Memoirs

         I leave from the Port Authority building in New York City by bus to Fort Dix, New Jersey, where I’ll begin my two months of Army basic training.  I’m just shy of my twentieth birthday.  The Port Authority is like Grand Central Station where I was sent unwillingly to camp at age four.  This is different, a decision I have made.  And although there is a claustrophobic feeling of doors closing and choices made which cannot be changed, there is also the sense of adventure and maturity that is concomitant with actions taken by men.

         Almost everyone on the bus is an inductee from New York City.  The Jersey countryside, a dune-like succession of sandy low hills and chicken farms, rolls by until we arrive at Fort Dix, which is surrounded by barbed wire.  At the entrance to Fort Dix stands a tremendous statue of “The Infantryman,” the ultimate fighting machine I am about to become.

         We are herded into a huge building, formed into lines, and begin our transformation and processing from civilians into army troops, first swearing loyalty and fealty to the United States and then being given shockingly short, dare I say bald, army haircuts.  We put our civilian clothes into bags.  We are marched into line after line where we are inspected, questioned, sorted, and given a series of injections in both arms with air-powered guns.  We move down a lengthy counter where we declare our chest, waist, weight, height, and shoe sizes and are given shirts, pants, belts, underwear, shoes, and socks, more or less consistent with our size declarations.

         At the end of the counter we flow onto another line and approach a sergeant seated at a table filling out forms with the information necessary to issue each man his dog tags.  When I reach the table the sergeant finds my name and military identification number on a card and asks me my religion.  I’m not sure why, but I am just not able to answer him.  I don’t think it’s that I am afraid of anti-Semitism, or ashamed of being Jewish, quite the opposite, I am rather proud of being Jewish and eager to stand up to anti-Semites.  It is much more that I don’t really believe in religion and I’m sort of stunned and offended because I don’t think my religious beliefs are anyone’s business, especially in this context, I mean this is the United States Army is it not, and we were all equals right, brothers in arms.  I mean what does my religion matter?  It seems almost unpatriotic to make such a separatist declaration.

“What’s your religion?” the sergeant asks me again in a Southern drawl as I continue to stand there, in spite of my wish to answer him, quite mute, embarrassed, and dumb.

“What’s wrong with you, son” the peeved sergeant asks, “what’s your religion?”

And I just stare at him, unable to answer, unable to form the words, unable to fully understand what is going on with me.  Maybe I’ll say, “no preference, sir” but I can’t make up my mind and don’t really like that answer either.  So I just continue standing there, struggling with myself about these matters of personal and philosophical significance, as the sergeant grows more and more exasperated, and rightly so, thinking I’m a moron or something, and rightly so again.

“I said, ‘what‘s your religion, boy?'”  he says slowly, very slowly. And I just stare at him … frozen.

“Jesus H Christ,” he growls almost menacingly, “Who are your people, boy? “

People?  The word “people” startles me.  Who are “my People?”  Shit, I know that answer. People?   “Why the Hebrews, sir,” I say.

“Hebrew,” he repeats, and writes it down. “Next,” he says, and smiles.

I receive my dog tags two days later.  They read just that, “Hebrew.”  I still have them, of course.  I don’t imagine there are many other Hebrews in the U.S. Army, but the Hebrews are definitely my “people.” And were there ever to come a time to identify my scarred and unrecognizable mortal remains left on some desolate field of battle I think I would be far more comfortable buried as an ethnic American, dare I say tribal, Hebrew (for all that would matter) than I would be hypocritically declared a “religious” Jew.

Plattsburgh – a university town and the home of one of the U.S. Air Force’s Strategic Air Command bases – is where I’ve been teaching and conducting research for the academic year and playing four-wall handball at lunchtime in the university gym – the sticks, the boonies, the antithesis of the New York City I consider home. It has also been a surprisingly interesting and comfortable experience for me. I meet interesting people. I make good friends. I think my work is almost relevant. Yet I have no idea what I’ll do next: maybe live in the California near the Pacific where the air is warm and you can smell the salt floating in the fog, wear shorts and sandals 365 days a year, finish my PHD, maybe stay here and teach at the University a second year in this frozen northeastern outpost of a disintegrating culture. Well that’s what I was thinking.

