Public Displays of Patriotism

The Fourth of July has come and gone this year. Once again, I have managed to avoid every parade and every fireworks display. This time, I did not even hear a firecracker.

The last time I saw fireworks was several years ago when a chronically depressed and critical (but on some level intellectual, highly cultured, and fun-loving) threw a party as she happened to be living in a rented home from which three fireworks displays were easily visible.  I remember that although I was my usually pretty stone cold sober self, many of her intellectual, highly cultured, and fun-loving friends had no trouble becoming rip-roaring drunk.

Perhaps patriotic holidays are one of those days, like New Year’s (Eve) when the “amateurs” get drunk; the people who otherwise are not terribly likely to do so.  The “professionals,” the backbone of Alcoholics Anonymous, probably watch fireworks stone cold sober while smiling at the “amateurs.”

I remember, from grade school, that I only got to see fireworks after I begged and pleaded.  My parents agreed it was necessary to celebrate the birth of the country that let my grandmother in when she ran from Russia, but they did not want me or my little brother of blessed memory to be where it was really happening.  We each held the hand of a parent and walked to the top of Powder Horn Hill, on the side of which we lived.  We watched from a distance and the fireworks in the sky were indeed beautiful.  I remember, when I could not have been more than 7 or 8, trying to draw pictures of them.  I begged my mother, who photographed my brother and me on what seemed like a daily basis when we were that small, to find a way to photograph them, so I could have the pictures year round. She told me to look up “fireworks” in an encyclopedia and so, to have someone else’s pictures year round.

My father of bliessed memory loved patriotic presentations for his various school bands.  He once offered me a “gig” as guest conductor to get me to come home early from France or something.  Whatever it was, I refused.  He told me I did not actually have to know how to conduct, as the kids knew the music cold.  (He knew I could at least beat time, even if I never was much for the conductor “flourishes” he loved.)  No, I told him, it would be an uncomfortable place for me, but one he had richly earned, and that I wanted him to enjoy. He told me he liked to imagine he was John Philip Sousa.

Curiously enough, my most interesting manifestations of patriotism were when I found myself a bit adrift in foreign countries.  I have a vivid memory of seeing a public presentation involving a major hockey star in Canada that seemed to move everyone else but me to tears.  The star wore a mink coat that I would have died for at the time. Although I did not see any tears when “O Canada” was played, and I do not know what percentage of their population knows the words in either language, nobody seemed to be singing.  Maybe there is a private patriotism when they send their kids to start hockey school on their third birthday. I also remember hikers (Canadian hikers, hiking in Canada) telling me how happy people were to pick them up when they had a Canadian flag on their backpacks.

In France I went to a lot of patriotic manifestations, with long winded speeches and platforms covered in blue, white, and red bunting.  I could cry at the playing of the Marseillaise (I still remember all the words) because this was the country that let me become a physician, which is exactly what I had always been meant to be; I mean, by now, this ought to be obvious to the world. I remember being part of the fire department in Beauvais France; my hat, my banner, the pomp and circumstance. After I had served in Beauvais and was living in Amiens, right before my thesis presentation and only a few months before my return to the United States, I went to a fireman’s ball; not as a member of the fire department because I had finished that part of my life, but as a single woman. I have always loved public dances.  They seemed to happen more in France than in the States, but my perspective was likely skewed as I was a single woman then. Besides the bunting they had festoons of flags in the public square, with the “RF” (Republique Francaise) logo and the music was old-fashioned, for I remember the firemen’s band playing “Fascination,” which had been a hit about a hundred years before.

The last dance I danced was with a uniformed fireman, who wanted to continue dating the woman doctor from the University Hospital Center. He was kind and held me at the requisite distance, but I was honest and told him I would be back in the States soon.  He was a pretty good looking and probably not too stupid fellow, although he was decidedly not the kind of person found posing on contemporary “Fire Department” calendars.  He was sad I was honest, but I saved him the heartbreak many of my women friends, then and now, have lived with foreign students who return to their own countries, for such folks are not usually terribly good bets for lifetime or even semi-lifetime-long-lasting love.

He had, however, reminded me of the obvious.  Public patriotic celebrations may be great places to meet people; even local holidays. Much later, in Kansas, I was pretty surprised when a female colleague psychiatric resident told me she met her husband, a professional crop duster, at “Bean Day” in Leota, Kansas.  I actually participated in a few local celebrations of similar sorts, whenever I knew about them. Things like “old settler’s days” or God knows what.  I always seemed to meet people who were anxious to describe local traditions, but never wanted to be more than a mile from their beloved Kansas homesteads.

A bit later, in Wichita, I went to the “Concert in the Sky” on a fourth of July in a University stadium.  They played Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, with blue fireworks.  Curiously enough, I learned later that my not yet husband was within that selfsame auditorium, but that is not where I met him.

Being married, especially to a husband who feels crowd avoidance is a religion, is not the whole of my reason for missing patriotic manifestations. I love America as much as I ever have; my ancestors did come here and I did wear her military uniform. I am not as simple minded as I once was about saying things like “my country right or wrong,” which I may actually have said, as a school girl in the early days of Vietnam.

On television news I see parades with clowns and the waving of flags, and little flags in children’s hands.  I do not think that a bad thing.  I just am not suited to it. I remember one of the anecdotes about John Philip Sousa, when he played the Corn Palace in Mitchell South Dakota. Although the military had been part of his early career, by the time he hit Mitchell he was a for-profit bandleader, who thought Mitchell did not look wealthy enough to pay his band, and so they did not leave the train until he was shown the cash.  I cannot help but smile when I think of this, and wonder if it somehow symbolizes the fate of all patriotism.

We are fighting a war which seems to be more about oil than anything. My country protects my right to speak my mind about it. We have a president who promised change and looks more like his predecessors every day. We are simplistic about politics, which we think has only two sides; left and right.  In ways I cannot explain, the right seems to have co-opted patriotism as if it were theirs alone.  As if any expression would mean I am on the right with my politics. We seem to be giving up civil rights in the name of protecting ourselves from terrorism.

Flag waving is easy.  Being true to the ideals of the founding fathers is hard. I celebrated the holiday by checking out the Declaration of Independence online. It is easier for me to be happy and proud and celebratory of what happened then, a major feat by any measure, than of where we are now.