Old Glory

[Destroyer]

Originally Posted by Fishwhisperer 180

Hello V-20 community,
I wish to thank you all for making it possible for me to be part of this group. I get the impression that if I was stuck out on the water, I could count on any one of you to lend assistance.
Just a quick thought...
As a young boy it was my job, before we got underway, to get the flag from below and place it in the mount on the transom. Only then would I tend lines. Is this no longer the custom?

FW180

I can't speak for anyone else, but it's my experience that the custom has fallen out of favor. I suspect for many reasons... some practical and some stupitidy.
As a fisherman I can tell you that the last thing you want when you are fighting a fish is to have your line wrapped around anything, including a pole with a flag attached to it.. and many people are simply too lazy to take the pole and flag out of the socket when they are fishing, so the just don't fly it in the first place...so that's on the practical side. On the stupidity side, a lot of people just don't know, or simply don't care about what the flag actually means, so they don't fly it.
Speaking for myself, I'm a Vietnam combat vet. I know what it means, and I've seen what it means to not live under it's protection. There's a flagpole in front of my house, and one on my boat. both of them fly our nations colors. To me, the flag is a symbol of the country that I love and am willing to fight for, to the people that fought and in some cases gave their lives
for so that I could raise my family in a free land. A land where I can say and do pretty much as I please, without the fear of someone coming in the middle of the night to arrest me and trhow me in jail for what I think, say or do, or for the God that I worship. It's a symbol of hope to the rest of the world. It's truly a crime they don't teach that in our schools anymore. I fly it all the time on my boat.