Word: fifes
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Like a sudden swarm of 200-year locusts, commemorative kitsch is appearing everywhere: plates, mugs and glasses decaled with an eagle or the likeness of George Washington or John Adams or the flag or Archibald Willard's familiar Revolutionary fife-and-drum trio.* Businessmen are offering patriotic yo-yos, ties, music boxes, telephones, costumes, clocks, T shirts and egg timers. Even foreigners are getting in on the act. Many inexpensive Bicentennial items-though the ads, of course, never say so-are made in Taiwan or Japan. British Airways advertises: "You gave us the business 200 years ago, America. Here...
Many Bicentennial promotions are having early success. "Anything under $5 sells like crazy," says Jamie Goodchild, proprietor of Heritage Shop in Boston's historic Faneuil Hall. He stocks inexpensive "antique" flasks, walking sticks and fife-and-drum records along with quality pewter. But there are doubts over all the Bicentennial schlock...
...whose own "flintlock" rifle promotion is not living up to expectations-perhaps because of proliferation of Bicentennial products. Doubtless anticipating such a reaction, Crestline, a well-established maker of colonial furniture, has come out with what might be called an anti-Bicentennial ad. Beneath a photo of the familiar fife-and-drum trio marching off into the mist with backs turned to the camera, the ad asserts: "Soon 1976 will be gone, along with the bicentennial. All the hooplas will be over. And all the guys who made a fast buck in Early American furniture will be looking for something...
Ryan's Yorktown Tune. If Oh, Kay! isn't American enough for you, you can check out this "Bicentennial play" commissioned by Tufts in honor of the occasion. Don't expect any of the typical fife-drum-and-bugle-stars-and-stripes hoopla, though. This play reportedly addresses the question, "Do people make revolutions or do revolutions make people?" and the plot concerns a cowardly Boston barman who is forced to become a revolutionary because he needs the money and because Sam Adams threatens to put a bullet through his head. The script isn't flawless, but the production...
...cream of the 1975 crop was shepherded through Harvard Yard yesterday by fife-and-drum players on the way to two hours of Literary Exercises in Sanders Theater during the Phi Beta Kappa induction ceremony...