And the Home of the Braves

My star-spangled breakfast.

Growing up in Milwaukee in the late 1950s and early 1960s profoundly influenced my perceptions of what it means to be a patriot.  While people complained the President spent too much time on the golf course and didn’t know what was going on in the world with Khrushchev in Russia, the Koreans and the Middle East—we’re talking about the general in charge of the D-Day invasion of Normandy, similar to the way people complain today the President spends too much time on the golf course and doesn’t know what is going on in the world with Putin in Russia, the Koreans and the Middle East—we’re talking about the guy who gave the order over some dissenting generals’ advice to invade Pakistan to take out Osama ben Laden, those of us who grew up in Milwaukee stood up proudly and sang the national anthem dedicated to our major league team.  Since then I have heard the amusing tale of how some recent immigrants from Mexico thought the opening line of the anthem asked, “Jose, can you see?” but at the time my friends and I thought the final line was, “and the home of the Braves.” By 1967, when the Braves moved to Atlanta, most of us figured out the national anthem was not celebrating the team whose feathered mascot remains locked in a controversial discussion of whether it honors or derides a segment of the earliest inhabitants of this great land.

Yorba Linda requires a patriotic walkway.

What I did know for certain was come the Fourth of July there would be a parade with kids riding bicycles and tricycles with red, white and blue crape paper wrapped around the frame and baseball cards clipped to their spokes with a clothes pin to make a simulated motorcycle sound.  Little blonde, red-haired, and brunette—who today would no doubt have hair sprayed blue to complement those with already patriotic hair—wore flouncy skirts and helped their mothers push baby buggies draped with the aforementioned red, white and blue crape paper.  Everyone assembled in a nearby park to receive little flags, ribbons for the best decorated and a rousing speech of how fortunate we Americans are delivered by the mayor, who must have travelled a couple hundred miles that day to get to the dozens of parks throughout the city—fortunately gas was plentiful and 25 cents a gallon.

We risked fire hazards due to our drought
conditions to watch All-American fireworks.

While the fervor of patriotism has been tainted by the intrusion of less glamorous wars than the World Wars, attacks in Oklahoma, on September 11, and at the Boston Marathon have solidified red states and blue states, white skinned and black skinned, Democrats and Republicans, young people and old people, natives and immigrants to stand together and affirm their commitment to the ideals of this great nation.   So, when I woke up on the day our country declared its independence, though I no longer went looking for my bicycle, or even those of my children who have flown the nest during the past decade, I chose to decorate my morning bowl of cereal with those glorious colors. Then, I made sure the walkway to my home is outlined with the flags the real estate agent used to leave in years gone by. Finally, as I did when I was a child, I went to the local park and watched the skies light up with fireworks and saluted those who sacrificed so much so that I could declare myself proud to live in the land of the free, “and the home of the brave(s).”