Do you remember those old Life magazine stories that attempted to create a slice of life profile of the United States? They were usually titled "A Day in the Life of America." They featured sentences like, "At 7:04 a.m. in Cleveland, Ohio, a convoy of 23 garbage trucks at the Cuyahoga County Sanitation Facility begin to fan out into the city's 48 boroughs, to collect what will before day's end be a mountain of 497 tons of trash."

These Life magazine stories were stirring. They made the commonplace heroic. They simultaneously made you appreciate the vastness of our continental republic and the commonness, even intimacy, of our national experience. Garrison Keillor wrote a parody of the formula in the New Yorker in 1975. It was titled, "How It Was in America a Week Ago Tuesday." It was so well done that my friend Steve and I wondered if it was really a parody. A couple of years later I had the chance to ask Keillor about the many "statistics" of the article: 4.6 million cans of soup, 160 million cigarettes, 40 million quarts of orange juice and 2 million plates of leftovers. "Made 'em up," he intoned in his best Wobegon voice. The plates of leftovers should have tipped me off.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if there were a way to create a precise and comprehensive profile of America for the Fourth of July weekend now ending, an exhaustive one-day cultural census of the United States on its 233rd birthday? If Thomas Jefferson could witness America this weekend from a lofty hot air balloon, what would he see? More to the point, what would he say? Would he weep for the American republic or shake his dreamy head in tolerant bemusement at the myriad of ways we have come to define the phrase, "the pursuit of happiness"?

How many bratwursts bit the dust this weekend? How many people experienced their first watercraft ride, ran their first marathon, assembled their first s'mores or attended their first Major League Baseball game? How many teenagers experienced their first furtive kiss this weekend? How many Americans hoisted or waved a flag? How many slept in a tent? How many people will be nursing a beety, painful sunburn tonight, shaking their heads at the folly of it all? How many Americans shot a bottle rocket? How many shot a gun?

Amber waves of grain. Purple mountains' majesty. America means wide open boundless space and rivers to make your heart ache with national pride.

It would be fascinating to have the weekend stats for the number of hot dogs eaten, and pounds of hamburger, and slices of cheese; for buns, brats, chicken wings, marshmallows, bottles and cans of beer, units of guacamole; for the national square footage of steaks, or (better yet) the length of all the steaks eaten this weekend laid end to end across America with a starting block at Mount Rushmore. How many of those steaks began their journey from creature to consumable on a ranch in western North Dakota?

Inquiring minds want to know.

If you added together the money value of all the food and fuel and stuff that has been consumed this weekend by America's 306,798,000 people, of which of the world's 192 countries would it equal the annual gross national product?

American means abundance.

How many bags of charcoal have been opened across America over the last three days? How many bags of ice? How many bags of potato chips? For that matter, how many bags of marijuana?

America means freedom not unmixed with a streak of misrule and anarchy.

If all the gunpowder in all the fireworks detonated over America this Fourth of July were put into a single barrel, how large would that barrel be and what could it blow up? (Would it finish the Crazy Horse Monument or merely smooth his war-weary forehead?) How many Americans are saying that this was the best fireworks display they ever saw? And how many have preferred to remember a Fourth of July long ago when the world was a magical place and red Radio Flyer wagons and homemade ice cream were the marker of the holiday and the measure of happiness?

How many Band-Aids have been applied across American in the last 72 hours with a kiss and words of comfort? How many casts have been set by doctors called away from picnics and pontoons, ball games and the Boston Pops?

How many Independence Day babies were born this year? How many of the newborns were named Thomas Jefferson Schamansky or Thomas Jefferson Xiong? Or Liberty or Freedom Malloy?

America means diversity.

How many prayers have been spoken this weekend for our troops in Iraq (141,000), in Afghanistan (32,000), in South Korea (26,339); for the men and women serving their country at the 820 military installations in more than 40 countries worldwide? How many Americans have died in uniform this weekend? Imagine those calls.

America, in the 21st century, means empire. Mr. Jefferson would not have liked that at all.

How many times, in how many places, did citizens hear Lee Greenwood's patriotic anthem "God Bless the USA" and how does that compare to the frequency of the song's performance on the Fourth of January or the fourth of October?

How many weddings were performed across America on Saturday? How many of those occurred in the six states that have legalized same-sex marriage?

America means tolerance.

How many men in bolo ties or top hats or funny wigs stood before a crowd of patriots Saturday and read aloud the preamble of the Declaration of Independence? How many featured speakers tried to articulate what it is about America that is so amazing, so inspiring, so breathtaking, so free, so important to the world, and got choked up and left the podium feeling a little embarrassed?

How many people, born in how many countries, became naturalized U.S. citizens Saturday? I know that 66 people, from 35 countries, took the oath at Jefferson's Monticello in its 47th annual naturalization ceremony. Seeing that ritual in that place is high on my bucket list.

How many people at some point during the weekend looked up from whatever they were doing, in the midst of the celebratory hoopla or the sheer relaxation of a sandbar, and said, "My God, I love this country. I'm so glad to be an American"?

I know I did.

America is still the last best hope of the world.

(Clay Jenkinson can be reached at Jeffysage@aol.com.)