The Patriot At Home

My father, my infant brother and me, circa 1968

To my father, patriotism was of utmost importance.  He exhibited the love of country more common in a recent immigrant, even though we could trace our family lineage in California back several generations.  Love of country was just all-important to him.

My father was born at the start of the Second World War, and his mother, a descendant of those who lived through the potato famine in Ireland only to become ensnared in the Great Depression and watch as her family lost their farm in the Dust Bowl, transferred her food insecurities to her oldest son.  We were commanded to finish everything on our plate each evening at dinner, and we were taught to live frugally.

My father came of age just after the Korean War ended, and by the time Vietnam kicked up, he was a young husband with two kids to feed and a stay-at-home wife.  So he was not drafted, but he had two younger brothers who went to that war, one of whom contracted spinal meningitis in boot camp and never made it to the front while the other died years after the war from skin cancer caused by Agent Orange, the popular jungle defoliant.  Seeing his one brother struggling to walk again with crutches and his other brother suffering from PTSD and cancer inspired guilt that he had somehow failed as an older brother to set an example.  They were brave and went to war; he did not.

Instead, war movies became my father’s refuge.  He loved and idolized John Wayne, and his favorite movie was The Battle of the Bulge (1965).  Later, he religiously watched the 1962 television series Combat! starring Vic Morrow.  Memorial Day and Veterans’ Day and the Fourth of July were sacred holidays to my father.  He also revered the National Anthem and “America the Beautiful.”  At church on those holidays, the choir often sang American hymns like “God Bless America” and “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”  My father soaked it all up.  He was not blessed with a singing voice, so he would listen, spine stiff and his eyes forward.  He felt every note.

His patriotism carried over in one strange way.  Whenever we watched a sporting event on TV, when the game began with the National Anthem, he insisted we stand, place our right hand over our hearts, and remain so throughout the entire anthem.  Only when it was finished could we sit back down on the couch.  The one or two times I questioned why we had to do this in our own home where no one could see us, I received a sharp answer.  “You show respect,” he would growl, “no matter who can see you.”

The biggest argument I ever saw my parents have occurred over an article of clothing on a long ago Memorial Day.  In the 1960s and 70s, it was fashionable to sew an American flag patch to the seat of one’s jeans.  It was all part of the anti-establishment years when protests over Vietnam were running hot and the line between the younger generation and the older became the “generation gap.”  Nothing got my father more riled up than to see the flag patch on a “hippy’s ass.”  My father responded to this act of disrespect by affixing to his truck bumper the popular sticker “America, love it or leave it.”  Next to it, he placed his National Rifle Association sticker.  These two stickers became the hallmarks of his Republican conservatism, something I never shared with him.

That year, on the holiday to remember those who gave their lives for our country, my mother gave my father the gift of a full barbecue apron and chef’s hat made out of an American flag.  She saw it as patriotic that he would wear the outfit while barbecuing on this most American of holidays, second only to the Fourth of July.  My father exploded when he unwrapped the box and opened it up.  In his view, this would be in line with the American flag patch on torn jeans.  It would be sacrilegious  and disrespectful to country.  He was enraged and would not listen to any attempts to explain alternative views.  My mother was in hysterics.  The outfit went back into the box never to be seen again.

On a holiday to sacred memory, I remember my father.  He never got the chance to serve his country in war, which I know was a disappointment to him, possibly even something to be ashamed of.  But I am happy he got married and started a family before the draft came for him.  In America, there are many ways to be patriotic.