But then, some time after Christmas break, I decided I could not stand idly by, privately espousing my abhorrence about the immoral war in Vietnam, but not taking stronger action to confront and undermine it. And while I contemplated a series of guerilla actions involving suicidal assaults on the Air Force base I was not courageous, desperate, or stupid enough to really want to do it and, honestly, I didn’t think it would be a particularly effective strategy anyhow. Oh, it would make a momentary statement, like a monk immolating himself does, but I would then be arrested, jailed, and taken out of effective circulation for decades. The tides would roll in and erase my footprint. No masses of people would pick up my cudgel. My actions would have served only as a temporary salve to my anguish, but not to advance the larger cause of peace and reformation. This theme of efficacy is one I will return to and be consumed by for decades.

And it is in this mode of ruminating that I conceive the idea of mounting a visible protest that might galvanize public opinion in Plattsburgh and in the university community against the war and perhaps even lead to transformative action. My plan was simple. I would picket the draft board in downtown Plattsburgh each day at lunchtime – at the immense sacrifice of my four-wall handball game – walking to and fro with pictures from newspapers and magazines of maimed and dead victims of the war, both Vietnamese children and American GIs.

I buy two very large pieces of art board, maybe two feet wide by four feet long, and paste the pictures I’ve collected onto the boards, Vietnamese casualties on one board, American casualties on the other. I draw large red octagonal highway stop signs on the boards and write in bold print “Stop Killing Our Children!” I affix the signs to one another at the top with pieces of twine at each upper corner so that I can drape it over my neck and shoulders like sandwich board advertising. I like the emotionality of the sign, the balance of American and Vietnamese loses, the sense that I wasn’t necessarily taking sides, that I was just declaring that the war must end.

On the first day I carried signs to the draft board headquarters, put them on over my jacket and began walking back and forth like a solitary striker on Main Street. Plattsburgh is a quiet town in which nothing much happens on the surface. But having someone walking around on Main Street with a sandwich board sign saying “Stop Killing Our Children” though silent was not quiet. So I did get a certain amount of attention in the sense that people looked, but no one said a word. And after an hour I took my signs off, walked back to my car, and drove back to the university, an apparition.

The next day the apparition was back, and it kept coming back every day for weeks. And soon a dozen students had joined me, on a good day two dozen. And a newspaper reporter came by to interview me and take pictures. And an article appeared in the Plattsburgh Daily Gazette. And the president of the Masonic Lodge in town called to ask me if I would be willing to be a guest speaker at their next monthly meeting and I accepted, of course.

I thought long and hard about my speech. I decided that advocating protest per se was inappropriate, that I had to speak in a manner that captured the tension in our democracy between loyalty and dissent. When I delivered my talk I distinguished between the state and the nation. I argued that the nation was a body of ideals and principles around which a people organized themselves, principles to be guided by and to work together for, while the state was the organization established by the nation to help execute its ideals in a pragmatic way. The question I posed was what happens when the actions of the government (the state), appear to be at odds with the values established by the nation. I gave as an example the question of slavery. I argued that the notion all persons are created equal could not conceivably be reconciled with slavery, and yet the government did just that, which then forced individual citizens to have to choose between loyalty to the government or loyalty to the higher ideals that informed and presumably guided the state. And people of good conscience broke the slave laws precisely because their moral conscience and compass required they do so, and in that defiance they honored the nation while breaching the will of the state. There were other examples I cited, the very birth of our nation born in rebellion, and now the war in Vietnam, which so clearly, at least in this citizen’s eyes, was the result of the decisions made by the few, who had hijacked the state, and saw the survival of the state in terms of dominoes rather than in terms of self determination and struggles for freedom of choice and liberation.

