A Geo-Oddity Holiday Celebration

I faced a dilemma on the 4th of July holiday this year. I’d celebrated in style last year with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to view the spectacular Washington, DC show from a rooftop balcony. How could I top that for Independence Day 2010? Well, the answer is I couldn’t. The only way I could improve upon that remarkable achievement would be to transform somehow into the guy who got to ignite all the fireworks.

That didn’t dissuade me from having a good time. We jumped at the opportunity when friends invited us to their home for some hospitality and to see the nearby City of Falls Church fireworks display. Followers of the Twelve Mile Circle might recognize that location. The City of Falls church is an important geo-oddity that anchors a major endpoint of a wide continuum: at two square miles, it is the smallest county-equivalent geographic unit in the United States. I was going to see the fireworks in a genuine geo-anomaly! Woo-hoo! Well sort of, kind of… read on.

The City of Falls Church presented a surprisingly decent fireworks display.

Falls Church, simply because it’s the smallest, is hugely important to people who focus on county-related geographic hobbies including Counters, Highpointers and Amateur Radio Hunters. I’m a relentless County Counter myself, as are several active participants on this website. I’ve even highpointed a few. I’ve personally highpointed the City of Falls Church, which isn’t much of a noteworthy achievement when someone happens to be in the area.

I’ve been within the actual borders of the independent City of Falls Church hundreds of times over the years. Still, l can’t seem to pass up an opportunity to document it. Here is a police trailer owned by the smallest county-equivalent geographic unit in the United States. Jealous yet? Therapy is available for those of you who answered "yes."

We walked over from the home of our friends to the the city’s only high school. Falls Church also has only a single middle school and two elementary schools. That’s all they need to cover the needs of their 11,000 residents. Such is life in a two mile square. In fact, Falls Church exists as an independent entity principally because the local residents wanted local control over these schools.

The fireworks would be best viewed from the high school football field.

People packed densely onto the surface of the football field, spreading out blankets and filling the artificial turf from one end to another, goalpost to sideline. It seems like a huge crowd but it’s deceiving. That’s the entire crowd.

It’s amazing to consider that several hundred thousand people were crowding the National Mall in Washington, DC, at that very moment, less than ten miles down the road. Here it seemed like small-town America, a scene replicated thousands of times across a great continent that same evening. If anything, this is the norm and the National Mall is the anomaly.

One might wonder how such a small city can sustain such an impressive display. Unfortunately it can’t. There won’t be a show next year due to budget cuts. It’s an extravagance that hit the chopping block in a tough economy. What will I do next year on July 4?

I’m going to tell you a little secret, but let’s keep it to yourselves. The City of Falls Church is so small that it doesn’t have room for a high school within its own boundaries. The parcel is contiguous with Falls Church but the school is actually located in neighboring Fairfax County.

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I’m not sure what kind of agreement had to be struck to allow that arrangement but I think this may count as a rare and coveted double geo-oddity. Falls Church is a genuine geo-oddity in its own right and the high school is a tangential oddity springing forth from the greater oddity.

A Capital Fourth

A rare opportunity dropped into my lap a few days before the July 4 Independence Day celebrations.

My family and I received an invitation to view the fireworks on the National Mall in Washington, DC. The vantage was a rooftop balcony only two blocks away from the action. A lifetime can pass without an offer such as this so I snapped it up immediately. Imagine the symbolic significance of being in a capital city as its nation celebrates independence and freedom with a rousing spectacle of light and sound.

Now, truth be told, I’ve attended this event before. However I’ve always watched from the grounds of the Iwo Jima Memorial or the Netherlands Carillon along the Arlington Ridge in Virginia. This is a nice elevation but it’s also about two miles away from the rockets’ red glare and the bombs bursting in air. This distance reduces much of the visual impact and it’s far enough away that the flash arrives noticeably before the boom.

I could never seem to rationalize going to the foot of the Washington Monument hours in advance to claim a prime spot, sitting out in the hot sun all day so I wouldn’t lose it, and sharing my personal space with several hundred thousand of my closest friends. Maybe that’s a sign of age. I dunno. I wasn’t all that tempted even when I was younger.

As with just about everything else I’ve discuss on the Twelve Mile Circle, there is also an underlying geographical dimension. A physical barrier, the Potomac River, stands between the fine people of the Commonwealth of Virginia and the grand firework show in the District of Columbia. The problem isn’t getting across the river so much as trying to return after the show as thousands of revelers hit the bridges and subway stations simultaneously. So for a variety of reasons I’d always been content to be on the "right" side of the river to avoid the mayhem, on the increasingly rare occasions I even made an effort to watch.

Now most of those excuses fell by the wayside. I could arrive whenever I pleased, evade the crowds, find ample space on a large balcony, and get the best seats in the house directly in front of the firework staging area. I could go inside the building if the weather turned nasty. I could even avoid those nasty porta-potties. Sure, I’d still have to fight the crowds after the show but I could withstand any of that with every other inconvenience and lame excuse removed.

The monuments began to glow as dusk approached, illuminated by floodlights along their base. Flashing and twinkling sprinkled the amassed crowd far below, from cameras and mobile phones recording the scene.

Tiny colored bursts appeared along the far southwestern horizon as distant towns in Maryland began their local celebrations. Suddenly rockets thundered to the sky without warning, their explosive force throwing sparks in concentric directions, accompanied by concussions of sound and vibration for the next twenty minutes.

It was an incredible show. I wish I could do it again.