OPINION: Land of the free, home of the mutts
Gotta say, I appreciated all the red-white-and-blueness of the past weekend. Caught a good fireworks show, saw friends, spent good time with family, saw a country music shindig on TV from Nashville, even watched the president trot out war vets to salute historic flags.
But nothing resonated quite as much as tacos.
Late lunch on the 4th of July, America's 250th. Taco Lucha, an Aggieville joint inspired by the Mexican version of pro wrestling, which is of course fakery. I had a couple of Nancys - pineapple juice mixed into Busch Light. Three tacos, one involving Buffalo chicken, one involving raspberry sauce, one involving bleu cheese and two involving bacon.
On the TV was the pregame from Philly - lots of images of a throng in front of Independence Hall - for a World Cup soccer game between France and Paraguay. On the sound system, at the precise moment I decided to pay attention to these details, was Led Zeppelin playing "Goin' to California," followed by "Simple Man," by Lynyrd Skynyrd. Heavy British rock band pining for a new start; the OG Southern rockers spinning out Mom's advice. Come to think of it, we walked in to "Shook Me All Night Long," Australians screaming about a one-nighter, and walked out to "Honky Tonk Women," Brits grooving about the same thing, a song written in Brazil about a gin-soaked barroom queen in Memphis. Two of my all-time favorite rock songs, coincidentally.
Never felt more American.
From the get-go, America has been a mishmash. The Puritans got out of Dodge because they didn't fit in. The colonists dumped a king, then won a war against him with the help of Louis XVI. Turns out the white guy who wrote the Declaration of Independence had six children with a black woman who was his slave. This train carries saints and sinners.
A nation of immigrants, including the "Natives," who evidently got here first by walking over a land bridge from Asia to Alaska, then making their way south.
The Stones, Zep, AC/DC, even Skynyrd: They're all derivative of Chicago blues, which traces to the Mississippi Delta. And that can be traced back to African work songs, and for that matter Appalachian folk. Brits, Australians and guys from Jacksonville, essentially repackaging and selling back to us what Americans created in the first place. Is it worth mentioning that the guys from Skynyrd met at a high school named for Robert E. Lee?
Tacos with Buffalo chicken. Pineapple juice dumped in cheap beer. An international competition of a global sport, beamed into a Mexican restaurant in northeast Kansas from the origin point of the Declaration of Independence.
The "melting pot" analogy is out of favor at the moment, but it's not wrong. Maybe a more accurate analogy is a "stew," where the flavors mix and enhance each other, while the ingredients don't entirely disappear.
We are, as Bill Murray put it in "Stripes," mutants. We're the wretched refuse. Our forefathers got kicked out of every decent country in the world. We're mutts.
For 250 years, we've not only made that work, we're far better off because of it. Feliz cumpleaños, paisanos. Allez, America. E pluribus unum.
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This story was originally published July 6, 2026 at 5:20 PM.