THE FUTURE IS HISTORY IN A LATER EPISODE

I took a walk the other day…and I saw this strange object which had landed upon a field. What on Earth is it?  How does it work? It has no screens. No place to insert a credit card. No cords that I can see. How did it get here? Is it an omen? What is next? Is it safe to take walks anymore? Maybe I should  stay inside and just watch news.

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Memoiresque:

I really don’t remember much about a flag in my life – in my youth. In my schooling we had quasi religious experiences…we’d gather in a common room and sing a hymn on Monday mornings and Friday afternoons.  The Headmaster, or some Teacher, would get up and stand in front of a lectern and read something from a bible… I remember hearing about “Yea, Though I walk in the Valley of Darkness, I shall fear no evil.”…Something like that. No harm. No foul. But no flag stuff. Somehow, though, I learned the flag was not supposed to stay out at night. (Like me) and it was to be folded  carefully…but I think I only saw that happen in movies, or on the news when some soldiers were doing it. I also knew it was not to touch the ground. That would be like a sin; letting it touch the ground. 

I went all the way through college without ever really seeing any flag activity – as far as I recall. 

Oh, I guess there was a flag you could see before  professional baseball games. It seemed to me, at those times, people were waiting for the song and the hand over the heart and the flag out there past Center Field …for that whole ceremony to be done so we cold get on with the hot dogs, peanuts and all…

Then I went in the Army. We marched all the time in Basic Training at Fort Knox. There was always a flag Standard Bearer posted in front of our unit as we marched along. “Standard Bearer! Ready! Up!”… And the Standard Bearer would raise high the flag, which was on a staff, and off we’d go to Sargent Braxton’s deep basso cadence calling as we’d march for hours and hours…learning how to “Double Time”, “Left Oblique” and “Right Oblique”, always keeping in step and if we wanted we could see the flag way up in front bobbing along …the flag was not really much of an event – compared to Braxton’s great loud version of  “Sound off…cadence count…”I had a girl way out west/ thought the Army life was best/ now I’m marching the rest of my life/ and she’s somebody else’s wife…Sound off …Standard’s bearer …prepare to rest…” and then we’s see the flag no more  – until we set off on another march to nowhere.…

Next, I left the Army and went to New York and got a job on Wall Street…. and I did not see a flag for a year or so. If there was one hanging off the New York Stock Exchange, or the Treasury building, I never noticed. Then the Musical… the anti-Vietnam play “Hair” made it to Broadway …and they took a flag on the stage and they dropped it on the ground – stage floor, center front –  and they burned it – to the shock of the audience… It was an anti-‘Vietnam war’ activity…I think that was the first time I took the idea of the flag seriously. So, entertainment can be a good thing.

When George “W” ran for President was the first time I saw the flag as a symbol for how much someone can love his country. ‘W” had flags all over the place when he campaigned, and whenever he gave a speech or planned to be in public. That’s when I first started to think “Uh, oh” with the flag business…..and he won, or came so close to winning they let him win anyway. And then we went to Iraq…and the country went flag mad. …deep in the heart. But wait. That was nothing…Then came Trump…I saw a clip of him hugging the flag. …And saying how much he loved the flag….and he hugged the flag as if it were a porn star…and I, for the first time really, truly believed the flag had become a Right- Wing thing …Baseball games and Basic Training marches be damned. I would drive down a road to anywhere and if I saw a flag in front of a house, or a flag decal on a car …I suspected I would not like the man inside…and that he would not like me…If I sit in a coffee house and see someone wearing a shirt or a hat with a flag on it – I know not to talk to that person because…because that is the way it has become…and then I think of that quote by Keith Richards “I don’t wave a flag for anything. I’m a
musician.”…I agree, even though I can’t sing or play the guitar…

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Some Quotes:

• “You’ll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race.” ~ George Bernard Shaw
• “Never Wrestle with pigs. you both get dirty and the pig likes it.” -George Bernard Shaw
• “Your Flag Decal won’t get you into heaven  anymore, their already overcrowded from your dirty little war/now Jesus don’t like killin/ No matter what the reasons for/and your flag decal won’t get you into heaven any more.  -John Prine

That’s it for the week…and a fond  “Hello” to Caroline & William, wherever you are.

C. E. Metzger

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