‘So This is a Day of Independence’
This morning as I pulled the flagpole out of the old butter churn where it resides most of the year my memories retreated fifty years back, lying on a grass bank behind Jadwin Cage (now more sensitively called Gymnasium) watching fireworks explode overhead and reflecting in the waters of Princeton Lake. I had graduated from high school only a month previously, visited old neighbors and experienced Washington DC for the first time, and now was in NJ with my friend Dwight before setting off to hitchhike to Phoenix in hopes of working on Arcosanti with Paolo Soleri. I was eager to take on the world.
As I unrolled the flag I thought of all the marvels I’d seen in so short a time: paintings by Rubens, Whistler, Picasso, Monet; Ford’s Theatre (how small it seemed!), the Hope Diamond (badly exhibited, I thought), The Spirit of St. Louis (even smaller than I imagined); structures built before the Revolution; huge Mercer Oak 250 years old that had witnessed a Revolutionary battle. And here was newly built Jadwin Cage, ultramodern to my eyes, its three shells expanding open like my young mind.
I stuck the flag into its stanchion hoping to see the flag wave a little in the listless air but it did not. Suddenly again I was fifty years in the past, smelling gunpowder in close still air, remembering how fervently I then considered our country sadly divided by the war, the intransigence of Nixon’s attitude and policy, and the ferocious anger unleashed since Kent State and the campus strikes. I remember my belief at eighteen that great change was coming, that while Nixon was terrible there would never be a President worse. Ultimately there would be a transformation in our country. At last all citizens would be truly recognized as equal; women would have social and economic parity; my generation would open shut doors and never revert to the distrust and conventions of our elders. Things were awful right now, but change was coming soon.
It is becoming dark, so I bring in the flag, furl it away until Labor Day, and turn on lamps against the twilight. Maybe I will have a beer. The fireworks will start soon. I’ll lie on the floor and hold Emma. And try not to think.
