GLASGOW has always had an affinity with America.

We even have two statues of cowboys - Buffalo Bill in full bucking bronco mode outside a housing development in Dennistoun, and Lobey Dosser, albeit a cartoon cowboy, astride his two-legged horse on Woodlands Road.

The Buffalo Bill creation might seem obscure until you realise that William F Cody pitched his Wild West show in Dennistoun for four months in the early 1890s. The cowboys and Indians quickly became acclimatised. Buffalo Bill turned up at a Rangers game, and show performer Charging Thunder spent 30 days in the nick charged with assault after getting drunk at Hogmanay. He claimed his lemonade had been spiked with whisky.

The bronze cast of Lobey Dosser, the surreal cartoon creation of newspaperman Bud Neil, was financed by Herald readers, inspired by diarist Tom Shields who thought Lobey should be memorialised. It is beyond beguiling that Glasgow would honour a cartoon creation.

So surely American Independence Day on Friday would be marked in Glasgow, particularly as the main constituents of Independence Day stateside are fireworks and food, which never go out of popularity in Glasgow. It was a Glaswegian expat now living in Los Angeles who told me: "The Fourth of July - when we get to play our favourite American guessing game - was that fireworks or gunshots?"

Edinburgh of course has the US Consulate General whose Principal Officer Zoja Bazamic held a reception in the Sheraton Hotel for friends and contacts. My consul insider tells me: "They enjoyed an American-themed food and drinks menu and Dixieland jazz music." So it doesn't sound like an affair where the local constabulary would be called to deal with crazed individuals fired up by whisky-spiked lemonade.

The National Library of Scotland did its bit to mark Independence Day by putting on display two documents from its US collection dating back to 1797. One was a dinner invitation from President George Washington to a British Minister, Robert Liston, and his wife Henrietta. The other was a page from Henrietta's diary describing the dinner.

But what about Glasgow? Well the American-themed diner TriBeCa - it's a New York acronym for Triangle Below Canal Street - was giving away hamburgers on the Fourth of July. I did hear of a diner in Wishaw which was in the Rectangle Towards Motherwell which thought about calling itself RecToM, but decided against it.

But I was looking for something more authentically American so tried the Deep Inn at Kelvinbridge which launched its American beer festival on the fourth. True, you could drink that fine San Franciso beer Anchor Steam at the Inn, but the customers were more intent on watching the France v Germany World Cup game than celebrating America's independence or its breweries. Before half time two American girls arrived for dinner, and one patriotically ordered Brooklyn lager, brewed of course in New York. "Typical Americans," I thought, very uncharitably, "always turning up late when France is up against Germany."

It was in another Glasgow pub, I recall, that an American tourist was confused when he ordered a whisky, held it up, and asked the barman: "Am I supposed to drink this neat?"

"Naw, you're awright in jeans and a T-shirt," he replied.

However, just a short walk from the Deep Inn is an impressive connection between Glasgow and the US. Glasgow University is where Fife-born James Wilson, a signatory of the US Declaration of Independence, studied. He also had a significant role in drafting the US Constitution, and was one of the original justices appointed by George Washington to the Supreme Court.

The fact he went on to make some spectacularly bad investments and died penniless after a spell in a debtor's jail seems to add to his Scottishness.

Actually Wilson's main argument was that America had no representation at the British Parliament and should not be forced to pay taxes it had no control over. He did not, however, see a problem with an independent America retaining the British monarch. So perhaps he was the Alex Salmond of his day.

Nor does the Glasgow Uni connection stop there. More famous American Founding Father Benjamin Franklin visited the university twice. He later wrote about the extremes of wealth in Scotland, and the irony of barefoot workers making shoes and stockings for export. On a more practical level he suggested that the university put up lightning rods to reduce the chance of a ruinous blaze. Shame he wasn't around later to give some fire prevention tips to the School of Art.

The main objection to American independence at the time was from Glasgow's merchants who found their lucrative tobacco trade disrupted by the war between Britain and the United States leading up to independence. They even paid for a regiment of soldiers to be raised, the Royal Glasgow Volunteers, who went off to the war, although even that start was disrupted by a group of Highlanders in their ranks who mutinied as they thought they were joining a Highland regiment, and felt they had been misled.

So no American flag waving at the Deep Inn, just a bottle or two of American beers. Despite Glaswegians' love of many things American, Independence Day celebrations in Glasgow were more of a damp squib than a full fireworks display.