Who Stole The Peace Flag?

Cars used to look a lot cooler than they do now.

We are at war in Libya. Just like that. Good thing we have an all volunteer army.

A friend who lived down the street was in Viet Nam dropping Agent Orange out of a helicopter on anything that moved when my mom made a peace flag. She sewed it! It was a white cloth peace sign on a sky blue piece of material. I remember it being beautiful. We flew it on the flag pole out in front of our house and my friend’s mom got all bent out of shape about it. I remember her calling our house and screaming over the phone while my mom made a rational appeal to her. “Surely you want peace too”, I remember her saying, but the argument continued. This neighbor thought it was flat out wrong to fly that kind of thing while her son was fighting for our country. He was only in the army because he flunked out of Bonaventure and got drafted.

I was so proud of my mom but the thing is a lot of people felt like her and it was a bit of a mystery when the flag was stolen a few weeks later. “Who stole the peace flag?” became the family’s obsession as we weighed the suspicion level of each neighbor. We found out months later that it was the younger brother of the guy who was in Viet Nam. I’ll bet the guys over there were real happy there were people back home working against peace.

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