LET YOUR FREAK FLAG FLY – Episode 3 (of 5)

Vexatious Vexillology and Vexillography

Revolution was in the air! Time for change! Down with War Mongers and Bubblegummers!!! Rise Up!!!! And now, this very night, it was all up to us!!! Just Lloyd and me to save the world. We were so up for it….

But, you might ask, exactly how do you change the world while drinking tea at an arborite kitchen table on Chetamon Drive in the Hardisty Subdivision (not nearly as pretentious as it sounds) in Hinton, Alberta, Canada, wallowing as we were in the geographic vortex of a million square miles of spruce trees, muskeg, snowbanks perfumed with mill smoke? Write a stirring manifesto? Give a rousing speech? Go on strike and burn some old phone books, bicycle tires and copies of the Hinton Herald in front of the Roxy Theatre? Sing La marseillaise at the pulp mill during shift change? Print purple-inked protest pamphlets on the high school Gestener machine and hand them out at the Timberland bar? Yeah, right, Man. We’d have a pulp truck driver, skidder operator, or bronco buster from Brule knock us from here to Moose Jaw before we so much as waved a daisy or tucked a flower behind our ear.

No, we needed something truly rousing – in addition to music – and in addition to concert posters and bumper stickers. Something truly powerful to stir the masses. Something Grand. Something Epic. But we also didn’t want to do much actual manual labour, get into fisticuffs with the bar crowd, or make so much of a mess that we might have to sweep up afterwards. Plus, we were a little short on campaign finances to buy Che brand, collapsible street barricades from the Eaton’s catalogue (“Some Assembly & Tools-Required. Batteries and Band-Aids Not Included”) and neither of us we were exactly do-it-your-selfers, as Mr. Nowicki, our long suffering shop teacher, would have readily attested to.

So, what could Lloyd and I do to rally the troops and get them marching on the battlements of “The Man”. Wait! Hold on! Hold, on! Don’t get me wrong here. I’m not talking about real troops armed with tanks, sling shots, pitchforks, squirrel guns and with submarines down on the Athabasca River. No, I’m talking of an army of peaceniks who would usher in the golden age wearing flowers in their hair and armed only with love beads, maracas and bongo drums. Those kind of troops. The Gang of Two discussed, debated, argued, ultimately concurred, then unanimously voted that, yes, what was most urgently needed was – a Freak Flag! Something to fly high in the sky and inspire all our freaky brothers and sisters and get their butts off their bean bags and waterbeds and onto the streets.

No time to waste. We set to work that very night. It was all happening – here and now – right there in Mrs. Litke’s kitchen. We were totally stoked. This was so great. Time for action! We were only waiting for this moment to arise. Our strategic plan indicated that Phase One would be so simple to execute that any idiot could do it. All we had to do was quickly gather the usual flag-making paraphernalia: flutterable fabric, scissors, paint, paint brush, bold catchy symmetrical design, maybe a skein of embroidery thread. Our inventory analysis was soon complete, on time and on budget. Now for the procurement phase of operations. Then…. Thud!

It was then, not ten seconds into Phase Two, when we lurched to a sudden, shuddering halt. Turns out Phase One hadn’t been so entirely idiot proof after all. We had like zero items from our list of essentials. We stared blankly into the abyss, into a deep, dark pit of despair and existential funk. “Buummerrrrr!!!”

It had always been a hardship and, quite frankly, kind of an embarrassment, to live in a town without its own Flag-n-Flappers franchise, but now it was proving a disaster. The nearest flag shop was somewhere in New Jersey. We tried placing a collect call to Greyhound to inquire about tickets there, but they simply snickered before resorting to yelling before hanging up on us. We eventually duped someone in Edson into accepting a collect call by my impersonating Sgt. Stedenko, of Cheech and Chong fame. We were soon shocked to learn there wasn’t a direct bus route to Hoboken for the foreseeable future. The milk-run, on the other hand would include 418 scheduled stops – including an unavoidable pit stop in Edson. Edson??? Yeah, right, like that’s ever going to happen! No way, Man! Naturally, we next considered our online options. This proved more problematic than we could have imagined, since neither the internet nor computers had been invented yet. Besides, Amazon was still only a river back in those long-ago days, so no help forthcoming from Mr. Bezos either.

Then, behold, deep in our darkest pit of our unbearable downness, Wayne, Lloyd’s younger brother, charged madly into the kitchen wearing his paisley pajamas and matching purple nightcap. Completely gonzo! He was brandishing a humongous set of sail maker’s shears, the biggest I had ever seen outside of a 17^th century royal navy shipyard. We thought he had totally flipped and was intent on mayhem and slaughter right then and there, and just when we were about to save the world too. Oblivious to the commotion being made in the kitchen earlier, he had woken as soon as the whispering started. He overheard our muted call to arms and the ensuing procurement crisis. Puzzle, puzzle, puzzle, then a stroke of brilliance. The giant scissors he was waving about were pilfered from his mom’s sewing kit. And now became his timely contribution to the cause. With his night cap perched at just the right angle he looked like he was ready to storm the Bastille, or maybe the set of Captain Kangaroo. Anyway, he was in! Our first recruit and the flag wasn’t even created yet. We were now officially the Gang of Three.

