When I was a boy, I was predisposed to patriotism. My Catholic school put God before country, but the authorities went into a secular rapture when John F. Kennedy became the first Irish-Catholic president.
The Boy Scouts taught me to handle the flag like something sacred. Folding it properly was a serious and solemn act, almost beyond me, a boy with dirty fingernails and a loosey-goosey approach to precision.
As for the flag, we were never to let it touch the ground. It was not supposed to fly in darkness without illumination. If we happened to be chosen someday as the U.S. Olympic team flag bearer, we were forbidden to dip the flag when we marched in front of the podium. The U.S. didn’t bow to anyone, especially Olympic officials who tolerated East German judges who had it in for us, giving ridiculously lousy scores to our heroes who had been raised on truth, justice and American Wheaties, the “Breakfast of Champions.”
I approved of this sentiment, although it did not seem likely that I would ever make the Olympics, unless they had a competition in daydreaming. I briefly tried Wheaties, but I preferred Cheerios, the breakfast of sugar addicts. With bags of Domino sugar at the ready, my whole grain oats floated in a sea of sucrose. America, sweet America.
Although I didn’t take naturally to musicals — the idea of bursting into song seemed foreign to my life of riding bikes, tossing baseballs and running through sprinklers — I did like one that was rerun on TV (in glorious black and white) from time to time. Yankee Doodle Dandy starred James Cagney, who had street cred from his gangster movies. Who was I to say this real man shouldn’t sing and tap dance? He moved like a baseball shortstop making the double play.
There was something about his cocky style that appealed, and opened the door to acceptance of another musical, Damn Yankees, at its heart (for me) a baseball movie. I could only barely comprehend the seduction song, Whatever Lola Wants, and what she might do to get it.
Yankee Doodle Dandy was a Hollywood firecracker version of the life of Irish-American George M. Cohan, of whom it was said that he “owned Broadway.” He wrote over 300 songs and 50 musicals. Today he would have reality TV shows and be brilliant on Twitter. His songs included show-stoppers Grand Old Flag, Over There and Give My Regards to Broadway — and the less stirring Shoes That Hurt and You Remind Me of My Mother.
Cohan was born on the East Side of Providence, R.I., not far from where my father had owned a gas station. One day my dad, who didn’t say much about his Irish heritage, drove me past Cohan’s modest birthplace and said nice things about him. There was a little plaque on the house. His obituary in The New York Times said he was perhaps the greatest song and dance man in Broadway history.
When Cagney sang (as Cohan), full-throated patriotism seemed plausible. It was a “grand old flag” and he was “a Yankee Doodle Dandy, a real live nephew of my Uncle Sam, born on the Fourth of July …”
The New York Times obit said Cohan was indeed born on the Fourth, though his actual birth certificate said July 3. Oh, well. Go with the better version I suppose.
All of this is a meandering introduction to the major issue of recent days, about whether we can truly celebrate flag and country when America’s history is replete with sins and injustices that continue to this day. I have to admit my assurance is shaken by inhuman gun violence, politics of contempt and likely sedition, and a calculating Supreme Court majority of 18th-century reenactors. All sides are riled. We are the United States of Grievances.
Monday night, July 4, we went to the concert in Colburn Park in Lebanon, and then watched Hartford fireworks from the Lyman Bridge over the Connecticut River in West Lebanon. From there, the booms were muffled, but fierce flashes of light reflected on the water, bringing to me the same old feeling of something good, memories of something exceptional.
I hear those who say the flag is something they cannot revere, a growing sentiment and a national misfortune. Rather than shake fists in return in anger, and declare we are the greatest so love us or leave us (this becomes all too personal), we’d do better to listen to their stories and think about whether and how they can ever be made whole.
Or how all of us can be made whole, really.
Dan Mackie lives in West Lebanon. He can be reached at dan.mackie@yahoo.com.
