[I meant to post this a while ago, as you'll see from the first sentence. It's not so timely anymore, but I think it's still worth putting up.]

Well, it's Constitution Day again. I know a lot of people have mixed feelings about it, considering it to be as fake as some Hallmark holiday, but I actually like it a lot. As with so many things when I was growing up, my parents always went all-out on it, so it was always really special for me. We were never really traditionally reverent or patriotic, so we always skipped the usual reading of the Constitution in the town square (or in our case, the college football stadium) that so many families participate in, but we always did the secular stuff that's also become associated with the holiday (I still wonder to this day how they got the box of Jefferson Mints under my pillow each year without my knowing about it).

I guess I've really loved it since CD '77, when I was eight. That day we got up and did the usual stuff--watched the parade on TV, answered the door to greet ribbon-wearing neighbors reciting the usual litany of historical trivia, daydreamed about dinner (the smell of cabbage and bacon on Constitution Day is one of my strongest childhood memories)--but then around ten or so Dad said he needed to go to the hardware store, and asked if I wanted to come along. Now, I was too smart for that--even at eight I knew that the shops were closed on Constitution Day--but I saw the mischievous gleam in his eye that he always tried so unsuccessfully to hide, so I figured I had to see what was up.

We piled in the car and drove toward downtown, past Motel Row, past the old City Hall, past the train station, and eventually ended up outside of Mainway's department store. My Dad said that what he needed was actually in their hardware department (he was never really good at credible lying...remind me to tell you the Bionic Man egg story sometime). Anyway, even though I knew that the hardware department at Mainway's couldn't be our real destination, in we went, right through the big glass doors, and on we walked, past the men's clothing department...past the housewares...starting to skirt past the hardware section...when suddenly we ran into a friend of his from his monthly Shriner's breakfast club. (Dad wasn't a member, but he was fairly well respected in the community, and had worked with a lot of the Shriner guys in his dealings with the city government, so he had a regular open invitation to their monthly informal breakfast meeting at Dee's Diner. He took me along a couple times, so I knew a lot of the regulars. This guy was 60-ish, a little portly, with an expensive but old-looking light gray suit, a pearl tie clip, neatly-trimmed gray hair, and a huge gold monogram ring...real "old Shriner," if you get my drift.)

"Morning, Nate," he said, and then greeted me too. He said that he was there to pick up a couple of things for the house (yeah, right...a Shriner buying hardware on Constitution Day in our town?), and that he was waiting for one of the stock boys to bring some things out from the basement. He then asked my Dad if he'd be willing to do a huge favor and take his wife, who was waiting in the car, her prescription, which he'd just picked up for her next door at Wizen's Pharmacy. Dad said sure, and the old guy handed him a little brown bag (and I'm pretty sure I may have seen him wink).

So we went on, our supposed original errand apparently forgotten, until we reached the door opposite to the one we'd entered. Now, my dad worked in a building near The Parallel (the big outdoor shopping mall where Mainway's was located, one of the first of its type in the U.S. back then), so I knew the area well enough to know that this door opened onto a big brick-paved pedestrian plaza, and there was no parking anywhere near there.

Sure enough, when we went out, there wasn't a car in sight: just a plaza crammed with people. I remember huge streamers of balloons (want to guess what three colors they were?), the smell of hot dogs and popcorn, and the sound of a band playing Sousa marches. My Dad (remember, he was a crappy liar) said something like "Wow, what's this? We should stop and take a look. Here, hold this while I get you a soda." And then he handed me the bag. Now, I really loved the sodas that you got at public events back then because: 1) fountain soda beats can soda hands down; and 2) they always came with that cool little clear plastic skin you had to peel off the cup before you could drink them; but I was worried about the old lady getting her medicine, which I told my dad. He said (and I have to admit that this was pretty clever), "You're right. But I'd hate to miss all this. Maybe you'd better check the bottle to see how often she has to take it. We might be able to steal a few minutes here before we have to go find her."

That sort of logic worked well on me, striking the right balance between my innocent sense of civic responsibility and my childhood Pepsi lust. Opening the bag, I looked in to find...not a bottle of pills...but a little plastic case containing...a Johnny Constitution action figure! I'd never seen anything like it (they had just come on the market, and I had somehow missed all the TV commercials). It blew my mind. I mean, action figures are dime-a-dozen nowadays, but this was one of the first ever made. Clunky as it was, it was a revelation, and I was mesmerized. (It was only later on that I learned how hard they were to get at that time. My Dad must have asked his friend to check around and pull some strings to get it; that would explain our strange encounter in Mainway's. Anyway, boy do I wish I still had that action figure today). I looked up to my Dad, who smiled, all warmth and joy at the great scam he'd pulled off, and said "Happy Constitution Day, son. Come on. We'd better get those pills to Mrs. Belmont." I was still in such a daze with toy joy that I didn't even realize how stupid that sounded (what pills?), and I just let my Dad lead me along until I found us standing in a long line at the center of the plaza.

I asked my Dad what was going on, and he made up some ridiculous story about it being the line to the parking area, but I didn't even care. That is, until I noticed a commotion at the front of the line, and kids walking back our way with what appeared to be signed photos in their hands. I caught a glimpse of one and saw what appeared a big rectangular shape with arms, doing a thumbs-up. Then it slowly started to dawn on me what was going on: oh my god..could it be...yes!...I was going to meet Johnny Constitution himself! This was going to be way better than the time I met Robin at the grand opening of Eddie and Joe's Mobile Home Shows!

Now, we can all agree that it's cheesy in retrospect, but I was eight years old, and that sort of mind trip can rocket you into a completely different, much happier universe when you're that age. I'll dispense with the description of how everything went into slow motion as the line dwindled to nothing and I approached the roped-off area where he was. But, there he was, the living embodiment of the Constitution itself. With adult eyes I'd probably have noticed that the costume was made of papier mache and tempera paint, with the eyes painted onto mesh so that the poor guy inside could see a little, but to me he looked just like the real thing, surrounded by the Founding Fathers, muskets at the ready, old glory flying high. (We've all had to face it at some point in our lives: the writers of that movie weren't historians.) If you wanted to, you could even read all the funny old words across his big, yellowing face, with their strange little f's for s's.

The rest of the day is a blur. I got my photo and a firm handshake from Johnny Constitution, along with an autographed copy of the Constitution in miniature, we had a big lunch at Bob's Big Boy, I went home and played with my new toy, and most likely went to bed a very happy but very tired young man.

It may just be pure operant conditioning, but to this day I still get a little funny when I hear the Constitution Day song, and I'll probably even go to see Constitution Day VII, no matter how bad the reviews are. Now, that's Great American mythmaking.