Flags galore: So proudly we hail as vote nears...

American Flag-Wikipedia

Written by Jim Heffernan for the DuluthNewsTribune/11-2-24

 Well, it’s almost over. Election day voting is Tuesday in the most contentious national election cycle I can recall, and I ain’t no kid, friends. My first vote was in 1960 when Kennedy and Nixon faced off.

 

One thing I’ve noticed this campaign is the proliferation of U.S. flags all over the place. Not just on Independence Day and Memorial Day, but every day. Not just at schools or government buildings, but on homes and cars. And an occasional pickup truck will roar by with Old Glory waving on both sides of its box.

 

Patriots? Super patriots? Or politics?

 

I’m patriotic enough, like, I’m sure, your average American is patriotic. I love our country for the good things about it, and recognize bad things about it both in the present and the past, and hope they can be addressed. I willingly served in the military. Nobody’s perfect.

 

Also, I don’t associate the flag exclusively with any particular presidential candidate in this election, but I sense that some do, big time.

 

I put a small flag out on Memorial and Independence days. It measures about 12-by-15 inches and has a narrow arrow-like staff I stick in a flower pot facing our street. It’s like the flags that line the rows of veterans’ graves in cemeteries on Memorial Day…graves that include my father’s.

 

My generation was taught to venerate the American flag hanging in our classrooms, and we were preached to by elders on how to handle flags. We pledged allegiance to it regularly with our hands on our hearts. I remember being told that if you were handling an American flag and somehow it touched the ground you were supposed to burn it, out of respect.

 

Whew. I was always careful not to let that happen because I wasn’t supposed to play with matches.

 

There’s something disquieting to me about the proliferation of flags these days — fairly large ones prominently displayed on numerous houses the way my father always displayed a good-sized flag on my growing-up home but only on appropriate days, including Flag Day each June.

 

A few years ago I read that when you start seeing an unusual proliferation of flags all over the place it could be a sign of impending war. Who knows? We can hope not. Of course there’s plenty of war going on right now, but generally not directly involving U.S. troops.  

 

I sometimes wonder what might happen to a politician — presidents, presidential candidates, Congress people from both major parties — if he (this mainly applies to suit-wearing men) neglected to put one of those tiny American flag pins on his lapel. They never appear in public wearing a suit without a tiny flag on the lapel and they almost always are clad in suits. (Some woman politicos also don them when they wear blazers.)

 

I guess they think it proves they’re patriotic Americans and that they love our country in case there was any doubt…“so vote for me.” Also, the higher level politicos never appear on TV without a row of tall American flags draped behind them. “O say can you see…?” Yup, sure can.

 

I have one of those little lapel pin flags, given to me under unique circumstances. I was a pallbearer in Texas for a relative who had been a career U.S. Army officer, lived a good life, and died an elderly veteran.

 

As we awaited the start of the funeral service, a friendly woman I didn’t know came over and pinned little U.S. flag pins on the pallbearers’ lapels. Fine with me; it was an appropriate occasion for wearing one as we honored a man who had devoted a good part of his life to serving America in uniform.

 

So thanks, ma’am, whoever you are. Inquiring later, I was told that the lapel flag pin lady was the daughter of Ross Perot, the Texas business tycoon/Reform Party politician who ran for president in 1992 and again in 1996, and made relatively good showings. She was a nearby neighbor to the daughter of the veteran we were honoring.

 

I still have that little lapel flag. It’s in a small china cabinet in our home where we display fancy crystal accumulated over the years — and almost never use. I never use that little lapel flag either.

 

No disrespect for the flag. I’m just not running for political office. And I don’t wear suits much anymore.

 

Don’t forget to vote your conscience on Tuesday.  I’ll be voting my heart…along with whatever’s left of my brain. You shouldn’t have any problem finding your polling place. There’ll be a flag out front. Let’s hope none of them touch the ground.

 

Jim Heffernan is a former Duluth News Tribune news and opinion writer and continues as a columnist. He can be reached at jimheffernan@jimheffernan.org and maintains a blog at www.jimheffernan.org. 

