Last Friday morning, I participated in an unusual volunteer project. Most of the working world was doing that which they are required to do: put in the hours for a paycheck. While others, of the sort who are perpetually thinking: 'it's five o'clock somewhere', in the same vein as starting weekends on Thursday afternoon, in an effort to whittle the work week down to four days, were either leaving town or thinking about diversions for the Memorial Day weekend.
I had responded to a request I found in my email looking for volunteers to help put out flags along the median of Victory Drive. There is apparently a group of veterans who have been organizing this project for several years, that erects a number of flagpoles and has dozens of American flags to fly on holidays. The group has been using young Army recruits in recent years, and had a problem with getting the young Infantry trainees this time around, so put out a call for locals to help with getting the poles with flags put out prior to the holiday. Being a person who so loves the stars and stripes, I tell people that is how to find my house: look for the mail box painted like Old Glory.
Naturally I would not pass up such a great opportunity. In responding to the email, I discovered the source to be a man who lives out north of town, and asked if I could meet and ride with him down to the veterans' center near the cemetery on Victory Drive. We met, and he, retired from Army as a full colonel and still looks like 'you'd better not cross him' but turns out to be a sweet, doting grandpa, drove us into town. There were about ten people all together - a pretty slim crowd, but adequate for the project. He hitched the wagon loaded with metal flag poles up to his truck and we started down the street. The city had installed pipes in the center of the median that the poles would be inserted in, and several guys, riding on the slow moving trailer put out the poles by each spot. My group. riding in the back of a second pick-up, with dozens of neatly folded flags, trailed behind. We unfolded a flag, and snapped it onto the clips on the pole, then three guys raised the pole and dropped it into the pipe to hold it erect.
Probably the length of a mile or so, from the turnoff into the Civic Center to what people still call The Traffic Circle, though there is no actual circle, but an intersection. There at the crossroads/traffic lights that mark the crossing of Victory Drive and Lumpkin Road, are a number of permanently placed flags that I understand the Army maintains and is responsible for. The ones our group raised line the median going northwest from that point up to the Veterans Center near the softball Commons sports complex.
The sight of all those brightly flapping, smartly snapping stripes, blowing in the breeze made me a bit weepy.
I thought about my dad, and how he would have loved to see it. How he would have delighted to hear me tell him about what a neat, moving, heart-touching experience it was. And how pleased he would be if he could see photos of that long line of brightly waving flags, with stars winking as the breeze picks up the fabric. Seeing those dozens of flags wave, with stripes of red and white popping in the wind, reminding every one who drives past: that's who we are, why all those service men and women do what they do, and what we have to be thankful for.
If you don't have tears running down your face by now, you should....we have so much, and so rarely take the time to realize what those things we enjoy every day really cost. Count your blessings, and tell your family how much you love them. Every single day.
I didn't get the photos someone was supposed to email me, so I will go out and take a picture of my mailbox, painted with stars and stripes for you to enjoy.
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