For Flag Day, one family sets up a patriotic parish
If you follow this column, you know my husband, Brian, sets up a Christmas village, with more than a hundred teeny buildings, from a haberdashery to the Chrysler Building. The week before Thanksgiving, we clean off every available flat surface — shelves, mantels, the ironing board — to fit the Christmas megalopolis. He also sets up a Valentine’s village, a Halloween hamlet, an Irish outpost and an Easter Podunk.
Truly, the Kipcap (our family car) has never spent a night in our garage because the room is filled wall to wall with Styrofoam boxes.
June is Pride month. So you’d think we would mark the occasion with a Gay Pride village at our house, or rather an LGBTQ+ Pride town with little Village People: miniature drag queens, petite dykes on bikes and the Castro Theatre, all set against a rainbow flag. But alas, the miniature town decoration industry has not caught up with the times.
The Roof Cow down the block is already decorated in her rainbow scarf, but the Bedlam Blue Bungalow looks as straight as any other house in the outer, outer, outer, outer Excelsior.
So instead of an LGBTQ Town, the FisherPaulsons went with Plan B, another kind of pride: patriotic. If you can’t have rainbows, stick with red, white and blue.
Monday, June 14, is Flag Day. It celebrates the adoption of the flag of the United States on June 14, 1777, after Betsy Ross took Washington’s suggestion to sew something that didn’t look like a Union Jack.
Thirteen stripes for the first 13 colonies. And a star for every state, leading up to July 4, 1960, when the constellation of 50 stars got the pennant looking so crowded that we haven’t added any more states.
Just kidding. By the end of the Biden presidency, we might have a star for Washington D.C., Puerto Rico and maybe even the Castro.
As holidays go, however, Flag Day can feel a bit lame. You put up a flag. You salute it. No Flag Day carols or flag cookies. Unless you’re into vexillology (the study of flags), you could skid right past it. It lacks the marketability of Valentine’s Day or Christmas, when you know you have to buy chocolate or Nintendos to keep your family happy.
Not so the FisherPaulsons! For our celebration, Brian sets up the patriotic parish: scaleddown replicas of Mount Rushmore, the White House, the Lincoln Memorial and even Independence Hall.
Behind the mall, we set the flag that we were given at Nana’s (Brian’s mother) funeral, from a nation grateful for her service. We put up the picture of Nana in her full Air Force colonel uniform, as well as Hap in his Army khakis. If we had a picture of Brother XX in his sailor outfit, we’d display that too.
There’s also a little statue to honor the fallen firefighters and police officers, because deputy sheriffs can be heroes, too.
All would be Americana bliss in our dining room but for one plot complication: Neither of our sons, Zane and Aidan, has ever paid attention to Brian’s masterpieces. They'll give it an eye roll, maybe, but never the shock and awe Brian’s hoping for. And none of our rescue hounds has noted them either, because it’s far too high for the boy dogs to mark.
But alas, Queenie turns out to be the Godzilla of Brian’s villages. How she jumps that high I do not know, but she’s already taken out the Statue of Liberty, and one morning I caught her chewing on the head of a minuteman. If dogs wore clothes, she’d be in a red coat.
She never touches the flag, though. Even a Pekingese has some respect.
This Flag Day column is dedicated to Earl R. McLeary, the only soldier in Hap’s company to be killed in the invasion of Fortress Europa. In fact, Brother XX was named in honor of him. (Wait! Did I just give up Brother XX’s real name?)
We remember men and women like him, who died so that Old Glory could fly above us.
By the end of the Biden presidency, we might have a star for Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico and maybe even the Castro.