke). Meanwhile the Philadelphia harbor was filling with reproductions of 18th century vessels.
The merchandising was incredible. I had a Bicentennial lunchbox, convenience stores sold fountain drinks in plastic cups with pics of Paul Revere, Ben Franklin, etc., K-Mart sold tri-corn hats and plastic muskets (I had a wooden cap firing musket and a pistol), they couldn’t make little plastic red and blue soldiers (red=British, blue=American) fast enough. Saturday morning kid’s shows came Bicentennially themed (my favorite was called GO!- I would love to see those again- there was even an attempt at multiculturalism, with all of the episodes centered on young people in the Revolutionary era, but one was a slave, another a young Mexican citizen living in the southwest where the events in Boston/Phil/NYC/etc. weren’t even the beginning of a ripple [basically a concession that “there were people outside of the 13 colonies in what’s now America”)… ah and all the cheesy memorabilia you can think of. I still have some Bicentennial candleholders, the coins they were tossing in Philadelphia that day (like Mardi Gras coins, but with the Liberty Bell and the date), my Bicentennial Viewmaster reels (View Master used to be far more educational than it is today), a little rubber John Adams head eraser (they sold them of all the Founding Fathers, though that’s the only one I have left). I at one point had dolls (I won’t call them action figures) of Franklin, Paul Revere, George Washington and Lafayette (there were others in the series) all dressed in little velvet longcoats and knee breeches- they were cheaply made- exact same body, just the little heads and outfits were different), boardgames, records, etc…
I remember also getting back to the hotel in NJ where we stayed on the Bicentennial (there were no rooms to be had in Philadelphia) and turning on the TV to reports of the goings on in Entebbe (quite an eventful day that day there, if you’ll remember). I also remember a Johnny Carson sketch in which he was dressed in 18th century costume and took the Liberty Bell to a repairman to tell him “there’s a crack in my ding dong” as the audience roared).
A great time- a patriotic streetfest, July 4 crossed with Mardi Gras. Ya shoulda been there.
(And when they did the I Love the 70s show, the nimrods responsible gave the Bicentennial one-minute!.)
Here’s another thing I remember: we stopped at all the patriotic must-sees on the way up: Mt. Vernon, Monticello, Appomattox Courthouse (Civil War as opposed to Rev, but still) etc… The next year we went to Virginia on business-pleasure and went to some of the same places- they were dead and had a fraction of the staff and attractions they’d had the year before. (George Washington’s birthplace, Wakefield [actually a recreation of] I particularly remember- during the Bicentennial it was staffed by guides in period costumes giving displays of 18th century crafts and daily life and there were gardens filled with crops that would have been harvested there in the 1740s when he was a boy; the next year there was a park ranger in park ranger garb and the lady in the gift shop had an 18th century dress on and that was it.)
Speaking of dress- my sister graduated highschool that year and the gown she wore in her senior picture was inspired by the Bicentennial. (It was blue and white, not red white and blue, but was of an 18th century style.)
It was called, “The American Freedom Train”, and it came to my home town when I was 7. I remember my parents taking my brother and I to see it. It was quite a long wait in line, but a really cool exhibit.
That year we went on vacation to South Dakota and on July 4, 1976, we were at a special celebration at Mt. Rushmore.
Good times.
Julius Henry just to clear things up, I graduated from college in 1976. Unless you’re confessing that we’re the same age and you graduated from high school four years later than I did. Pointing that out would not be polite so I won’t do it.
Wow, thanks! These are great - I’m printing them out to show to flodjr 
-
- I would have been about how old, eh, pretty young about then, let’s see, um… -well, let me just say to flodnak that “I know how you feel”.
- And mostly what I remember is the huge amount of red-white-and-blue stuff that was for sale that year. Especially regular consumer items, things like food packages, toys, clothes, and on and on, -and I wasn’t even really paying attention. Just about every consumer product available had some bicentennial slant on their packaging or product that year.
~
I was only seven but I remember the Bicentennial quarters and a huge assembly at my school. My city was decorated to the max because Archibald M. Willard the painter of the Spirit of '76 was born there and that house still stands to this day.
You may want to skip mine.
I turned 15 in 76 remember seeing the theme everywhere, school, stores, TV. My brothers and I were all collecting stamps at the time so my father took us to the Interphil exhibition in Philadelphia that year. It was extremely cool (for a young stamp collector anyway, I mean we got to see an inverted Jenny up close), and we all got the exhibition souvenir sheets with the various scenes - crossing the Delaware, signing the Declaration of Independence, etc. I still have mine.
