CSotD: Our tattered ensign
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Last week I was walking past a local rec center and saw that the flag was at half-mast. I searched my brain but couldn't come up with a reason, but someone was just coming out and so I asked.
He didn't know either and I thought about going in and asking the people at the front desk, but I didn't really care that much.
Probably some long-time gym member had died. None of the other flags in town were lowered.
Didn't matter. The flag almost seems to be at half-mast more often than full these days.
It used to be that, when we dropped the flag to half-mast, it meant that something massive had happened and you certainly didn't have to ask what it had been. It was something so important that we all knew why the flag had been snapped to the top of the staff sharply as always, but then slowly lowered halfway.
Now we drop the flag over any death — local, state or national — and the gesture has become so automatic that it has no real significance anymore.
Kirk Walters's cartoon, then, hearkens back to a time when the President, himself a veteran of the war for which the day was set aside, could comment on the significance of lowering the flag and his words on the topic would carry power, because the gesture, and the day, carried power.
I wasn't able to find a source for the quote, which means I can't put it in context, as I can the immortal speech his fellow veteran, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., gave in 1884, in Keene, NH, which is to say, about midway between the conclusion of his service to the nation in battle and the beginning of his service to the nation as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
In that speech, known by the phrase "Our hearts were touched by fire," Holmes spoke of the special bond among veterans, including those of both sides, and, if you look through the old papers of the 1880s and '90s, you'll see stories of reunions at places like Chickamauga, where GAR and CSA veterans met without rancour or grudges, as men who, in their youth, shared a common, shattering but ennobling experience.
We see that again in the stories of vets who go back to Vietnam, though, of course, those who cannot approach it on that level presumably do not make the trip, whether to Georgia or to Quang Tri.
Holmes spoke, too, of "those lovely, lonely women, around whom the wand
of sorrow has traced its excluding circle — set apart, even when
surrounded by loving friends who would fain bring back joy to
their lives."
The Civil War created not just a lost generation of young men, but a generation of young women in black, widowed not at 60 and 70 but at 18 and 24, who became a symbol of sacrifice during and even after the war, whether they wanted to be symbols or not. They had a sad and, as Holmes noted, an excluded existence.
And so I'd like to know the full context of Harrison's quote, because he echoes Holmes in speaking of the pride and joy and privilege of having been there, and that joy is a joy that means something profoundly different to those who have served, and have seen.
Which brings us back to the flag itself, and the strange way in which we have both raised it up as a symbol while cheapening it at the same time.
I not only remember when the flag was not lowered to half-mast every time somebody's dog was run over, but I remember when it was taken down entirely at sunset or when it rained.
Specifically, I remember sitting in class and seeing, out the window, the head custodian go out to take in the flag as the first drops of rain fell. He was a good guy, but he was no more noble or patriotic than anyone else. When it rained, you took in the flag. That was just how it worked, no more remarkable a gesture than rolling up the windows of your car, though one he rarely passed off to anyone else.
Schools were one of the very few non-federal buildings that flew the national flag in those days. When I took my drivers' test in 1967, it involved going to the county seat some 40 miles distant, a large town I wasn't all that familiar with. So, when the instructor said, "Turn left at the post office," my response was "Where's that?" and his quick, semi-exasperated answer was, "At the flag."
And I did feel like an idiot, because of course you could find the post office by looking down the street for the flag or, if it were raining, the empty flagpole.
That sure wouldn't work today, now that every car dealer hangs a flag every 20 feet down the street on his lot, and where flags fly outside of hardware stores and groceries and pizzerias, as well as fire stations and police stations. All through the day, all through the night, in sunshine and in rain and blizzards, and often until they are so faded and tattered that you wonder if the owners ever look up at them at all.
I came across an archived wire story once from the early 70s, in which it said police and fire departments were questioning the addition of US flags to their uniforms, since they were not federal employees and served at the pleasure of city, county or state officials.
Many of the people protesting this emerging love-it-or-leave-it gesture were veterans.
So I don't know when Benjamin Harrison said this thing about the flag flying proudly, but considering he died in 1901, he said it at a time when the flag was reserved for places and moments that mattered, and when flying it at half-mast was a dramatic and well-thought-out gesture.
Today, we drop the flag to half-mast with little consideration for the significance that the gesture once held, and we put it on advertising flyers and we use it on bumperstickers to declare we are more patriotic than our neighbors and we hand out cheap little plastic flags along parade routes, so they can be waved for a few moments and then tossed into the trash or dropped in the gutter.
We show our patriotism by flying the flag outside every business every day, and then staying open for business on Memorial Day.
Rain or shine.
Mike Peterson has posted his "Comic Strip of the Day" column every day since 2010. His opinions are his own, but we welcome comments either agreeing or in opposition.
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