In the summer of 1976, I was a seventeen-year-old who would soon travel to Europe for a month. This meant I would miss America’s 200th birthday bash. By the time our group of high school students and chaperones flew out of Billy Mitchell Airport in Milwaukee in late June, the buzz surrounding the Bicentennial hummed in the air. Having studied both Spanish and German in high school, I was excited to see Europe, but I was also sad about missing the Bicentennial. The next big celebration would be America’s 300th birthday, and I knew I’d never live to see that one. I didn’t know that a semiquincentennial celebration would be a big deal: I’d never even heard of the word.

On July 4, 1976, when our tour group arrived in Rome, we were given a choice about how we wanted to spend the Fourth of July. We could attend a professional ballet performance or an evening picnic followed by fireworks sponsored by the American Embassy. I chose the picnic and fireworks because if I couldn’t be in the States for the Bicentennial, I could at least be with a group of patriotic Americans eating scrumptious picnic food and watching extravagant fireworks.

It was the worst Fourth of July celebration I ever attended. The food was second-rate, the fireworks were average, and the park was peppered with litter. I grew up inspired by Lady Bird Johnson and the Keep America Beautiful campaign. Every spring and fall my sisters and I pulled our red wagon up and down our road and picked garbage out of the ditches. I yelled at friends who threw litter out of car windows. The inconsiderate Americans who couldn’t put their trash in the garbage can embarrassed me, and before the fireworks started, I regretted skipping the ballet.

At the time I saw the embassy picnic as a lackluster celebration that didn’t match the significance of two centuries of democracy. In hindsight it strikes me that American democracy has a long history of casting aside many of its citizens, like the discarded rubbish I saw dropped by patriotic Americans who somehow felt entitled to litter someone else’s park. Patriotism isn’t about eating a hotdog or watching fireworks or boasting about being the absolute best and greatest ever. Patriotism should be about loving a country that embraces equality, justice, and opportunity for all. Patriotism should be about learning from your country’s mistakes. Patriotism should never be about blindly following leaders who trade in rhetoric that elevates one group of people at the expense of other groups of people.

Years later my mother-in-law took me to my first ballet, The Nutcracker. I loved everything about it—Tchaikovsky’s music, the graceful dancers, the whimsical costumes, the enchanted scenery. And once again, I regretted missing the ballet in Rome on July 4, 1976.

But I realize that by choosing to attend the Bicentennial celebration at a park in Rome, littered with hot dog wrappers, chip bags, paper plates, wads of napkins, and plastic silverware, I learned something about patriotism: It’s okay to love your country, but don’t allow it to toss trash. Let’s be kind. Let’s remember democracy is inclusive. Choose the beauty of the ballet.

Happy Fourth of July.

[A version of this piece first appeared in Tales of Travel, an anthology published by the University of Minnesota-Duluth in 2023. It was part of a longer essay titled “European Tour 101.]