Despite the overwhelming success of our recent recruitment drive, we remained in a jam. We still only had this oversized pair of scissors and no other supplies to speak of. And, seeing those blades being flashed around in the air as they were, there was a clear and present danger they would lop off an ear or a limb at any moment thus delaying our launch even further. A cynical observer looking in on the scene, might assume we didn’t know what the hell we were doing. But we weren’t going to let mere dumbassedness get in our way; at least it had certainly never stopped us before.  We did have to ask ourselves, however, what the hell does a flag look like anyway? I mean, really? Never needed to know before so we never really looked. Bet you haven’t either. Clearly some major inspiration and a working template was needed. Then it came, like a trumpet on a battlefield, or a comet in the sky, or a drunk in a midnight choir, or a clown armed with a cream pie at a midnight carnival, or, … anyway, inspiration struck us all instantly. We three rushed as one towards the living room window and we pressed our noses against the glass and peered into the gloom.

Here are some strategic details you need to know now. The Litke home was unassuming enough, much like any other house in the neighbourhood. But it was also uniquely positioned at a sharp crik in the street. This orientation meant it faced due west, down the street sloping towards Harry Collinge High School at the end of the block. A large field stretched out behind the school with the Rocky Mountains looming in the far distance. Tonight, as always, the lights of the pulp mill cast an eerie glow for a mile or so in all directions and lit up the billowing smoke and steam rising from the stacks and into sky. Groans, creaks, horns, whistles, inexplicable loud bangs and an eternal hum came from within its walls like it was the lair of an ancient firedrake. The whole scene served as a perfect operatic background for what was to come. Centre stage, in full silhouette, was the Canadian flag proudly flapping in the wind. You certainly didn’t need to be a weatherman to see which way the wind blows. My god, we had to do this!

Again, Wayne sprang into action, truthfully more of a slink than a spring, but anyway, he metaphorically sprang into action and went back to rifling through the linen closet. And there he found it…. Still in the Simpson-Sears mailing wrapper. Pristine. A set of spanking-new, Queen-sized flannel sheets. We snapped open one of the sheets on the table and stared at it in awe and wonder. Meant to be! Back in business, baby! We gave each other a round of awkward hugs and back slaps and went at it again.

The next problem was glaringly obvious even to us. The baby-pink stripes on either end of the sheets – oh, boy, they had to go. Like, now! Only total losers have baby pink stripes on their flag. Every idiot knows that, and we were no exceptions. So, Wayne took to shearing. The giant scissors easily sliced into the flannel and immediately opened a foot long gash, a gaping, mortal wound. OMG. What, oh what, have we done? If we thought sacking then re-stacking the cookie jar was going to unleash the mother furies, what was this gaping slash in her sheet going to do? Stunned silence. Then the cutting re-commenced. Scrinch, scrinch, scrinch. Come hell or high water (most likely hell), we were committed now. No turning back. A few more scrinches and the pink stripes were limply coiled on the kitchen floor. And we were left with a pure white canvas with which to work our hippie magic on.

Then, of course, there was that other nagging detail: no paints. In a wordless frenzy, we looked everywhere we could without rousing the house or the ire. Cupboards, closets, under beds. Not a red, a pink, a yellow, a green, a purple or a black. Not a paint pot, spray can, box of Laurentian coloured pencils, or even the well chewed stub of a Crayola wax crayon. No colours to be had. Then it was Lloyd’s turn to Eureka once again. A triumphant look on his face, he leaped up from his chair and darted to the fridge. Totally bonkers!? But, no, total genius. For, lo and behold, on the top shelf inside the fridge, a giant pot of golden yellow mustard. Full and stout and beckoning.  Practically glowing there waiting for us in all its unopened unadulterated yellowness. How perfect! Picasso, Dali, Peter Max and Warhol all had their palettes, now we had ours, albeit a bit more limited in the colour spectrum.

We quickly improvised a paintbrush from a scrunched up toilet paper tube and set to work again. Lloyd thrust the brush deep into the mustard pot and came out a great glob of yellow. On fire, he stepped forward to engage his canvas, then lurched to a sudden halt. The design? What design? What the hell was he going to paint? Bit of a creative block. We had like one colour so that simplified things, but we were definitely at another standstill, but this time gooey yellow mustard was streaming down Lloyd’s arm and slopping onto the floor.

Turns out, even with all the motivation, hippie ingenuity and the essential ingredients in hand, designing a flag is not as quick or as easy as it sounds, especially when you start skidding around the kitchen floor slick with mustard paint. At least that’s what we found out that night right there in Mrs. Litke’s kitchen. Don’t count us out though. We knew from engineering and industrial design issues we had previously tackled – like the time the Litke brothers made those homemade rockets, and when I almost finished the book ends and tin box in Mr. Nowicki’s shop class – that we had to consider design precedents when prototyping. You know, copy stuff from somebody a lot smarter than you. That’s just the smart thing to do.