I was brilliant. The Masons applauded. They gave me a certificate suitable for framing that commended my participation as an honored guest speaker. They shook my hand. Then they went to the president of the university and said, “Fire him.” And the president said, “Don’t make a scene about it, boys, the academic year draws to a close. Just trust me. He will not be rehired.” And he wasn’t. And I learned something valuable from the Masons, which is that any time you want to sacrifice yourself for a principle, there will be no shortage of those ready willing and able to help you immolate yourself. And at the end of the academic year I was in California.

Almost every person I knew in my old neighborhood spent their spare time in and about the playground at the park on Van Cortland Avenue: after school, after dinner, on weekends. Everyone. Mothers with newborns, parents with toddlers, preadolescents, teenagers, old ladies seated on green wooden park benches, mobile ice cream trucks. The only people who didn’t hang out at the park it seemed were my parents. Maybe they knew that if they hung out there I’d have found another place to go.
My friends and I would play handball and basketball on the asphalt courts behind the benches and park railing, talk endlessly, engage in gossip and romance, tell dirty jokes. Everyone knew who was the strongest, the fastest, the best ball player, what girls liked what boys. The park was the town water well, the teen center, the marketplace, home plate.
Ours was not a tough neighborhood as Bronx neighborhoods go, but we were still arrogant, proud, egocentric New Yorkers, united in our common interests, our schools, the housing project we lived in. We are mostly Jewish and Italian. There was an insularity to our neighborhood created by its location abutting the old Van Cortland golf course, the Major Deegan highway, the Sedgwick Avenue Reservoir, and Mosholu Parkway to the east. We were called Amalgies, after the Amalgamated Housing Project we lived in. Not tough, just united.
Other boys from adjoining neighborhoods would visit our neighborhood regularly, hang out on the rail, play ball with us. Often the boys were tougher than we were. They traveled from their home neighborhoods in packs. They were intimidating in posture and demeanor. They were Irish. They smoked. The draw for them were the ball games and the numerous girls who lived in the Amalgamated Houses and hung out on the rail. We were sitting on the rail one evening in June, about two weeks before I was to graduate from eighth grade, the sun late to set, at least fifty kids talking and playing, when I noticed one of the outside toughs, a guy named James, hassling a pretty younger blond girl, a stuck up shy little seventh grader named Enid. She was very cute, very young, and clearly uncomfortable as she tried to dodge James’ attempts to touch her, to sit with his arm around her, to get her to go off into the park with him. I unconsciously stared at them.
“Why won’t you go out with me?” James asked, “I want to be your boyfriend. Don’t you like me? Come on, I won’t hurt you.” It was crude, overt, a bit aggressive, not our neighborhood style. If her father saw her she was in trouble. If a neighbor even reported it to her parents she was in trouble.
The true answer to James’ question was, “no, in fact I don’t like you, you scare me, you’re too old for me, you have pimples, you’re not Jewish, and my father would kill me if he saw me with you.” Instead she said, “I can’t.”
“Why can’t you?” James asked teasingly.
“I already have a boyfriend,” she said, a pretty clever answer for a seventh grader if you’d have asked me. Not bad at all.
But James, not easily dissuaded, misperceived her response as encouraging and parried, “Oh yeah, who,” an equally snappy reply in my book. I was easily impressed. So the cute twelve year old with the Veronica Lake hairdo looked around at the assorted boys available to her, she didn’t have any boyfriend as far as I knew, caught me staring at her, and nodding toward me said, “him.” Looked right at me as she said it. “Him.” Saw me looking at her, called my very name. Said, “yeah, him.”
I was shocked. Maybe also flattered. After all, she was cute, even pretty, even if I’d never talked to her because she was a grade younger than me, stuck up, and shy. But before I had the chance to further review these events, James was walking in my direction. Walked right up to me, was easily two or three years older than me, not bigger than me, but clearly tougher, put his face about two inches from my face and asked, “Are you her boyfriend?”
