Every day when I round the road by Leonard Dean’s house and see the flag flying at Buzzy’s Country Store I get a little rush at how cool it looks. From that angle, you can’t really see the Store at first, but the flag you can’t miss and when it’s waving in the breeze it is a beautiful sight to me. Of all the things that I have done at the Store these past 14 years, the flagpole is probably my second proudest accomplishment. (Just keeping the place open of course has been my Number 1 accomplishment thanks to all my friends who continue to drop in and support Buzzy’s like they do.)
Maintenance-wise, having the flag flying in front of Buzzy’s is not a problem. Every couple years I may have to replace the flag itself and it’s halyard hooks but that’s about it. In the event of a bad storm, I may take the flag down, but overall it is a set and forget operation. Forget that is, until I come around Leonard’s turn everyday and marvel at how cool it looks.
All that said however, there is one minor flag issue that I did not anticipate when I had it installed: monitoring and keeping up with the half-staff proclamations that mandate the flag be lowered for a couple days or sometimes weeks. Lately, these proclamations seem to be coming out more and more frequently as folks die off, or in the case of mass shootings, get killed off.
I guess I could just ignore worrying about it, but as always, I want to at least try and do the right thing. (The key word there is want in that what I want is not always what I do.) However, with regards to the flag being at half-staff when so directed, I will always try and follow the notices to do so. I even landed on a website that will send out an email notifying you when to lower it (click here.)
As to why the flag is lowered, it goes way back to the 17th century but sounds too much like a history lesson for me to go into here. (Also, I was a little surprised to learn that it is a custom done world wide in that most every country, including the Communist ones and even those crazy Middle East nutbags, will lower their flags on occasion. If you are curious about all this (click here.)
Leave it to Johnny to still have the best flag song ever recorded: