LET YOUR FREAK FLAG FLY – PARTS FOUR & FIVE

THE FREAKING FREAK FLAG FINALLY FLIES

“Summary: Herein is the big reveal of how the Freak Flag was created and hoisted aloft, launching the notorious Hinton Hippie Revolution of 1968. Also included is how Mrs. Litke smelled a rat, a patchouli-smelling hippie rat. Then there’s a whole bunch of long-overdue apologies.”

The universe stood still…. Then Lloyd, well, he just went for it. Total instinct, Man. Divinely inspired. Crazy! A glob of yellow mustard splatted in the center of the sheet. Game on. A dab, a swoop, a smear later, and we had our cosmic design. A giant yellow flower on a pure white background. We were awe struck as the flag quickly took shape before us. Then, we had it – our own freaking, frakking Freak Flag. Far Freaking Out!!!

We held it up before us, feeling the overwhelming desire to salute, if only hippies knew how to salute. That flag made our hearts sing, it made everything groovy, but we wanted to know for sure. So, we flipped it around. Apparently, a half jug of yellow mustard is only good for painting a giant flower flag on one side of a flannel sheet. The other side looked like… Let’s just say it didn’t look nearly as inspiring. So, the rest of the huge jug of mustard was sacrificed to paint the reverse side. But then we were really, truly done. We did it! We had our very own Freak Flag. No hippie could have ever felt prouder. Lloyd, prudently, stuck the empty mustard jar back in the fridge and furtively closed the door.

So now what to do? Again, all in synch, we headed back to the living room window, and we squinted into the night again. And there down the street, on the front lawn of Harry Collinge High School, stood the long, tall flagpole. And on very top, was the Canadian Maple Leaf flag snapping sharply in the wind. On with the boots and out into the night. Sneaking down the road. Across the patch of school lawn. Right up to the towering flagpole.

Immediately upon arrival, we paused for a “what the hell are we doing,” kind of moment. Being the naturally sage people that we were, we wanted to know the chances of us getting busted for this caper. Lloyd pulled the slide rule out of his red head band that he kept next to his harmonicas, chopsticks, actuarial tables, Expert’s Guide to the Dewey Decimal System and Jarvis Lake tide charts. He ran the stats…. Zip, zip, zip, went the slide rule. Scrunch, scrunch, scrunch went the numbers. Then. A moment’s pause as his analysis hit home. A scowl. According to his calculations, Mrs. Litke was right again: all three of us put together really didn’t have the sense God gave a goose. We already suspected that, so we were more anxious about the next set of calculations. Zip, zip, zip, went the slide rule again. The minutes passed grindingly slow, and the tension mounted. Dogs barked. Porch lights went on down the block. More zipping.

Then Lloyd was finally done. According to the figures, which he checked and re-checked, there was precisely a 110.996644111% possibility that we’d be in the Sgt. Dodger Clark’s drunk tank before the night was through.

“No way, man!” “Holy crap!” “Wow!”. We all grinned the grin of dumbasses everywhere. Our odds were never better!

We swiftly lowered the maple leaf. Loud squealing and banging of rope and pulleys ensued. A quick check around us. A couple more porch lights on. Then squeak, squeak, squeak, and down it came. We detached the flag from the rope. Then, using granny knots we learned in Junior Forest Wardens, we tied the giant yellow mustard hippie flower flag to the pull rope and started yarding it up the pole. More squeaking. But wait…. What to do with the displaced flag. Down came the flower. More loud squeals. For good measure, we flipped the maple leaf upside down, hung it below the flower flag then quickly hoisted them both to the top of the pole when the tattle-tale squealing, squeaking and banging mercifully ceased. We stood in silence staring at the flannel Freak Flag as it hung limply from its rigging. Nothing! Nary a quiver, flap or flutter. Only the drip, drip, drip of yellow mustard.

Then a quickening as the early-dawn winds picked up coming off the mountains. The flags slowly unfurled. Then the sharp snap of the maple leaf catching the wind. Finally, the gusts were brisk enough to flap the soggy flannel flower flag. More awkward hugs, back slaps, high fives, shoulder punches and stifled yells as we celebrated lift off. A mist of golden yellow mustard rained down upon the Gang of Three. Anointing us. In unison, we proudly saluted the flag with peace signs, and Wayne waved his purple hat. “Hail Atlantis!”, I shouted to the heavens. Then we were off, intoxicated with revolutionary fervour. Giddy with success. The Freak Flag was REALLY FREAKING FLYING!