Now I don’t know about you, but from my vantage point a certain chivalry, a certain courage not ordinarily required in one’s daily dealings, was unequivocally required in this situation. After all, less than a decade had passed since the end of World War II, a time we knew, even in our youth, when men and women were called upon to speak up for and defend the defenseless, a war in which my uncles had served, in which my father’s best friend had been killed, in which those who responded to Jewish plight were honored and praised, while those who failed to respond to the call for help were roundly condemned, at least where I came from.
“Yeah, I guess I am,” I said.
“Well, I want to go out with her,” James said, “and she says she won’t go out with me because you’re her boyfriend. So you’re going to have to fight me for her.”
Really? I thought. I didn’t know those were the rules.
“And if you beat me, which I doubt you will, you’ll have to fight my brother. And if you beat him, which I really doubt you will, you’ll have to fight my friend Smokey, who has a gun and just got out of jail. You understand?” No really, that’s how boys talked there and then.
Well, yes, of course I understood. I nodded. James looked at me. He smiled a crooked happy smile. He walked over to Enid and leaning in toward her right ear said, loud enough for me to hear, “I’m going to fight for you.” He turned his back to the rail and walked cockily down the block.
Don’t ask me how things like this happened, but that was the end of it and nothing more was said or done that evening. Nothing. James walked away. Enid went back to talking to her girlfriends. She didn’t look at me or talk to me. I didn’t talk to her. My friends didn’t say anything to me about what had happened. I didn’t say anything to them. I was not excessively concerned. It was just a moment on the rail, until about a week later.
We were sitting at the rail. Where else would we be? I noticed a black Buick coupe coming down Governor’s Avenue toward the park. I saw the car stop at the end of the block, at the stop sign across the street from the rail. James and two older guys, I’d say they were actually men, were in the car. They got out of the car. One of them was James’ brother, who I recognized, the other was a man who I took to be Smokey. They got out of the Buick, and sat on the front fenders of the car, arms folded and crossed upon their chests.
James called my name. “Hey you, come here,” he said. And, of course, I did. Walked the twenty yards from the rail across the street and stood in front of him, in front of the Buick, in front of the two guys leaning against the headlights and sculpted front fenders of the Buick, arms crossed, watching.
“Now we’re gonna fight,” James said.
“But I don’t want to fight you, James,” I said.
“You got no choice. What are you, chicken?”
“No, I’m not chicken, James, I just don’t want to fight you.”
“You are chicken, right. Say you’re a chicken. Admit it. You’re afraid. You don’t want to fight me. You’re afraid. Right? Right?”
“No, that’s not right.”
“Are you still her boyfriend?”
“Uh, yeah, I think so,” I said. I hadn’t ever even talked with her.
“Well, then, we have to fight. You have to fight. You have no choice. You have to fight. Understand?”
He came even closer to me, stuck his face into my face. I could see the bloodshot lines in his eyes, the flecks of color in his eyeballs. I could smell the cigarette smoke on his breath. Saw stubble on his chin. Pimples. Freckles.
He pushed me with his the heel of his right hand hard in the center of my chest. “Come on chicken, fight me.”
I said nothing. I did nothing. My hands hung limply at my sides. I had the same silly smile on my face that I knew I had when caught doing what I wasn’t supposed to be doing. I tried not to look away or blink. I was afraid James was going to punch me. I wanted to see the punch coming, to not be surprised. I had no interest in fighting him, and absolutely less than no interest in fighting either of the guys on the hood of the Buick. I had no inkling how this was going to end. And although I didn’t like it, I also wasn’t scared. I just stood there, with that shit-eating grin on my face, unable to move, unable to think clearly, unable to walk away. What I actually remember thinking about were my blue jeans with the cuffs rolled up, how I didn’t want them to get dirty or torn, didn’t want to be in trouble with my mother.
