It took me about fifteen seconds to walk around the fireworks tent. I was looking for one thing: firecrackers. Now, I knew we couldn't get the real firecrackers in town, but I thought maybe Ladyfingers or something like that would be available. I still had a big sack of fireworks from earlier years, but no firecrackers--just sparklers, ground spring flowers and little bits and pieces of other things.

"So you guys can't sell firecrackers?" I asked the girl at the pay table. She didn't even look at me.

"They're too loud for the city," she said. I was, probably, the 1,087th person that day who asked this question. You could buy a mammoth assortment of aerials and cones and the like for $499 (worth over $800!), but nothing that might make a crack louder than clapping your hands.

Luckily, in Albuquerque, lots of people have guns. It's a perfectly suitable substitute (apparently--since buying ammunition and firearms is not against the law) for firecrackers. And we will hear gunshots ring out all weekend.

Earlier, while in line to check out at Wal-mart, I heard a gruff voice say, "This one! This one right here!"

An old man, at least in his 60s if not older, pushed a shopping cart to the end of an Express line. He had an all-in-one camera in the cart. These cameras were displayed in a wheelbarrow near the entrance of the store. A young, early 20s, Hispanic girl wearing barely-there powder blue shorts and a tight white t-shirt sided up to the old man and put a half eaten bag of potato chips on top of the camera. They bickered under their collective breath for a few seconds. And then they walked away from the cart and out the door. No one stopped them as they left, and I gave the scene a little smile.

I'm not sure if its shoplifting to eat half a bag of potato chips and then walk out on the bill.

It's hard to say what the laws are these days. There are so many of them, and they contradict each other on occasion.

On any given day, I break a few laws. I speed, go through lights turning red, let my front lawn area grow outside of the lines, and occasionally smoke a plant many paint as the downfall of the Western Civilization. My doctor, however, says my occasional smoking is "just fine." I haven't been pulled over by a cop in four years. I have received notice from the city about the weeds and vines in my front yard--although not this year. My roommate and I (along with our landlord) did get shit from the old lady next door, though.

We, in America, like to talk about freedom. Freedom means a lot of things to a lot of people. Sometimes freedom is a hundred cops in riot gear. Sometimes freedom is standing on top of a mountain and not being able to see another living person. Sometimes freedom is running a red light. Other times freedom is having a first beer with your fifteen year old son.

Right now, freedom is listening to Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Fortunate Son" while I write about things free.

Personally, I think there are way too many laws meant only to limit the personal freedom of the citizens of America. Social laws which try to mold a nation's morality through legislation. It makes all of us lawbreakers--sometimes on a daily basis. And yet, I've never been put in jail.

Maybe it's because underneath all of these laws and regulations and permits and agreements, we all understand part of freedom is looking the other way.

There are a lot of things about this country I don't like. I write about them from time to time. Me writing about them is freedom. Those people who do the things that piss me off is freedom. Encompassing both of these opposing forces is America. Which, I think, is actually bigger than freedom--and why the government feels the need to restrict freedom.

In the end, America is bigger than the sum of its laws and leader, war and peace, supreme court judges and confidential sources.

America is everything we actually are and everything we want to be.

Sometimes it is the most beautiful thing in the world.

And sometimes you can't buy firecrackers.

Matt Worley is free.