We have two American flags always: One for the rich and one for the poor. When the rich fly it means that things are under control; when the poor fly it means danger, revolution, anarchy.
- Henry Miller

by Glynn Wilson

It is 90 degrees in the shade on the screened-in porch on Saturday before the Fourth of July, which falls on a Tuesday this year. These would be unremarkable facts by themselves, since it should always be hot as Hades on the first day of July in Alabama. And except that it means the weekend will extend for at least two extra days, three for the truly bright and playful who learn early in life how to stretch out the pursuit of happiness to its fullest potential.

The Baltimore Orioles are beating the Atlanta Braves 4-1 in the third inning as we put away the dirty dishes after the best summer meal of the season by far: Homemade chicken salad, rattle-snake green beans, fried okra, salad peppered with fresh Dothan tomatoes, cornbread, sweat iced tea, and squash “cooked to death” and drowned in butter - the only way to make the stuff edible, like they do things in New Orleans.

Photo by Glynn Wilson

Liberty National’s Lady Liberty on I-459

We ate so much we saved the strawberries, old fashioned pound cake and Bluebell ice cream for later, which is probably why I am awake to write this and not fast asleep in the Stratolounger.

The reason for writing today, dear blog diary, is to relate a tale from the past that also illuminates the present and contains portent for the future. The subjects are the Fourth of July, the American flag, the true meaning of liberty, and the freedom embodied in the great phrase in the Declaration of Independence: “The pursuit of happiness.” We also have a few things to say today about the current American president, the United States Supreme Court, and the very recent conviction of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman and deposed HealthSouth founder Richard Scrushy.

There are times in a writer’s life when the convergence of events must be taken down in some fashion. For some practitioners, a pencil will do. Having never liked the feel or sound of lead on paper, however, perhaps because my earliest memories of it involve being forced to perform math, this recording could be done with a modern pen.

Or, it could be hammered away on the old black manual Uniroyal typewriter that adorns the coffee table in the old technology museum here in The Bunker, which stays as cool as a cave even in summer.

The story could simply be typed in a word processing program on a computer and rest there for no one to read but myself or some future book publisher.

But due to the technological nature of the times and my own predilections for publishing online - and to hell with the pretenses of New York hierarchy - this story will be relayed first on a blog.

If you watch the Google ads on this site at all, especially the ones on the front page with the bridge picture, you might run across an ad for turning a blog into a book. Some parts of the blog archive being created here may one day see print. It is all being saved for that purpose. But to publish a book, I do not need to purchase any more software than already exists on my trusty blue and white Mac.

When I get ready to sell a book, I can lay it out and publish it myself and sell it right here - and keep all the money, not just the 4-6 percent you get to keep when the mandarins of Manhattan deem you worthy.

It is also being published here to aid my brain as I pass middle age. While the newspaper industry fears this medium, I will use it along with savvy readers to remember what happened in the past, lest we forget history and all - even if it is personal and perhaps not globally consequential. It is interesting to note here that even the Library of Congress chose our archive on Supreme Court Battles to store for posterity as one of the early examples of blog publishing.

You may guess from the Henry Miller quote that heads this piece that I am not in a totally friendly frame of mind as it concerns the leadership of the country or the flag at the moment.

I think Miller was right and I think there are two Americas. And I think they are growing further and further apart with each passing year. Every time we celebrate our independence from the British Crown, we seem to come full circle back to part of our past, the part where the masses of people would rather be subjects of a divine empire than independent souls with real freedom of thought and action.

It is possible that this realization has dawned upon me many times in my life. But the instance I am recalling today took place on the weekend of the Fourth of July in 1989.

For those of you who know precious little about me, let’s just skip to the good part by saying by the summer of 1989, I had experienced a music career of sorts in the 1970s, a journalism career in the 1980s, and had even gone through the experience of owning my own business, a bookstore, newsstand, coffee house and hang out for leftists and curious independents and libertarians on the Southside of Birmingham.

After three years in business, with two stores to run for the past 12 months, I was burned out on the retail business and about to move to Fairhope and then Gulf Shores to get back into newspapering for another stretch covering politics and the environment on the Gulf of Mexio coast.

But it was, after all, the Fourth of July weekend and, being my favorite holiday of the year, a celebration was required. In those days, when I still had the last of my youthful looks, a celebration meant a real celebration. Something special.

