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THE FOURTH OF JULY STEAM DISPATCH!

To our Readers

From the Editorial Staff of The Steamboat Dispatch Press, East Bellmont Bureau
Upper Chateaugay Lake, Franklin County, New York

—Filed on the Morning of the Fourth, Year of Our Lord 1925—

With Respect and Salutations to the United States of America and Her Veterans

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O say can you see…?
By the light of the forge, and the red-glare of rockets made from stovepipe, sap, and powder stolen from the old logging storehouse, we surely can.
We can see it all, and we ain’t forgot a damned stripe of it.

We seen Uncle Sam hisself (or a reasonable bog-shaped facsimile thereof) step off a barge last night with a stovepipe hat stitched from birchbark and stars that flickered like fireflies in retreat. He doffed his coat and saluted the valley—a proper one, not one of those limp-handed fakers you get from the summer people. Then he nodded toward the hills, where the kilns smoked like cannon, and said in a low voice:

“Let it rip.”

So we did.

The official Popeville “Stephen Moffitt Civil War cannon” boomed from far-off Ingraham ridge in the west courtesy of his bigwig brother waitin’ up there ready with them Lucifer matches—then the old Squire lit the fuse with the English saber tip his son Bill scavenged somewhere from Shiloh while on his daily grease run. Under some corn. That’s right. Shiloh.
Then Bill hisself, a.k.a. Miles “The Hulk” Miller, stood proud with a bugle he fashioned from a shotgun barrel and a broken Naptha engine carburetor. The man’s 2X large in every regard and the only reason the flagpole didn’t fall over was he leaned against it real patriotic-like.
Johqu, silent all day, finally spoke when the flares rose high and the lake shivered red:

“That’s for the Republic. The Republic.”
Then he tapped the blade on his belt and nodded slow.

This one’s for every vet who stood post in the rain, in the mess hall, in the sea, on the line, in the kiln-pits, or right here over by the Chateaugay Lake Narrows for their annual boat parade with decorations and them fancy buntin’ under a July sky heavy with bug-zap and drum rolls.
This one’s for those who never came back, and those who did—scarred, sacred, hungover, maybe even stuck writing editorials for a paper printed in a boathouse.

To our readers and fellow Americans across this great land:
We stand, we serve, we remember.

Josephine Percy struck up the anthem on her frying-pan fiddle while Abner banged the harmony out of an empty kerosene drum. Even the cryptid, whatever he is—Gitaskog or just an oddly patriotic driftwood shape—seemed to rise and hum in key.

We grilled speckled trout.
We whittled balsalm firecrackers by firelight.
We told tall tales and saluted real truths.
We raised a glass of Squire’s home-made real cider for the Union—and drank it all the way down.

And we print this for the honor of the flag,
For the memory of the sword,
For the republic for which it stands—
One lake, under God, indivisible, with liberty and bog-core for all.

From all of us:
Johqu
Squire
Miles “The Hulk” Miller
Josephine
Olive
Abner
Mordecai (half-dressed but well-meaning)
And the full editorial crew of The Steamboat Dispatch

HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY!

GOD BLESS AMERICA!

AND

GOD BLESS HER VETERANS!

(Oorah baby.)