By this time, it was either very, very late or very, very early late so Lloyd and Wayne slunk back into their house. There they hid the tell-tale signs of our crime as best they could before the early risers caught them out. I guessed by this time, however, as they crept about cleaning up all the mustard splatter, that they were getting just a little fretful of what wrath they might incur come breakfast. As for me, enough damage done for one night. I scurried away in the dawn’s early light to my secret hideaway in the catacombs of the Anglican Church on Hardisty Avenue.

The rest of the weekend passed uneventfully as Wayne and Lloyd dutifully did their homework and chores and I didn’t, because, well you already know how come I didn’t and don’t. Monday also came and went peacefully. I was in the park on Hardisty Creek near the Anglican Church blissfully preoccupied with beading my buckskin jacket. Lost in my personal reveries I had completely forgot about the flower flag flapping in the wind down at Harry Collinge High. I didn’t even hear the sirens. Then along came Tuesday….

It being the kind of sweet day that it was, I was contentedly washing my socks and bandanas in the creek when I heard the chillsome keening on the far side of the park. It was coming closer and closer, louder and louder. I stood up and saw her charging through the trees and over the bridge towards me. My very own sister, Joan, with a wild, frantic look in her eyes. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you. Oh, my God, have you heard the news?” I was rattled. “What news? I’m the guy washing my socks in the creek, for Pete’s sake. Nobody tells me anything. What the hell is going on?” “There’s been a revolution,” she breathlessly replied. “Right here in Hinton. The hippies have started a revolution.” “Whaaaaaa?”, I replied? “What on earth are you talking about?” “They shut down the school and sent everyone home,” she said feverishly. “There are police cars everywhere, even Mounties from Jasper and Edson and Evansburg. Dogs are searching for bombs and everything. I heard they’re even flying in special detectives from RCMP headquarters in Edmonton.”

“Holy crap”, I thought. This is some totally weird shit going down. “They even put up a flag down at the school,” Joan blurted out. “What are we going to do? What’s going to happen to us?” Then “KAPOW”, something detonated in my brain. A cold sweat instantly broke out from hair to heel. “Holy shit, Man”, I flustered to myself. “Holy, shit! Holy shit,” I said again and again, as I struggled to pull my cowboy boots over my soggy socks. “Our Freak Flag!!!, I yelled as I bolted over the road and into the bush upstream, rocks flying and creek water loudly squelching in my boots. “Whaaaaaa?, Joan yelled after me, terror and confusion still clutching her throat. I kept running as her plaintiff wailing slowly faded away behind me. “Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa???

Breathless, I snuck through the brambles and bushes up to a vantage point on the ridge overlooking the high school where I could secretly watch the action unfolding below. Sure enough, just as Joan had said, Chetamon Drive, the school parking lot, and the field beyond were all filled with police cars, lights flashing, sirens blaring. Cops with shotguns yelling; dogs with teeth barking. Everywhere I looked people were frantically running back and forth. Crates were being unloaded from police vehicles into the school. And streams of boxes from the school were being loaded into police vans. Total crazy town.

I hung around just long enough to snap the Instamatic photos above, then like a fool on the hill, I saw the sun going down. And I was off. Into the proverbial sunset heading for the proverbial hills just as fast those scrawny legs and waterlogged boots would take me.

I was now a wanted fugitive with the sheriff and posse hot on my trail. Alberta’s least wanted man. Seems like half the cops in the province were hunting for the coup leaders, as in little old me. I must admit that for months I was pretty freaked out, especially around shelves of mustard counters and hot dog stands, paint stores and kid’s crayon displays. I was convinced they were all staked out by agents of the state – the granny in the babushka nibbling radishes in the grocery store; the slick-haired dude with the sunglasses and cigarette slouching outside the pool hall; the featureless men in dark suits and skinny ties who always seemed to show up everywhere I went. All part of an elite SWAT Team ready to swoop.

“But, hey”, I started to say to myself during my life on the lam. “Like, really, man…. what’s the worst they could do anyway? Lock me up? String me up? Shoot me? Hah!” No, what I feared far more than vigilante justice, prison toilets, a lifetime of baloney sandwiches on McGavin’s white bread, or the relentless pursuit of The Man was the wrath of Mrs. Litke. Sooner or later, I greatly feared, she would add two and two together and that’d spell just one word – “me”. On this dreaded fate I festered away many a night, gnashing my teeth, throwing sticks and baying at the moon. I readily admit I did not look my comeliest nor sound my most serene in those years as a loathsome hippie fugitive.