I also remember two comments from one of our group of friends, which we picked on him about for the rest of our high school days. One was at a field trip to Valley Forge, where we saw a short movie, which included narration from letters and other documents from the time. The guide told us the dialog and narration were all from historical sources, and said this would have been spoken and sounded back then. So our friend asked, “Were those their real voices, too?” Then later in the year we were talking about how everyone was making such a big deal of the whole thing, and that the July 4th celebrations that year would be so much bigger than usual. So he said, “yeah, they’ll probably give us that whole week off from school for that.”
The Bicentennial was an extraordinary mess. After years of planning, one concrete result of the American Revolution Bicentennial Committee (ARBC) was the design and specification of the ARBC logo. They were very particular about it. Planning of celebrations and events lagged far behind. (There was a Centennial Exhibition circa 1876 to celebrate 100 years – we never had anything comparable for the Bicentennial). This was actually a big issue at the time, with lots of articles in the papers about it.
A countercultural group called the People’s Bicentennial Committee (PBC) grew up in opposition to the ARBC. When the ARBC re-enacted the Boston Tea Party, the PBC staged its own version, dumping oil barrels into the water to protest the big oil companies. The ARBC hated the PBC, but I have to note that the PBC looked like rebels – younger and unshaven – while the ARBC looked like The Establishment. You could imagine the PBC people actually pulling off the Tea Party.
In any event, as noted, there was the Tall Shjips visit (I saw them in Boston, and got down to NYC when they were there). There were fireworks and concerts (I got back to Boston the day after the July 4 concert. The Esplanade was normally a mess after the July 4 concert, but that year it was astounding).
I actually think the Bicentennial Minutes was one of the more clever bits. It actually did succeed in getting done, it reminded you of the events of 200 years previously, and gave you a real sense of how they unfolded in time. They brought notice to everyday trivia (Martha Washington’s method of keeping fruit fresh) as well as momentous events (battkles).
The first thing that came to mind was the Tall Ships display in NY, which I watched on TV. I sailed at the San Diego Navy Sailing Club (Oh, how I wish I could still use my Dependent’s ID card!) nearly every weekend, and I loved Tall Ships.
The second thing I remember is something I didn’t notice at the time. As other posters have mentioned, bicentennial marketing was every where. What I didn’t notice, being a kid, was that the country was in a recession. Apparently there was a lot of debate over how much money should be spent on the celebration, or whether any should be spent at all.
I remember the painted fire hydrants. There was one near my school – the first painted hydrant I’d seen – that turned out to be the best one of them all. I may or may not have a photo of it somewhere.
I think I spent part of the Bicentennial Year in San Diego, and part in Lancaster, CA. The Freedom Train didn’t stop in Lancaster, but it passed through on its way to L.A. I put a penny on the tracks, and the Freedom Train flattened it. I still have the penny. Had I been thinking, I should have used a Bicentennial quarter.
Speaking of quarters, I never heard that they would be worth a lot of money someday. (Maybe in a couple hundred years…) But I’ve tried to save every one I received. Surely I spent a lot of them, since I probably have less than $30 worth; but I still save them. Why? I thought they were neat at the time, and never got out of the habit.
I was into model rocketry at the time. I remember Estes had some patriotic-themed rockets. 1976 reminds me of Estes rockets, and the ‘modern’ stickers (not Bicentennial) that they had for their new ‘club’.
Until I read this thread, I’d forgotten about the Bicentennial Minute. I always liked educational things on TV. I loved Schoolhouse Rock (remember Government Rock?). I think On The Road with Charles Kuralt was on Sunday mornings then. Or maybe it was called Sunday Morning. I liked that.
In 1976 my dad bought his first airplane, a 1970 Cessna 172 Skyhawk. My Yamaha 250 Enduro was a new 1976 model, but I didn’t get it until 1977. It was less expensive, since it was leftover stock (not that I paid for it – it was a birthday present); and I liked it better than the ‘updated’ 1977 model.
There were Bicentennial cameras. These were little plastic jobs by Kodak that were white with red and blue stickers. Maybe there were stars on them; I don’t remember. I never had one, since I had (and still have) a Minolta 450E AutoPak that I took everywhere with me.
I remember the marketing, but it didn’t really resonate with me, an adolescent in Southern California. I’d always been interested in history, but the Right Coast seemed so far away. It was like, Hey! The country is 200 years old! But California was still a Spanish colony then.
One more thing I remembered upon reading this thread:
What do buffalo celebrate after 200 years?
Their bison-tennial.
Oh yeah…
Why do they want to fight The Battle of Bunker Hill over again?
It wasn’t fought on the level.
Children across the land learned the song Fifty Nifty United States and can probably recite the states in alphabetical order to this day. I had no idea until now that it was written by Ray Charles.