Flags

July 1 was Canada Day. As is increasingly the custom, even here on our island off the left coast, it was marked by a good deal of flag flying.

One notices this because flying a Canadian flag is, for most of us, ceremonial, and occasional, and distinctly not everyday normal. In Canada, flags traditionally fly on government buildings, schools, and motels catering to US tourists. Most individual Canadians don’t apparently feel a need to advertise: we know we’re in Canada; we expect visitors to know that as well. And for most of us flying a flag to demonstrate patriotism would be vaguely embarrassing: we’re not, after all, like those chauvinistic Americans!

Americans, on the other hand, I discover from two recent extended van trips through the heartland, fly American flags. All the time. Especially, it appears, those living in ranching America, the Land of the Long Driveways.

These flags are clearly not flying for our benefit, so it may be impossible for a thoroughly-indoctrinated Canadian such as myself to parse them. When we visited Isaac’s parents in Minnesota a couple of years ago I asked Isaac’s dad, Irv, if he could explain flag culture as exhibited in rural Montana, but he was unable to be very helpful beyond what I had already sort of inferred: Republican voters are more likely to fly the Stars and Stripes than are Democrat voters. If that’s true, there are a lot of Republican voters in rural Montana. But we already knew that, so maybe it’s a solidarity thing. (If solidarity is not too socialistic a concept.)

In Utah, in a suburb of Salt Lake City, we saw one of those traditional Mormon churches (I wonder if the designer of the original gets a royalty for every one built, and, if he does, how wealthy he is) flying an American flag. I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen that before, not even on Canadian military bases.

Dealers of American cars in Texas fly bedsheet-sized flags. That must be an appeal to patriotism: buy American. But what does the size say? I’ve never seen larger except in Turkey, and in their case the issue is clearly a need to overcome feelings of inadequacy, like those ads for penis-enhancements. (we’re significant, we have a huge army, see our enormous flags!) Do dealers of Fords, Chevrolets and Dodges feel somewhat inadequate? Texas Toyota dealers don’t fly oversized flags (in fact, I don’t recall any flags at all) but there are lots of Toyotas in Texas.

In ranchland Texas the driveways frequently sport a Texas flag on one side and a Stars and Stripes on the other. This appears to be something of a theme in Texas generally, and I gather has something to do with the inalienable right of Texans to either secede or divide into four states, if they want to. Sort of like Quebec, except that the language in Texas is Spanish, and most Spanish-speakers in Texas just want to be Americans who speak Spanish.

After we returned to Canada just south of Regina, I was on the lookout. Canadian prairie farms don’t, as a rule, fly flags, but we did spot a driveway not far from the Battlefords with a Canadian flag on one side and a Saskatchewan flag on the other.

Must be transplanted Americans.