One of my favorite Bicentennial things were the fire hydrants painted red white and blue. It took a while before they were all painted back to yellow. By the mid-80s I remember finding a lone holdout hiding deep within an apartment complex when I went to visit a friend.
I gave my mother a paint-by-numbers of kittens and it came out very expressionist — as if it was less a painting of kittens and more like a painting about what it feels like to be a kitten.
And she’s gone for good.