Today is Flag Day.
When I was a kid we rarely recited the Pledge of Allegiance in school, except for second grade, where Miss Gertrude Pennykamp required that we do it every day and sing patriotic songs.
I remember nothing else of second grade except that my teacher wore a wig and there were lots of purple mountain majesties, occasionally broken up with Home On the Range. I hated that year, and many of the students knew that forcing us to do the Pledge was wrong.
After all, the Berkeley City Council stopped reciting the Pledge during the Vietnam War and refused to recite it again for thirteen years. When they did, it made national news.
I can’t say that the flag was revered in our house, though it wasn’t reviled either. It was loved in our own special way — my dad had a very large flag that he used as a bedspread and later on an easy chair. I borrowed it for 4th of July picnics in San Francisco and for Toga Day at Berkeley High School. I knew someone who knew the guy whose flag burning case went to the Supreme Court and while I never found an appropriate moment to burn one, I always felt that banning burning would make a mockery of the freedoms that the flag symbolizes.
Now things are a little different. It was years before I knew that every day on base, they play the national anthem at 5pm. Everybody within earshot stops what they are doing, wherever they are. People stop jogging, stop pumping gas, and put down their cell phones for the duration. It is an unnerving site for the uninitiated.
I once pointed out to Elysia that it didn’t seem particularly safe for people to just stop in the middle of the road while driving. Her response:
It’s not about safety, it’s about respect.
I recently discovered that all of the kids at day care also stop whatever they are doing, if they are outside and can hear it. Only instead of covering their heart with their hand, they all clutch their stomachs. A little bit of Berkeley at Bolling Air Force base!
Miss Pennykamp died while I was in college and my mom sent me her obituary. Just as we suspected: Not From Berkeley. She was a Lutheran from Kansas, which possibly explained why she told my mom in a parent-teacher conference that “Mitja is a good student despite having come from a broken home.”
But little did she know how patriotic my mom is: She was born on Flag Day.
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