We used to shut the river down for raft races on the Fourth of July.

The fire department had a team. They called themselves the Hosers. A ragtag band of Mays Landing locals went by the River Rats, which told you everything you needed to know about them. The whole town showed up along the bulkhead of the Great Egg Harbor River with chairs and picnic baskets and their own food, their own drink, their own kids underfoot. Someone’s grandfather had a folding table that weighed forty pounds. Nobody cared.

It was the summer of 1976. America was turning 200, and the whole country showed up for it.

The networks called it the Bicentennial. Channel 10 in Philadelphia called themselves “Bicen-TEN” and ran it into the ground all summer in the best possible way. Grown men and women dressed in colonial-era clothing and nobody seemed embarrassed. Towns like mine put up plaques. There were evening balls, community lunches, whole calendars built around a shared national birthday. Every commercial on radio and television had red, white and blue stitched into it.

When dusk came to Mays Landing that July 4th, we watched fireworks over the river. Everyone. Together.

When the whole country showed up

I’m telling you this because Mount Holly just canceled its Fourth of July celebration. Not postponed. Canceled.

The event was free — live music, carnival rides, food vendors. The kind of day a town saves up for. But this year, township officials said they had been monitoring events across New Jersey that were canceled due to, in their words, “alarming violence.” The police department and the Police Benevolent Association sent a formal letter to the township manager. That letter, obtained by a local Substack reporter, cited a specific incident from last year’s celebration.

A child was knocked from a stroller during a fight between teenagers.

Let that sentence sit for a second.

A child. Knocked from a stroller. At a Fourth of July celebration. In New Jersey.

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Mt. Holly Municipal Building | Google MapsMt. Holly Municipal Building | Google Maps

A child knocked from a stroller

The PBA said the event has simply outgrown the township’s ability to manage it safely. Too many people. Not enough officers. No viable solution in the time available without significant additional cost to residents.

What makes this worse — somehow — is the dysfunction inside the decision. Two Mount Holly council members, Tara Astor and Kim Burkus, went public saying they were never informed of the cancellation by the township manager, the mayor, or the special events coordinator. Elected officials, learning about it the way the rest of us did. That is not a footnote. That is a governance failure layered on top of a public safety failure, and it deserves its own conversation at the next council meeting.

The failure inside the failure

None of this is Mount Holly’s fault in any meaningful sense. The town did not create the conditions that led to a baby being knocked out of a stroller by teenagers at a fireworks celebration. They are responding to a real problem that every town in New Jersey is now navigating. Some are adding security. Some are shortening hours. Some, like Mount Holly, are walking away from the event entirely, at least for this year.

But I keep coming back to 1976.

We were not naive that summer. The country had just come through Vietnam, through Watergate, through a decade that had torn things apart. The Bicentennial was not a celebration of a perfect nation. It was something more complicated than that — a decision, maybe, to mark the birthday anyway. To show up at the river with a lawn chair and a picnic basket and stay until the fireworks were done.

This summer, America turns 250. And a New Jersey town cannot safely throw a party.

What we lost, and what it costs

I don’t know what the answer is. More officers costs money towns don’t have. Metal detectors at a carnival feel like evidence of something broken. Telling families to stay home again carries a cost too, one that never shows up in a budget line.

What I know is that the people of Mount Holly did not deserve to lose their Fourth of July. And the child in that stroller last year did not deserve what happened to them.

We used to shut the river down for raft races.

20 Photos That Perfectly Capture Small-Town Life in the 1970s

Take a trip down memory lane — and down Main Street — with these photos from the 1970s that capture small-town life before social media and smartphones, when things were simpler, slower, and full of real-world experiences.

Gallery Credit: Stephen Lenz