So, you want to know what happened next? Well, I’ll tell you. But you should be warned, it is not a pretty tale. If you thought my life on the run was grim. Them Litke boys had it a lot worse. A lot worse. Week after week waiting for the terrifying hammer of delayed but always imminent justice to strike them down. As best as I could forensicate, this is what happened next. According to Lloyd and Wayne, it did take her a while, but their mom slowly started to puz the puzzle.

They tried to keep a low profile, hoping things would blow over. But! Quiet Litke boys? Very, very suspicious that. The empty jug in the fridge – a year’s supply of mustard disappearing overnight. Totally weird, and duly noted. Shears not in their proper drawer – even after strict orders they never be used at all. (Especially never again for rope, wire, customizing blue jean jackets, and cutting up old inner tubes to make sling shots.) “They wouldn’t dare”, she grumbled while rearranging her sewing basket. “Oh yeah,” she muttered some more. “Something is up, all right”. They said you could see it in her eyes, every single day and every solitary night, squinting suspiciously in all directions. Sniffing, sniffing, sniffing…. She smelled a rat!

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EPISODE FIVE (of Five)

THE FREAK FLAG FLURRY & AFTERMATH

With Special Free Bonus Section –

Apologies, Acknowledgements & Confessions

Then came a cold, dark evening rain driving on the windows, wind rattling the doors. Mrs. Litke finished her glass of comforting warm milk and went to put her cozy new flannel sheets on the bed. That, my friends, is when all hell broke loose! “Where’s my other sheet? What happened to my sheet? Which one of you knows something about this?” Even today, I cringe when I think of them poor Litke boys seeing the whole sordid story coming together for her – right before their very eyes. Then the most terrible thing of all happened. Horrible! Feverishly searching for her missing blanket, she pushed the sewing basket aside… That’s when the baby pink flannel stripes tumbled into view.

“KAPOW!”, an explosion went off in the Litke house.

“Oh, my lord!”, she cried out. Oh, my lord! Don’t tell me you two and that Melvin boy made that damned hippie flag out of my new sheets? Oh, my lord. Oh, my lord! I never heard of such a thing. Tell me that isn’t what you did. Well, I never! I just never.” Apparently, this one-way conversation carried on for a long, long time – like weeks – while them Litke boys tried desperately to stay out of the line of fire. Thank goodness they didn’t know where I was holed up or they might have cracked under the intense pressure and turned me in. Reward or not, I’d have been a goner for sure. And that’s a true enough fact.

Oh, I know, I know, I shouldn’t really be confessing all this to you here. As my old buddy, Rudy Wirth was fond of saying, “The statue of limitations ain’t up yet.” I don’t know if they still have a reward posted, but I finally have to fess up and get this terrible burden off my chest. And here’s the truthsome reason why, friends. I’ve heard whispers and rumours for years that there’s a stubborn old codger of a detective still on the case, some say its none other than Stedenko himself, but I don’t know that for sure. Whoever he is, for some time now, he’s been zeroing in on his primary suspect, namely me. Now long into retirement and even longer in the tooth, he’s apparently still sifting through those moldy old evidence boxes from Harry Collinge High School. Still hoping to crack this cold case more than 50 years later (I did the arithmetic myself, 2021-1968 = around 50, or something).

I got a recent tip that all this time he’s been looking for examples of my homework to find the clues that will finally crack the case and send my hippie ass to the Big House? Well, sorry, Man, you just ain’t going to find any homework anywhere. Any one of my teachers could have told you that decades ago. They never saw any either. He did locate numerous nervous doodlings found everywhere in the school, textbooks, library books, desktops and gym lockers. I don’t think they would yield enough evidence that would hold up in court, except if my own team of lawyers use them as a One flew Over the Cuckoos Nest, defense strategy. And the boxes of poetry confiscated during Mrs. Harts’ typing classes? They were considered even more obtuse than my doodlings. I’m not really sure if that was meant as a compliment or not, but, hey, I’m thrilled that anybody is reading them at all. Braver than me.

As it turns out, my downfall is likely going to be good old fashioned fingerprint analysis. Seems forensic science has advanced so much since 1968 that they have been able to gather fingerprints from the cookie-crumb-infused-mustard stains left behind on the school flagpole. Damning evidence, I am told.

So you see, I can’t go on running forever. My hiding hole in the church basement has been cemented over and I can only wear mittens for so long before I slip up and the coppers make a match off an ashtray, some love beads, or an old issue of Georgia Strait. Besides, that poor old detective on my trail deserves to finally get some satisfaction.

