View from the North 40: What does your the flag fly for?

The overwhelming number of videos about the D.C. protest-turned-siege of the U.S. Capitol didn’t make me think of my grandpa until I saw an entirely unrelated video that seemed to complete the picture, like a Venn diagram with the American flag in the center.

I’ve written about Grandpa before, a gentleman with a warm heart, a quick humor and strong ethics.

The son of immigrants, one Irish and one German born on the boat over to the U.S., Grandpa loved life, so loved many things: a good joke, a cold beer, visitors, a hearty meal, home, the Golden Age of Hollywood and music ... well, you get the picture. Neighbors flocked to his and Grandma’s house and affectionately called Grandpa the mayor of their rural neighborhood.

Though Grandpa’s loves were many, his true loves were few: Grandma, family, friends and America.

The home surveillance video I watched this week shows a gray-haired man hobbling up to a residence to deliver an armload of packages. It looks like one of his hips and at least one knee would rather be spending the day relaxing in a hot tub, but he struggles to a knee to set the packages down carefully. And after standing and turning to leave he finds an American flag has fallen to the ground behind him. He takes the time and painful effort to retrieve the flag from the dirt, fold it in a tight, military proper triangle, set it on the packages. The delivery man finishes with an honor guard precise salute and turn before leaving.

I don’t know what it was about the man that made me think of Grandpa. The gray hair? The fact that the flag was taller than him so he had to stretch his arms above his head to keep it from touching the ground while folding it?

Maybe it was something in the man’s wide-hipped build and the shuffling gait. Not that Grandpa had any bad limbs or joints. He enjoyed 90 years of ridiculously good health – except for his eyesight, which succumbed in fits and starts to the effects of macular degeneration. It was his resulting blindness that caused his irregular but careful gait.

It certainly wasn’t because Grandpa was a package delivery man. He was a railroad man, loyal to the end to Northern Pacific Railway, even after NP merged with Burlington Northern Inc. – clearly without consulting Grandpa, who would’ve advised against a partnership with the riffraff.

Beyond being a family man and a railroad man, Grandpa was an American-made man. I suspect that, beyond having a loyal nature, it was due to his two year stint in the United States Armys 91st Division serving in the Italian Campaign during World War II.

He didn’t talk much about the war, preferring more lighthearted exchanges, loud card games, quiet time on the porch with Grandma, faithful service to his mother-in-law who lived next door for most of his married life, and a cold beer or two with friends.

He had hugs or handshakes, warm words, tall tales, teasing and jokes in equal measure for everyone. The jokes might be clean, asking you if you’ve ever noticed that geese flying south for the winter always have one side of their V flight pattern shorter than the other. Do you know why that is? “Well, scientists studied this phenomenon for years, decades even,” he’d say with sincerity, “and their conclusion is that there are more birds on one side than the other.” Or they might be unprintable in the local newspaper.

He’d check out your vehicle every visit and look askance at anything lacking a Ford, Chevy or Dodge emblem. I suspect he felt one benefit of going blind was not being able to see “Made in Somewhere-other-than-America” labels on products.

My Toyotas were tsk’d at, my husband’s temporary insanity, a Volkswagen Thing, was called a Kubelwagen, as if we’d just driven the Thing’s forebear straight off the fuhrer’s car lot. To be fair, though, he would have preferred an American Edsel over the allies’ Mercedes or Mini-Cooper, as well.

Not that he was a big-footed, braggadocios American. He’d paid the price, though, for his pride of place — had the Bronze Star and the flag folded in a tight triangle to show for it. But he’d watch “White Christmas” on TBS for the 500th time rather than a war documentary to keep the happiness coming and the nightmares at bay.

He had an electrical line trenched out to his flagpole at the front of the property so the Stars and Stripes could stay on display day and night, bathed in light as flag etiquette requires.

I don’t think it would’ve ever occurred to him to wear an American flag as a cape or scarf or head covering as people did on Jan. 6. Nor would he have written slogans on or printed someone’s smiling face over the Stars and Stripes. And he would’ve been furious, as he rarely was in his 90 good years, to have seen people claiming to be good Americans while displaying a campaign flag on an American flag pole, and using the American flag to beat officers and vandalize the Capitol building of the United States of America, his America.

I read two other stories to round out my American flag Venn diagram. In the early morning hours after the insurgents were cleared from the Capitol building, New Jersey congressman Andy Kim was himself down on the floor helping to clean up the mess left in their wake. In the following days, Navy vet David Smith, who told the Washington Post he was embarrassed that veterans participated in the insurrection, organized a group of fellow veterans from all branches of the military and all political views who came together to clean the insurgents’ trash and graffiti left strewn along Pennsylvania Avenue.

These are the kinds of Americans my grandpa would have joined forces with, the America he believed in, and the one for which he fought and flew the flag.

——

That’s all I have to say today at http://www.facebook.com/viewfromthenorth40.com .