I looked past James to see what the guys on the fenders were doing, but they were just standing there, feet planted, arms crossed, leaning on the Buick, staring. I was aware the street was unusually quiet and still. The rail was still. I sensed no movement, not among my friends behind me, not among the guys in front of me, not among the old ladies on the benches.
“Come on, chicken, fight me,” James screamed. He was really angry and frustrated. Working himself up. Trying to provoke us both.
“You’re a baby. You’re a real fucking baby. You’re afraid. You’re a chicken. You’re a fucking little chicken. Come on, fight me you bastard.”
I don’t know. I just wasn’t moved. It’s not as though I was completely frozen, but I certainly was stuck. I didn’t want to fight him. I didn’t want to get hurt. I didn’t want to get my jeans dirty. I didn’t want to turn and walk away. It was too shameful, too cowardly, something I would regret for years to come, an embarrassment in front of my friends. I didn’t want to back down, but I also certainly didn’t want to fight. I could get hurt.
So I stood there. Staring. Trying not to appear frightened, holding what ground was mine. Not sure what I felt. Smiling. Not really feeling anything or knowing what was coming next.
“You are a big fucking chicken,” he said. He pushed me again. I thought he was going to spit on me. He spat at my feet. He shoved me again. This time I deflected his hand. Then I shoved him back.
“Come on you big baby, come on, hit me. Fight me. You’re a chicken. You’re chicken shit. Come on. You’re afraid to fight me.”
I still felt nothing. I was numb. Alert, but numb. Thoughts raced through my head, no solution amongst them. It was a stalemate, tense but almost safe. I’d stand there. He’d yell at me. I’d stoically take it. It would end. He’d get back in the car and drive away believing I was a chicken and that he’d won. I’d walk away a winner having stood him down. A win win situation I thought. Perfect.
“Come on, James,” one of the guys on the car grumbled, “fight the jerk. Let’s get it over with, will you, huh?”
“You’re a chicken,” James said. He was yelling. He was frustrated. His hands balled into fists. The veins in his neck stood out.
“You’re a coward. You’re a fucking yellow Jew prick. Your mother is a Jew whore. Your mother sucks dick. Hitler was right.” He pushed me again.
Now those, unfortunately, were words that somehow pierced my heart and actually hurt, words with power. Fighting words. I stopped reflecting. I impulsively grabbed James’ shirt in my right hand and pulled down hard, ripped it half way to his belt. I was shocked. James was shocked. A surprised expression was on his face as I pulled him toward me and kneed him reflexively in the groin. He backed away. His mouth was open. He hit me hard in the cheek with his right fist. It hurt. I heard yelling from the rail behind me. Cheering.
“Come on, hit him.”
I was angry, acting on fear and adrenaline. I grabbed James in a headlock. He wiggled free and grabbed me in a headlock. We wrestled around and fell to the ground. Hard. I hurt my elbow but ended up on top of James, straddling him, facing the rail with my back to his brother and Smokey. I didn’t want to be there. Didn’t want to be on top of James with my back to Smokey. Didn’t want to tear my jeans. But this guy was a bastard, a fascist, no better than Hitler youth. And he was in my grasp.
I was also in real danger … and I finally knew it. As we wrestled on the ground I consciously yielded my position leaving James on top. It was safer. I tried to hold him close so he couldn’t swing hard. I had no idea what would happen next, James seated on top of me in the gutter, in the middle of the street.
As I lay there contemplating my circumstances, I noticed movement to my left and saw an adult man who lived in my building walking down the street. He was about twenty feet from where we lay when I heard him say, “What have we here, isn’t that the boy from Gale Place?” He was totally naive, on automatic pilot. Two kids from the neighborhood were fighting he thought and he was simply going to break it up. He walked over toward us apparently intent on pulling James off me. As he came forward I saw James’ brother move off the car. He reached into the front of his jeans and pulled out a long thin black handled knife. He pulled the knife back above his shoulder and started moving quickly toward my neighbor who was about to pull James off me.