The way we were when we were car crazy...

Heffernan's 40 Ford

Written by Jim Heffernan for the DuluthNewsTribune/10-5-24

One of my grandsons recently passed his driver’s license test upon turning age 16. He’s very happy to be able to legally drive a car, just as his older brothers and cousins were before him.

But this milestone seems more routine these days compared to when I got my driver’s license many long years ago, at mid-20th century. Being able to drive was a huge deal in the lives of teenage boys of my generation.

 Back then we were able to get a permit and take the driver’s test at age 15, and most of us promptly did so. The reason is we were what was referred to as “car crazy.” I don’t think many of today’s teens, including my progeny, are car crazy, even though they are pleased to have passed this D.L. milestone and sometimes speak of Lamborghinis.

 

Passing the driver’s test for me and some of my friends was considered the overarching achievement of our lives then and forevermore, amen. It was everything we wanted to achieve in life. Crazy? Of course. Car crazy.

 

In those days, the tests were headquartered at the National Guard Armory on London Road where Bob Dylan saw Buddy Holly perform a few years later. You can’t mention the Armory without including that. Never mind that world renowned composer-pianist Sergei Rachmaninoff once performed there too. 

 

A Minnesota highway patrolman known as Officer Blinn (maybe not his exact name, but close) gave the tests, with dreaded parallel parking roped off on Jefferson Street alongside the north face of the Armory.

 

A close friend, a few months older than I, passed the test before me with an almost perfect score — 98 of a possible, flawless, 100. Whew, that was daunting for me when my turn came around a few months later. And I didn’t achieve it but I did OK with an 87. Seventy was passing.

 

Why do I recall all this so vividly lo these many decades later? Because it was so important to most boys of my generation. It opened the door to possibly getting a car of one’s own, and “customizing” it into something akin to a “hot rod.”

 

Customizing involved altering the outside of the car by removing such things as hood ornaments and trunk handles, filling the remaining holes with lead and repainting. Lowering the rear end was also de rigueur.

 

Possibly the most important alteration (other than huge fuzzy dice dangling from the inside rear-view mirror), was installing dual exhausts with “Smitty” steel-packed mufflers that rumbled loudly through chromium echo cans on the tail pipes when the engine was revved. These were called “twin pipes.” (Later, after I got car of my own, I was pulled over and ticketed by a Duluth cop for having those loud mufflers on my twin pipes.)

 

Mechanically minded kids “souped up” their engines so they could beat the drag race competition at downtown traffic signals.

 

But back to the state driver’s test at the Duluth Armory, where, about a week after I passed the test, I almost lost my license.

 

I was allowed to take the family car — no twin pipes — to school on the day of a city-wide high school music festival at the Armory, which I attended with other Denfeld kids. On a lunchtime break from the festival, a friend lined up a trio of girls from another high school to join us for a noontime joyride in my family’s car. Fun.

 

With the girls in the back seat and my friend riding shotgun, I “peeled” out of my parking place on London Road and began roaring through the neighborhood, “scratching” in second gear when I shifted. Scratching meant making the tires squeal by popping the clutch and “goosing” the engine when shifting a manual transmission from low to second gear. Peeling out was also known as “burning rubber.”

 

Just about every 15-year-old driver tried it, and my dad’s car always responded well, even if he wouldn’t have. Ford V-8.

 

Anyway, after tearing around the Armory neighborhood for several minutes we arrived back outside the festival where I screeched to a stop, a uniformed law officer waving me down. Yikes, it was Officer Blinn who had passed me in the road test barely a week before.

 

He strode over to my side window and sternly said something like, “Any more driving like that and I’ll take that license away from you.”

 

I was chagrined, the passengers in the car cowed, and I never drove that way again until the next time I got the family car a few days later. There was something about peeling out and scratching in second that couldn’t be resisted…when you were 15.

 

But don’t tell my grandchildren.

 

Jim Heffernan is a former Duluth News Tribune news and opinion writer and continues as a columnist. He can be reached at jimheffernan@jimheffernan.org and maintains a blog at www.jimheffernan.org.