Don's Tuesday Column

    THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson   Red Bluff Daily News   6/04/2024

Sadly, my flag flies upside down

I’ve more to say on that, but first a final note to reserve your seats for the Red, White and Blue Republican Dinner, to be held June 8 at the Heart S Ranch, 17420 Bowman Road, Cottonwood, at 5 PM for social hour, and 6 PM for dinner and program. Call 530-949-2761 to find out if seats are available. Sadly, but not too sadly, our tickets will have to be contributions, as the onset of 100+ temps drives us (literally) in our RV off to the mountains.

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“According to the U.S. Flag Code, flying the American flag upside down is only meant to be done ‘as a signal of dire distress in instances of extreme danger to life or property.’” The term “dire distress” is in the “eye of the beholder”; protests from the Vietnam War to Black Lives Matter have used both the upside-down flag, as well as the “Appeal to Heaven,” pine tree flag.

This column is proscribed from delving into the larger issues surrounding the current flag protests. However, search some articles by title (also, at Donpolson.blogsot.com): “Our Upside Down Flag Moment Is Upon Us,” (redstate.com); “Which Party Is The Real ‘Threat To Democracy’?” (Dailycaller.com). Also, “A Republic, If You Can Keep It” (andrewdavisweb.wordpress.com), Founder Benjamin Franklin’s reply when asked by a woman if the Constitutional Convention had given this new nation a monarchy or republic.

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The building of my flag pole began with a pile of rocks harvested from the next-door lot after we bought it around 1991. About a quarter-century ago, it occurred to us to organize those rocks into a large post by forming a stretch of “hog fence” into a round container for said rocks. I had much more industrious energy then.

Then, the 9/11/2001 terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington, DC, brought a nationwide wave of patriotism, which prompted me to pull out the American flag given us after my Dad, a Navy veteran, passed. I used the longest wooden pole I could find to attach that flag and, by rearranging those rocks, support my flagpole. You’ve heard the expression, “project creep,” and so it began.

The wooden pole wasn’t long enough for a 6 ft by 10 ft flag, so I acquired a metal pole of sufficient length to keep the flag a proper distance from the ground. The pole then had to be buried further into the rocks; the winds pushed it around. I added an outer pipe for stability, only to realize the only proper way would require burying the bottom into the ground with concrete.

Well, that required removing the rocks and hog wire, digging a two-foot hole and adding the concrete while being mindful of the need for vertical leveling, lest my flagpole be off kilter. Now that the basic flagpole was layers of pipe thick, the height was no longer sufficient. With an additional 15-foot pipe, my Dad’s flag would fly about 30 feet off the ground.

That outer pipe needed lifting high enough to slip down to rest on the lower section. Lacking a “cherry picker,” I asked a tree service guy if I could hire his; and a worker to lift and lower the final piece of my flagpole. The “crowning jewel” was a golden eagle with a rotating pulley wheel to allow the wind to move the flag around. The tree guy was happy to comp me the service for my flagpole.

A neighbor was kind enough to weld the two pipes together; a little silver Rust-oleum paint to protect it and “Bob’s your uncle,” I had one of the finest flagpoles in the county. But what about nighttime? I used some leftover rocks to secure an outdoor flood light; add a dawn-to-dusk timer and it was done.

Jeff Foxworthy’s “redneck” tag line comes to mind: You might be a patriot if…you go through what I did just to fly your veteran dad’s flag day and night. Johnny Cash’s tribute to a weathered small-town flag, “That Ragged Old Flag,” also comes to mind.

I’ve had to “retire” a few flags since then, courtesy of the scouts and vets. When we are in our Red Bluff home, provided it’s not storming, that beautiful symbol of America unfurls in front of our house, with gratitude for the hundreds of thousands of lives given in military service and conflicts to secure this nation from foreign subjugation. President Reagan’s photo graced the half-staff flagpole in 2004.

In closing, I submit that it is a foreign form of government, witnessed in “banana republics” and totalitarian nations, for retribution and legal persecution to be exacted on those of a political party or persuasion that is out of power, by those holding, perhaps temporarily, the reins of power. These are despotic attempts to secure that hold on power for the crass goal of tilting the scales and securing a permanent iron grip on the executive, legislative, and even judicial branches. A free, representative Republic it is not.