If you grew up in Milwaukee, Independence Day hit different. There was a stretch when Milwaukee owned the Fourth of July.
Milwaukee has always been, simultaneously, both a small big city and big small city. Nothing captured this spirit quite like the Fourth of July in Milwaukee during the 60s.
Like many big cities, it had big fireworks. Downtown on the lake front. You had to camp out early in the day to claim a prime viewing spot. So families would picnic in the afternoon and await the big show. Only in Milwaukee this was done on July 3rd (Independence Day Eve) so you could view the big show fireworks and still have your individual Fourth of July celebration.
On the fourth itself Milwaukee would have a huge parade through downtown. But it was a parade with a twist. It was a circus parade. Circus parades were a strategy circuses used to entice customers. They would parade the animals and acts as they entered a new town. This was a natural fit for Milwaukee as Baraboo, Wisconsin was the home of, and the winter quarters of, Ringling Brothers Circus.
This was the brainchild of two enterprising Milwaukee promotors, Chappie Fox and Ben Barkin. The parade had marching bands, but it had so much more. Circus wagons, clowns, animals, calliopes, stilt walkers, trapeze artists, a 40 draft horse hitch (Budweiser who?) — basically an entire circus parading through downtown Milwaukee. It attracted hundreds of thousands of people every year.
And then there were the local celebrations. There would be individual parades in neighborhoods throughout the city, fifteen or so. Grade school bands, convertibles with local celebrities and politicians, the neighborhood fire department. You could either start at the beginning and march the whole route, or you could watch the parade instead and just jump in when your local school went past. These parades ended at Milwaukee County parks throughout the city, with free ice cream distributed at the finish. Because, well, free ice cream. At 9:30 in the morning.
Those parks would then have classic small town festivities: flag raisings, bike/trike/stroller decoration contests, a talent show. Families would picnic, barbecue, go for a swim in the park pool, play some softball, maybe rent a boat on the park pond, and generally wait until dark.
At some point during the day Milwaukee’s singing mayor, Henry Maier, would stop by each park and regale the attendees with slightly off key polkas.
Feeling some FOMO? Here’s a video of Mayor Maier singing one of his compositions.
Each of these fifteen parks would end the day with fireworks. Smaller scale than the big July 3rd fireworks, but most Milwaukee residents could watch them right from their own backyard.
It was a perfect confluence of events. Major league baseball was leaving Milwaukee and the city was starved for summertime activities. These traditions generated enough momentum in the 1960s to last well over fifty years.
In some ways Milwaukee became victim of its own success. It’s summers got too bountiful. In 1970 Milwaukee introduced Summerfest, a hugely popular musical festival (certified by Guiness as the world’s largest) that also ran through the fourth. Major league baseball came back with the Brewers and attracted large crowds.
Eventually, time and tide took their toll as well. The downtown fireworks had trouble finding sponsorship and have since been replaced by a (much cheaper) drone show; the Circus Parade kind of fell out of favor (parading wild animals on city streets); the local parades became shorter and the park festivities more modest (the county park system no longer the crown jewel it had once been). But there’s still free ice cream at the end of the parades (woe be it to the Mayor that tries to end that tradition!)
So, for the most part, Milwaukee lost its grip on Independence day. Still with some pomp and circumstance, but mostly not that different than the rest of the country.
But, there was a time …
