For one who was born and grew up in the small towns of the Midwest, there is a special kind of nostalgia about the Fourth of July. I remember it as a day almost as long-anticipated as Christmas. This was helped along by the appearance in store windows of all kinds of fireworks and colorful posters advertising them with vivid pictures. No later than the third of July—sometimes earlier—Dad would bring home what he felt he could afford to see go up in smoke and flame. We’d