As the man bent over James, James’ brother was less than a yard from him, clearly aiming to attack, perhaps to even stab the man in the back, or at the least to pull the man off James before he could interfere in the fight. Suddenly, out of nowhere it seemed, my friend Joey came hurtling across the street from the rail and threw himself hard into James’ brother’s shins, knocking his legs out from under him. The man grabbed James, still intent on pulling him off of me. Joey got up and grabbed the man to pull him off James. James’ brother got up from the ground and bent to find his knife. Smokey got off the car and started moving towards us. He reached into his pocket to pull out his handgun. I heard police sirens coming down the block. James got off me. He and his brother and Smokey quickly jumped into their car. I got off the ground ready to run. The man touched my arm and shook his head “no.” The police car pulled up beside the Buick, stopping right in front of Joey, me, and my neighbor, all standing to the side of the street.
“What’s going on here,” the cop on the passenger side of the cruiser asked?
“These two boys were fighting, officer,” said the man.
“Oh it was nothing,” said Joey.
“Well keep it that way,” the policeman said.
“And you guys get out of here,” he said to Smokey, who was calmly seated behind the wheel.
“Yes sir,” said Smokey as he put the car into gear, accelerated smoothly, turned at the corner, and drove up the hill.
And that was it. No one told my parents I’d been in a fight, or that some guy had come looking for me with a gun. At least no one in my family appeared to know. And it seemed better that way. Over the next week or two when I would come home from school I’d see the black Buick parked in front of the entrance to our apartment house and would go around the block to the back and come in through the basement. Nothing more.
Beginning in July my family rented a house for the summer in Long Beach, Long Island, outside the city, near the ocean. I don’t really know why my parents rented such a house. It seemed impulsive and out of character. My mother wanted to be out of the city for the summer, wanted her kids out of the Bronx I guessed, wanted another context in which to manage and entertain us. My father was between jobs, retired as a New York City fireman on a small disability pension, not yet working a new full time job. He loved the beach. Maybe that was the reason.
It was an ordinary tract home, in a suburban neighborhood, though substantially different than the tenth floor high-rise apartment we lived in in the Bronx. Long Beach was different too. One main street filled with stores. An inner harbor. A long sandy beach. I was aware of the sun shining, could smell salt water in the air, sand filled every crack in the pavement, little dry beach plants sprang up in front of peoples’ houses on the wide streets lined with parking meters.
I got a job as a stock clerk and grocery delivery boy at the King Cohen grocery on Main Street, made friends with a group of working class kids who wore crosses, regularly petted under the boardwalk with a slightly crippled fourteen year old girl who lived next door, had a permanent limp, and everyone called “Duckie.” Sometimes I unhooked her bra and actually held her breasts. She would touch my erection through my pants. She wanted more. I somehow didn’t. I was too afraid I think.
I was caught smoking cigarettes that summer by my father who inadvertently walked passed the open window of the recreation room in the basement of the deserted beachfront hotel where I was absenting myself from work and playing poker. He never said a word to me. Didn’t talk to me for a week in fact.
I saw the black Buick with James, and Smokey, and James’ brother, twice in Long Beach. I don’t know how they knew I was there, but I believe they didn’t see me. And I told not a soul. When I returned to the Bronx that fall I saw the Buick parked in front of our house once. Then I never saw the car again. Weeks later James came to the rail. He talked to the girls. He talked to me. No one said anything about the fight. I never ever talked to Enid. Not once. Ever. I believe my parents never knew about James, the fight, Smokey, or the gun. If they had known, I’m certain that my father and my uncle the WWII aviator and NYC narcotics detective would have been involved. And they weren’t.

