Freedom Burgers

On July 3, 1776, John Adams wrote to his wife Abigail that the great day should be marked with "Pomp and Parade," with games, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations from one end of the continent to the other. He had the date wrong by two days, since he meant the July 2 vote, and the program mostly right.

The first anniversary, in Philadelphia in 1777, came close to his list: toasts, thirteen-gun salutes, a parade, fireworks, and ships in the harbor dressed in bunting. The backyard grill came much later. One trade survey found that 76 percent of grill owners cook out on July 4, the biggest cookout day of the year, which is a bonfire, more or less, brought down to patio size.

The picture takes the holiday at full volume. A banner reading FREEDOM NEVER TASTED SO GOOD stretches across a sky of fireworks and jet contrails. At the grill, a figure with the white hair and tied queue of an eighteenth-century general stands in sunglasses and star-spangled shorts, spatula in one hand and the other raised, beside an eagle in sunglasses and a party hat whose apron reads GRILL SERGEANT. Hot dogs, corn and ribs fly overhead, red cups and a boom box sit on the grass, and Mount Rushmore looms behind in party hats.