NEW PEKIN, Indiana — “Oldest Consecutive 4th of July Celebration,” proclaims the banner over this small town 45 miles northwest of Louisville.
Dean Weller could see the banner from where he was sitting on Saturday morning as distant drums teased the parade. He was waiting for one man to hang a left at the paved-over train tracks and bring the first flag down Route 60. “There’s Jeff!” Weller said, standing as the town marshal’s pickup rounded the corner — a flag flying from its hitch.
The Star-Spangled Banner already hung from most buildings that comprise the town’s five main blocks, but Jeff Thomas’s was among the biggest.
Peering through smoke coming off a barbecue with dozens of chickens, Weller waved at kids running with red-and-white top hats. In the parade were two torpedoes, and floats for each girl competing to be named the town’s Fourth of July queen. The high school girls’ basketball team, fresh off a state championship, fired lollipops at the crowd.
The nation’s “oldest” celebration gives Pekin — as locals call the town —something more on Google than the 2012 tornado that wrecked it. For a town that’s more used to people leaving, the Fourth brings a few thousand visitors, many of them former residents coming home for the holiday.
Some are drawn by the claim that this celebration in the middle of America has been going longer than any other in the country.
Both Thomas, 68, and Weller, 80, have been participating for decades.
They both grew up when the trains rolled regularly through Pekin, bringing logs from the southern Indiana hills to sawmills in town. Each year for the Fourth, Thomas called the railroad to hold the trains for Pekin’s parade.
Now, just one sawmill remains. The trains stopped coming in 2010. Some 95 percent of Pekin residents work out of town, mostly in Louisville or its suburbs. Thomas, as town marshal (a kind of police officer), and Weller, a former school principal, had two types of work that kept them in town.
They’ve stayed connected even as they have developed different feelings about America — and different understandings of the veracity of their town’s myth.
Thomas believes the Pekin celebration has been going on since 1830, based on a town history compiled in 1916 and local lore.
Weller, who is known as a keeper of town history, doubts that. He owns a copy of an oration delivered for the 1855 Fourth of July, the oldest record of the celebration in Pekin.
Other American towns also claim to have the oldest continuous celebration. Among them, residents of Bristol, Rhode Island, seem to have the most documentation. They claim to have celebrated Independence Day continuously since 1785. Bristol’s festival website lists speakers, staff and even participating naval ships for most of those years. For other years, there are newspaper accounts mentioning celebrations.
Two days before the Fourth, Thomas sat on Weller’s couch in Pekin, his crossed legs hiding a belt buckle emblazoned with “America 250.” As the conversation veered toward politics, Thomas said the focus should remain on how Pekin celebrates independence.
“Look at the bigger picture,” Thomas said, as Weller reclined into a chair. “We have a heritage here. It’s the celebration of the Fourth of July. Does that make sense?”
Weller dropped his gaze from Thomas and forced a smile. Finally, he nodded.
The celebration in Pekin began Friday, culminating in a nighttime fireworks show. Minutes after the official display ended, an informal contest began: who can shoot off the last rocket in town.
Several houses along the main street fired firecrackers high into the night sky, even as ash and debris floated down. If one house released a flurry, another would follow.
Kyle Taylor shot dozens of fireworks — even sideways toward a nearby park — earning cheers from onlookers.
“It’s our patriotic duty to set off the fireworks,” he said.
Then on Saturday, the parade ambled behind Thomas and his flag for a little more than an hour.
It finished near the town funeral home, a space that the Crockett sisters use each year to host a family reunion. All three, in their 70s, had moved away but came back — along with 50 relatives — for the “Oldest Consecutive Celebration.”
Leanne Crockett Helton sported an American-flag decorated phone case. It matched the flags printed on tablecloths in the funeral home, on Thomas’s leather boots and most everywhere else one could look.
As the reunion filled on Saturday, family members passed around American flag pins. One sister posed for photos with her grandson and two grandnephews, all wearing shirts with some version of the motto “Descendant of a Patriot.”
For the parades that Thomas and Weller shared, there’s records and old photographs. There’s a grainy print of a young Weller playing the fife. Another of him at a lectern, reading the Declaration of Independence. Or maybe the Constitution? He can’t remember.
“The preamble or something?” Thomas offered.
“It just says ‘Dean’ on the back,” Weller said, flipping the photograph in his hand. “Probably, the preamble.”
And, of course, there’s always the souped-up Ford, at the parade, known as Leapin’ Lena, that would rear up and spin around every year.
“Pay attention to me!” Thomas said, before miming the motion, throwing his hands up and head back.
Weller stays home most days with his husband, both of them in stalemates with prostate cancer. They married in Canada and again in Los Angeles, but never in Indiana, where he is comfortable living a private life. Some things in Pekin, he said, are best left unspoken.
On Saturday, Weller wore a Hawaiian shirt, mostly tropical patterns with a few American flags printed on it. He sat in the shade, near three of his brothers, all of whom had come from out of town.
As the floats drove past, Weller again looked back toward the cemented train tracks, waiting for another car to hang a left on Route 60.
“Leapin’ Lena!” he exclaimed. “There she is.”
Just as Thomas had promised, the flag-painted, souped-up Ford kicked back and spun around. Once again, Weller smiled.
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