I am one of the inmates at P.S. 95 on Governor Avenue in the northwest Bronx. Our teachers are principally frustrated and tenured nuns who missed the chance to wear the habit. Maybe they’re closet drunks. Whatever they are, they are totalitarians. But they like me.
There are weekly school assemblies at P.S. 95 at which all of the upper grade students and the teachers gather in the school auditorium to see and hear some sort of presentation, music or art appreciation usually. It is the high point of the school community’s week.
The P.S. 95 auditorium is situated on the ground floor of our school building, which is built on a hill, so that the auditorium is pitched downward toward a five-foot high raised stage and platform. At the left front corner of the auditorium is a baby grand piano. Above the piano, at the corner of the stage, resting in a massive stand bolted to the stage flooring is a huge American flag with a large brass eagle adorning the top of its flagpole.
Every boy who attends P.S. 95 is required to wear a white shirt and tie on assembly day. Every girl wears a skirt and white blouse, which every boy tries to see through. All students uniformly look forward to assembly day as a break from classroom routine. Every assembly begins with the pledge of allegiance to our flag “and to the republic for which it stands.” An honor guard, comprising five boys and four girls, waits outside the auditorium as each class silently files into the auditorium to take their assigned seats in their assigned rows. The filing into the auditorium is silent and orderly. Boys sit on the left side of the auditorium facing the stage, girls on the right. After every student is properly seated and the auditorium absolutely still a teacher says, “We will now all rise to honor our flag.” The audience then stands amidst a raucous clacking of folding seats springing back to attention and the honor guard, led by the senior student who has been selected as flag bearer, accompanied by appropriate marching music from the grand piano, then marches down the center aisle of the auditorium. The flag bearer carries over his right shoulder a small American flag that is stored in a closet outside the auditorium. When the honor guard reaches the front of the auditorium stage it parts into two separate files, every other student in line turning either left or right. Because the procession has alternated boy girl boy girl marching down the aisle, when the honor guard separates and marches to the sides of the stage and up the five or six steps onto the stage itself the boys in the honor guard have all lined up on the right side of the stage facing the audience, the girls have all lined up to the left of the stage facing the audience.
After the honor guard has lined up across the front of the stage the flag bearer steps one step forward to the edge of the stage. A teacher calls out, “Present arms.” The flag bearer lowers the flag he has been carrying upright and vertical over his shoulder to present the colors. The flag is held in the flag bearer’s right hand, his right arm fully extended, the flag pole at a sixty degree angle to the floor, the stars and stripes unfurled fully before the assembly, the end of the flagpole supported in a leather cup which hangs on a leather thong around the flag bearer’s neck. The flag’s edge hangs about a foot from the floor of the center aisle of the auditorium. The assembly recites the Pledge of Allegiance. Ms. Bailey strikes a chord on the piano and the assembly sings the Star Spangled Banner. The honor guard stands still and at attention. At the end of the national anthem the flag bearer raises the flag and steps back into line with the honor guard. He turns crisply and marches off stage, walking past the huge American flag with the large brass eagle adorning the top of the flagpole that lives on stage, down the stairs, and back up the center aisle of the auditorium. The other honorees follow as they march out the doors at the rear of the assembly, where the flag bearer ceremoniously replaces the marching flag in the closet used for its storage and then he, with the remainder of the color guard, rejoin their classmates.
I am the student who bears the flag at assembly in my eighth grade senior year. I do not know how, why, or by whom I have been chosen for this duty and privilege, but I am honored and pleased by the distinction.
Soon after the Memorial Day holiday in 1954 our class begins rehearsals for the graduation assembly to be held later in June. In the graduation assembly we are told the flag presentation ceremony will have two alterations. After the flag has been presented, after the Pledge of Allegiance has been said, and after the Star Spangled Banner has been sung, the graduating class will also sing “America the Beautiful,” after which the flag bearer will lift the flag, step back from the edge of the stage as usual, but will then turn to his left, and formally present the flag to the seventh grade student who will serve as the flag bearer of the honor guard next year. The honor guard will then part into two files, march down the stairs, as is our custom, up the aisle, and then return quietly to the seats that have been left vacant for us so that we are arranged in perfect alphabetical order when called upon to receive our diplomas.
