MARK SMITH MORE COLUMNS Advertisement

Don't mean to sound like Gertrude Stein with that headline, but in recent weeks I have heard several criticisms of Pahrump's decision not to celebrate the Fourth on the Fourth, and I have mixed feelings about shifting the fireworks away from the actual day.

On the other hand, Pahrump officials and businesspeople feel somewhat trapped. Do we want a whizbang show after dark or do we risk having a mediocre affair that will let everyone down? Do we want to draw the potential business we might otherwise lose during the week?

Now, in fact there will be three blasts of pyrotechnics -- at Terrible's Lakeside Saturday evening, at Petrack Park on July the Second (you know, that doesn't have the impact of "The Fourth") and, on the actual day, a final burst thanks to the Nugget.

I'm torn too.

I hate Monday holidays that don't fall on the proper dates. I've never liked the alteration from Lincoln's Birthday and Washington's Birthday to the neutered "Presidents Day." The holidays were supposed to honor two particular men, not a group of "presidents," some of whom have disgraced the office.

I don't like celebrating Veterans Day on, say, Nov. 12. World War I ended Nov. 11 and Veterans Day was based on that event.

(I was especially insulted when some who didn't want to honor Martin Luther King Jr. tried to conceal their real feelings by suggesting that, well, come on, don't we already have enough holidays?)

Does anyone imagine a suggestion would be taken seriously that we should alter Christmas to a time more convenient for business? Would anyone seriously consider changing Thanksgiving to the third Saturday?

There are, I think, some holidays that can be altered on a whim -- those that don't immediately bring a specific date to mind. I don't think many folks assiduously plan for Father's Day, say, on a specific date.

But there are dates that mean more than a Monday off. July 4 is one of the best known.

Now to be sure, there will be plenty to do on the Fourth itself, it's not as if we're all going to work as if the actual day means nothing. But deciding to hold the fireworks on one date, the softball games and golf matches on another, etc., I think does tend to dilute the whole thing.

Perhaps the town officials and the businesspeople and the fireworks folks need to start now to figure out how to put it all together on the same day.

Either celebrate the Fourth on the Fourth or bite the bullet and pick the more convenient day and do everything then instead of backing and filling.

* * *

Just a minor personal discovery, but did you know that in the last few years, the Great Plains have shifted west several hundred miles?

Well, that is what it seemed like the other week when I was gone east on vacation.

In the past, when I was a mere visitor to the Southwest, I would reach central Oklahoma and think, "Wow, the great wide open."

But now I've been out here, overall, for nearly two years without a break, and driving through the Texas Panhandle, quite a mental turnaround took place. I was hardly past Amarillo when I began noticing more green -- deep green grass up the knees of cattle, tall trees in woodlines and residential areas around, say, McLean. And long before I hit the Sooner State, I felt back amidst the foliage. By the point I passed by Henryetta, the plains were a memory.

On the return, after wilting in 95-degree temperatures and humidity to match in places like Vicksburg, Miss., and McLemore's Cove, Ga., the dry heat of Tucumcari and Moriarty, N.M., seemed a relief, and pulling up the hill from Vegas the last afternoon, I felt I had arrived back home.

Nice feeling, too.