I was never much up for the Christian holidays, Christmas or Easter, or any of the other petty holidays meant to give Americans a day off from work to shop. There has always been something special, though, about the Fourth of July. Maybe it is the journalist in my bones, or the revolutionary in my DNA.

And lets get these facts right: 1989 and 1990 were special years for the holiday, the flag and this thing called American freedom.

In 1989, the 101st Congress had passed that Flag Protection Act as a political gesture, as they often do when they get patriotic about reelection. This patriotism often seems to come around the Fourth of July, often the beginning of the mid-term reelection season, as it did this year, when the Senate killed a similar measure by only one vote.

On June 11, 1990, the Supreme Court in the case of United States v. Eichman struck down the Flag Protection Act, ruling again that the government’s interest in preserving the flag as a symbol does not outweigh the individual’s First Amendment right to disparage that symbol through expressive conduct.

The first attempt to make it a crime to burn the American flag in public came in reaction to protests during the Vietnam War, when the 90th Congress first enacted something called the Flag Protection Act.

But on the Fourth of July, 1989, it was still a crime to burn the American flag, even though the appeal of the case had already been filed with Supreme Court and experts were saying the law would never stand. So the opportunity presented itself to celebrate freedom properly. But where?

There in the local newspaper was a story about the largest replica of the statue of liberty next to the one on Staten Island. The one-tenth the size Lady Liberty had adorned the Liberty National Life Insurance building in downtown Birmingham for years. But the new managers of the Torchmark corporation decided to take her down, give her a bath, and move her to its new headquaters in the burgeoning suburbs in view from the new bypass Interstate highway, I-459.

Well being patriotic young men, my comrades and I who considered ourselves the rightful heirs of the Sons of Liberty title figured we could not resist such an opportunity. On the appointed night before the official dedication of the statue’s new berth, we snuck out there behind where the American Boy Scout headquarters now stands - armed with a six pack of good beer, a smoke of fine stuff, a little store-bought American flag, and a cigarette lighter.

With no guard in site, we climbed up Lady Liberty’s skirt. We climbed the scaffolding still left there by the workers who erected her. Once at the top, we lit the smoke, toasted freedom and the U.S. Supreme Court, and burned the flag right there between Lady Liberty’s feet.

It was the only time the feat has been accomplished for sure. How do I know? Because when we bragged about it in the bars of Southside, maybe Dugan’s Irish Pub, other friends wanted to go immediately and repeat the ceremony.

But it was not to be. The Liberty National folks must have found the cans and paraphernalia we left behind. The next night, when we pulled up to the newly locked fence, there was a full-time guard on duty 24-hours a day.

Now do you see how elusive freedom can be? One day you are free to pull a harmless prank with the tacit approval of the Supreme Court. The next day you are staring at a padlocked 12-foot fence and the headlights of a security cruiser.

That is America today in a nutshell. If you are born rich or manage to steal a fortune in the midst of run-amok corporate capitalism, as Richard Scrushy did, you are free and you fly the flag and feel all is well in the world. You are safe.

Your sons and daughters are not fighting in the desert in Iraq or cooking hamburgers for $5.15 an hour or begging for change on the mean streets of America.

Now, what of the poor - which is most of us now - and what are we going to do on this Fourth of July about the flag? If you do not see danger, revolution and anarchy lurking in that flag enough to burn it, then you are as blind as a bat and, one day very soon you are going to be shocked.

Did you hear Osama bin Laden put out another video the other day? You should know what that means. If you don’t, watch out for the fireworks. They may not be toy explosions afterall.

Now, I could go on with this diatribe, since I tend to write long. But I think I will stop, dear diary blog, and take a break to watch the new Superman movie for some journalistic inspiration a-la Clark Kent.

If the GD Web site is not attacked again over the weekend, I have a feeling I will have more to say on the subject of freedom between now and Tuesday.

For now, I’ll just crack open another Yuengling and say, “Up, up and away. Is it a bird? A plane? No, it’s SU-PER-MAN!”

Watch out bad guys. The caped defender of truth, liberty and the American way is on the case. Somehow we don’t think he is on George Bush’s side.

Photo by Rowland Scherman

The Triad of Dissent, the Garage Cafe courtyard, June 23, 2006

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 1st, 2006 at 8:23 pm and is filed under Under the Microscope. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.