On graduation day the energy at school is dramatically heightened. Peeking through the doors leading into the auditorium I see my parents, and the parents of many of my friends who have filled the auditorium. The rest of the graduating class marches silently to their seats. Mr. Black, the science teacher, is standing outside the auditorium with the honor guard. I see he is already holding a flag. But it is not the regular flag I have carried at every assembly for a year, the flag I have practiced with in advance of graduation exercises, the flag I anticipated would be borne by me on graduation day for presentation to next year’s flag bearer. Instead, without forewarning, the usual flag I carry has been replaced for graduation ceremony purposes by the huge American flag with a large brass eagle adorning the top of the flagpole that normally rests in the stand bolted to the assembly room stage above the grand piano. I have not been alerted to this change.
The processional music begins. I march proudly down the aisle carrying the huge unfamiliar flag in two hands in an upright position. I turn left at the edge of the stairs and march up the steps to center stage. I step one step forward as prescribed. Ms. Bailey says, “Present arms.” I lower the flag with my right arm extended over the edge of the stage. And as the audience begins to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, I realize that this flag with the eagle on top of it weighs at least forty pounds more than the flag I am used to holding and that there is simply no way I will be able to keep my arm extended, the flag at a sixty degree angle, and the cloth edges of the flag off the forbidden floor for the next five or six minutes. Indeed my arm is straining well before the Pledge is completed, “with liberty and justice for all.”
A cord is struck. “Oh say can you see,” is intoned. I am straining tremendously. I really cannot see how it will be possible for me to hold this position, to keep the flag off the floor during the singing of the National Anthem and America the Beautiful. I catch my father’s eye. He understands what is happening. He pokes my mother in the ribs with his elbow. She turns to look at him and he whispers. She returns her gaze to the stage. I am starting to waver. My right arm is strained and shaking, “and the home of the brave,” is sung. My mother’s mouth is open but no words are coming out.
Indeed, by the first chord of “America the Beautiful” everyone in the audience knows what is happening, and although they are all singing all of their mouths are hanging open longer between the words, and even the music has slowed down. I see the clock on the rear wall of the auditorium. I never really knew second hands moved so slowly. I’m wavering and shaking. The weight of the flag and the brass eagle are threatening to literally pull me off the stage. The tip of the flag dips dangerously low toward the floor. I can feel the strain in my back. My father’s mouth has now stopped moving and is seemingly permanently opened as well. My parents are actually holding hands. Their eyes are wide.
I am a statue on the edge of collapse. The drama will end when I fall off the stage. But I will not grab the flagpole with my second hand until the song is finished. I don’t know why, but those are the rules.
America the Beautiful, clearly the longest song ever written, has had new verses added to it by the diabolic Ms. Bailey while the statue is tottering. And though I can lean into my back from time to time and get a little more lift, I cannot bring my right arm up an iota. I am actually afraid I will start to cry. I can feel the tears welling up behind my eyes. I sense the grimace at the corners of my mouth. I try to maintain a blank and stoical gaze. I feel my whole body shaking and hope no one else can see it. I count five seconds. I count another five seconds. We are nearing the end. The flag dips ever closer toward the floor. I arch my back and lean against the weight of the flag. The audience moans the last words of the song. I reach out with my left arm and grasp the pole and pull it back high into my chest. There is a few seconds of silence, a pause, and then the audience literally bursts into spontaneous applause.
I lift the flag out of its carrying holster. I gather the cloth and fold the flag across my chest. I turn to my left and hand the flag off to my seventh grade replacement who literally sags when he grasps the full weight of the flag. I turn right and lead the color guard off the stage to return to the seat held vacant for me in an alphabetically defined cosmic order.