So, Peace Man. I do hereby confess to everything. You know, like, whatever. You can now pack up your Hardy Boys’ tool kit and retire someplace nice, like Edson maybe. And to show you there’s no hard feelings I’ll give you an autographed copy of Volume 1 of my collected poems and drawings (you might even recognize some of them). For volumes 2 to 100, I can give you either the friends and family rate, or you can go for the bulk discount on 50 or more.

All I ask in return for my signed confession is that I get our flag back from the evidence locker. I want to gather the Gang of Three together so we can hoist our banner over Harry Collinge High School just one more time. Seems to me, the world needs to see that Freak Flag flying high again – maybe even more today, than back in ’68.

Love and Peace,

Wayne

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Acknowledgements, Apologies & Confessions

Dear Aiders and Abettors: Many thanks to Ruth Anne Taves, Joan Melvin, Paul Welsby, Gerry Cook, Karen Sornberger, Marj Luger, Joe Laughy and the Facebook community for assisting me with this project, especially for lending me their personal photographs and helping me locate others out there in the ether. Thanks also to Hinton Memories for allowing me to post my Hinton stories and help with my research. So happy you are there for current Hinton residents and alumni.

And, also many apologies to all of you, because you probably didn’t know what kind of weird vortex you wandered into when all you really wanted to do was get rid of me as quickly as possible and get back to watching reruns of the Mod Squad.

Wayne & Lloyd: And a special thanks to Lloyd and Wayne Litke for being such good sports and for not clobbering me for so mercilessly teasing, taunting and provoking them. I’ll check, but I think there’s some kind of “good sport” award for enduring those kinds of teases&taunts from some home-town heckler skulking behind the penalty box. (Might only be a recycled senior women’s bowling league trophy issued to “participants”, so don’t buy a new suit for the awards ceremony.)

Karin & Carol: I also want to thank my long-suffering wife, Karin Mizgala who is, needlessly to say, very upset with all of you for aiding and abetting me or even slightly encouraging me in this endeavor, whether you intended to or not. Nevertheless, Karin and her mother, Carol, lent their keen eyes in spotting numerous embarassing typoos. They also told me numerous times that it was wayyyy too long, but, apparently I didn’t listen.

Anyway, I hereby absolve anyone and everyone of any legal liabilities or moral or immoral consequences of assisting with the telling of this tale. As for myself, I’m sticking with the cuckoo-as-cocoa puffs defense. Its all I got left, and nobody can dispute that anyway.

Dear Mrs. Litke: I somehow never got the opportunity to properly thank you for all your delicious sugar cookies I ate that night of the infamous Freak Flag Incident. And, although I’m a little late, as usual, I would also like to apologize for appropriating your new flannel sheets that you so unwittingly, and perhaps reluctantly, sacrificed for the cause. You might, however, find some belated solace in knowing that, as of this very moment, I am no longer a hippie fugitive and could very well be thrown into the hoosegow for my many misdeeds committed during the so-called Freak Flag Incident.

Gang of Four: However, and most importantly, the Gang of Three wants to formally recognize your indispensable and historic contributions to the creation of the Mustard Flower Freak Flag. We do, hereby, one- and-all, solemnly declare that henceforth and forever more, we are no longer the Gang of Three. We are now officially – the Gang of Four. Congratulations! Welcome aboard the Peace Train!! Hail Atlantis!!!

Dearest Story Victims & Survivors: I want to thank you for coming along on this circumbendibus journey, this long, weird and winding road. It’s been quite the trip! I will readily admit that the road got a little bumpy at times and we nearly went into the ditch on a few of those sharp corners and unmarked detours. And, though this may surprise, or even shock you, to hear this, it is true that not even I knew exactly where we were going at all times. All this being said, you would probably prefer an apology over a thank you, but you must admit I did warn you. Thank you anyway for sharing the ride.

Parting Gift: In appreciation – I want to share a song with you. Of all the thousands of powerful, meaningful, soul-stirring songs I listened to in the 60s, this is the only one that still pops into my brain every single day. Just one line – from that one song – from 1968, yet it so perfectly sums up all I have left to say about the great Freak Flag Incident. There must be a secret, cosmic message in here somewhere! Anyway, here it is, just for you:

“Yummy, yummy, yummy, I’ve got love in my tummy.

And I feel like a-lovin you.”

– Yummy, Yummy, Yummy – Ohio Express

“Aaaaaaaaagggggghhhhhhhhhhhh!!!”