September 17, 2001 -

It took a while to find it.

Like most things I own, it wasn't where I thought it was. Of course, it also wasn't where I was currently living, which meant I had to drive just to start looking for it. It wasn't in the black whicker chest, although I did have an encounter with some old clothes that I would rather have forgotten.

It wasn't in the main closet. Although Quentin will be glad to know that I did find the two boffer sticks we bought at Estrella. I also found a broken epee blade, and a failed blade that I was saving for showing people what an "S" curve was. There was also my first attempt at a scabbard, which was a sawed-off broom handle (bought specifically for this purpose, mind you...) covered with black and gold brocade. It lasted one event.

When all else fails, I look in the room downstairs. In "The Room", there is a complete collection of "Great Books of the Western World", my hockey gear, 10 hockey sticks, an unused dog kennel, a myriad of other books, an old bookshelf, a paintball gun and a whicker cabinet. I knew as soon as I saw the cabinet that it was in there.

I was right. It was dusty, well just the side that had laid face up for the last 2 years. I had purchased it right when I bought my house. I figured that every home should have one. My father's did. It came with a little metal contraption that fastened it to the side of the house, and a cheap pole. I couldn't find either of those, but they were just bits. I had found Old Glory, my old Glory.

Why had I let it sit in the cabinet for two years? Well...someone made fun of me while I was putting up the mounting bracket and so I just quietly put it aside. Always intending to putting it up while he wasn't around. I guess it never came up again. I eventually found the bracket and the pole, and tonight my job is to make sure that they hang at my new home.

Between Susan's house and mine is the overpass to a minor little highway. Between Susan's house and my work there are about 20 overpasses. On every one of those overpasses right now is an American flag. The overpass over the minor little highway has one too. But there is something special about that flag. I didn't notice it until Saturday morning, while I was running back and forth between my emptying house, and her filling-up house.

It was on one of these trips that I noticed the blue in the flag was running. My first thought was that that was a really cheap flag. But as I looked at the flag I realized that it was a home made flag. The stripes where a little ragged, and the stars weren't perfect. But from then on everytime I passed that flag I slowed down and stared. There is something tremendously noble about a hand made flag.

On Tuesday both Susan and I got home early, and we decided to meet Queenton and Quinton for lunch. We decided we would all meet at the Baja Fresh. Between our home and the Baja Fresh is a Ford dealership, one of the ones with the huge garrison flag. For those that don't remember, there wasn't a lot of wind here in Maryland that Tuesday afternoon.

We turned the corner onto the street where the dealership was, and there was the first flag that I had seen at half mast that day. I think it was the first one Susan saw as well. It was huge, and it looked as much like a weeping-willow as a flag can look. It hung with folded in on itself, as if it needed to have time alone to grieve. It was at that momement that it finally began to sink it. I'd watched everything on television, listened to the radio for the hours it took to get home, but it wasn't until I saw our flag hanging there, seemingly licking it's wounds that I truly began to understand the magnitude of what happpened.

Do you have an understanding of the times you are living in? Did Tom Brokaw's "Greatest Generation" understand? When you see President Bush on top of a smashed fire truck, yelling through a bull horn "The people that knocked down these towers will hear from all of us soon", do you understand that future generations will watch that video in history class? Will they have any understanding at all of what it was like? Of course not.

Do you know that the picture of the fireman raising the American flag over the ruined trade centers will be sold in post stores, be a picture in history books and will stand beside the Iwo Jima photograph as one of the most stiring images this country has to call on?

Will my childeren have to interview me or my wife for some homework assignment? Will I have to explain where I was, what I was doing, how I was feeling so that little Johnny can get an A in social studies? What will I say then? What would you say?

One thing I will say is that I dug out Old Glory with the rest of the country. I'll tell Little Johnny that some people actually painted flags to hang over freeways. I'll tell him how when we could do nothing else against a faceless enemy, we waved our flags. We went back to work. We went back to our friends.

See you all tomorrow.

Love,

Matt

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