May/June 2008

High-Flying Etiquette

It's not always easy to follow the proper rules of engagement when displaying the American flag.

By Larry Maddry

Now that warm weather is here, I think I'll begin displaying my American flag again—unless the Flag Police get on my case.

It isn't easy living in a military neighborhood like Hampton Roads unless you are right up to the minute on your flag etiquette, etc. I love the Stars and Stripes as much as the next person, but I simply tend to be casual in my treatment of my own flag.

It drives the Flag Police nuts.

My flag is a lightly used flag that I purchased at a Goodwill shop along with a pole. It's not the best looking flag on Earth, but it suits me and hangs proudly from its socket. But not all the time.

Some days I simply forget to display it on my porch. I dunno why I forget ... maybe the dog made a mess on the floor and I was distracted cleaning it up and didn't take out the flag. Or maybe I had to go to the golf course before daybreak and didn't have time to display it.

This has not pleased Mrs. W., who I believe to be either the deputy chief of Flag Police or possibly assistant chief. She has informed me several times that my treatment of the flag is disrespectful.

With arms folded rigidly, she stood in front of me and laid it all out. "Do you think the post office flies its flag only when the postmaster is in the mood for it?" she asked.

I explained as politely as I could that postmasters are paid to fly the flag appropriately and on specified days. I also told her that someone who displays the flag because they like to is more patriotic than people who get paid for doing the same thing. Even if they just do it now and then.

"It isn't proper,"Mrs. W. declared with a derisive sneer before marching away.

I wish now that I had told her I was a war veteran who had risked his life for his country, although I suppose that isn't technically correct.

While I was in the Army during wartime, I was not in combat but did suffer a lot of bad food and endured a botched molar extraction by an Army dentist. (I regarded the tooth pulling in which the dentist planted one of his shoes on the back of the dental chair for leverage as not only painful but life threatening. My cheek was puffed up like Alvin the Chipmunk's for a month.)

Anyway, it seems to me that displaying the flag properly is the important thing whether it is displayed every day or not.

But display is only the half of it. I have dubbed Mr. G., a U.S. Navy vet, as chief of the Flag Police. He came by one afternoon to collect my pledge to a charity and saw the flag poking out of a paper sack in a corner of the living room.

"You shouldn't do that," he said. "It is a clear breech of flag etiquette and unacceptable."

It was wintertime, and I usually keep the flag indoors to protect it from the elements until spring. I had folded it neatly it and put it in the sack. Some of it was protruding from the top of the sack, which is what Mr. G. saw.

Mr. G insisted that I was breaking the rules of flag etiquette by not folding the flag into a triangle with only three stars showing! I told the chief I'd have to stop displaying the flag if I had to do that every night it was flown because it would be too exhausting.

That's because I do not fold things well. Take stationery, for instance. I fold a piece of paper in half, then again in half, and then a third time.That way it is very small but fits inside the envelope.

He said it was better to do anything "than violate the code of flag etiquette."

Since then I have been sending pictures of flag code violators to Mr. G. and Mrs. W., hoping they would be distracted from my case when there are bigger fish for them to fry.

The photos range from fire hydrants, credit cards and cameras imprinted with likenesses of the flag on their surfaces in clear violation of flag etiquette to a photo of the interior of the Texas State Capitol Building, where a U.S. flag is embedded in the floor and walked upon daily.

Yep, that should keep them off my case ... for a while.