So that’s what we did. First off, we eliminated the obvious, flags with baby pink stripes. Already gone. Next to be eliminated were flags with stripes of any size or colour. Like, hey, what’s with France and Holland and Poland and Austria and all those other European countries ordering the same stripes from the same flag catalogue? And all those starry flags? How cliché. But, hhhmmm, then again… That big red maple leaf for Canada’s flag? We probably shouldn’t be too critical of cliches, I suppose. History has it that Jacques St-Cyr from Quebec, in 1965, created the design for Canada’s new flag. What is lesser known is that he was paid for his efforts with a lifetime supply of artificially-maple flavoured Girl Guide cookies. That’s what I heard anyway. And it sounds like something I would believe.

I’ll bet other countries were tempted to go with a cliché too. C’mon Holland, don’t tell me you didn’t at least consider putting a windmill, a tulip or a wooden shoe on yours. And, France, maybe the Eiffel Tower? Or a croissant and a camembert wheel with crossed bottles of red and white? Just fess up that you thought of it. In the end, some huckster with a bunch of leftover café awnings sold you all the same basic flag design. Great salesman, that guy. A hippie flag, we all agreed, needed something different than a strip of canopy to cover croissants or calzones. Something distinct. Something special.

Our hastily appointed design committee plunged into serious research mode. We found out that the Union Jack was credited to none other than King James 1, who cobbled together a bunch of countries that didn’t even really like each other all that much. He played around a bit with the flags from these different places and got frustrated finally dumping them all together in a pile on his throne, which proved a handy work bench for his many creative projects. And that’s where royal genius struck. He immediately saw that the pile of flags looked like the cross hatched crusts his grandmother taught him to make for the pig’s-knuckle/peach/rutabaga/onion-cream pies he was so terribly fond of. He immediately ordered the royal needlewoman to stitch them all together and that, my friend, is how the first Union Jack was born. Skivvy Wavers (signalmen) in the royal navy soon heard about his creation and thought having the king’s favourite pie on a flag was jolly good fun. They started tying little flags (jacks) on their ships and having a good chuckle at the king’s folly, but only when he wasn’t listening, of course. The King James design is still used today by first-day pork pie pastry chefs and over budget highway engineers. It is called the higgeldy-piggledy style, a nod to a design perhaps fitting for a king and an Empire, but way too crazy even for us hippies.

Some major design problems soon arose for the king with intractable socio-political-religious consequences. Like what to do about the whole Ireland thing. In or out? Orange or Green? Guinness, whisky, gin or clotted cream? Sorry, even I got confused trying to sort out the Irish thing, and I’ve got the blood of Irish kings coursing thru my veins, ask anybody in Ireland, they’ll back me up.

And what about Wales? Yeah, what about them, eh? Their red dragon obviously didn’t fit with the higgeldy-piggledy design so, basically, they got royally dumped. Pity that. That snazzy red dragon motif was lifted from the battle standard of none other than King Arthur himself. Like that’s pretty hippie dippie, right? But, we figured, without Puff on the flag, the Union Jack is nothing but a pile of ribbons and bows, again, a no go.

We next considered the familiar Betsy Ross flag, of 1776. We liked the circle of star dancing around a maypole motif. Kinda trippy. But, again, the whole stripe thing on the sides was a turn off (maybe we should lend them our shears?). And besides those ‘Mericans probably had an eloquence of Pennsylvania lawyers for us to fight over copyright infringements. And we sure didn’t want to risk another War of 1812 over territorial claims to who owns the moon and stars. Besides, they’re pretty grouchy at the best of times and still very determined to find out who burned down their White House way back then. (Go full camo Canada and keep blaming those bloody Brits. The whole thing will blow over eventually and, meanwhile, we need the cheap cheese and Arizona sunshine.) So, anyway, both stars and stripes were now ruled out of our design options.

The next models thrilled us with possibilities. The flag for Dominica was designed by a playwright and has a purple parrot on it. Way cool…. Bhutan also has a dragon, kinda scary though, so not exactly the peace-n-love message we wanted to flap, but a fun concept, nonetheless. Like Scott Mackenzie’s song, San Francisco, the Marianas Islands flag is all about wearing flowers in your hair. We were, like, totally getting a strange vibration from it, so a great idea. But…? Kyrgyzstan? Who would have thought the Kyrgyz Republic could inspire a hippie flag? But they have a big yellow sun on their flag that contains a drawing of a tunduk, the smoke hole in the top of a yurt. Now how freaking hippie is that?!

There was only one insurmountable problem with all four of these designs. None of these countries, let alone their flags, existed in 1968. We, therefore, voted, and collectively ruled it was not only unsportsmanlike – but also totally unhippiemanlike – to use these flag designs from the future even for inspirational purposes. [Editor’s Note: “Whhaaaa…???“] In any case, we three wannabe revolutionaries were once again staring woefully at Mrs. Litke’s blank white sheet and her pot of yellow mustard.

To Be Continued

in

EPISODE FOUR

(OF FIVE)

“BIRTH OF THE FREAK FLAG“