Holding the Flag

This old car was resting peacefully over on the Eastern Shore last weekend as I wandered aimlessly searching for some formal gardens at the wrong house. I'll let you guess whether this was part of the formal gardens at the right house, or just plain and simple once again CBW inadvertently trespasses the wrong house.

Anyway, today I'd like to dig deep into the vast wasteland recesses of my brain and talk about a very vivid memory that has haunted me for over 30 years: holding the flag for the school bus.

Back when phones were attached to the wall and you actually got up and walked to the television to change the channel (to one of the other two or three that came in via the rooftop aerial), I rode the bus to school.

Right next to Thomas Edison.

I had no problems with the whole bus riding concept; in fact I liked it, except for those hot, sweltering days when we drove by the pig farm on Ridge Road with the windows down because air conditioning had not been invented yet there was no such thing as air conditioned school buses. Or cars. Or houses.

Not only did the houses buses lack air conditioning, but they also managed to function without the yellow "slow down" lights that now change to the "you have to stop now" red lights.

But most of all they lacked the nice flashing red stop sign that now swings out on the driver's side alerting oncoming traffic to Listen. This is your one last chance and I will most definitely not say this again: STOP.

Back then, the flashing stop sign to alert oncoming traffic to first of all, there's no such thing as traffic in Mathews children crossing the road in front of a huge yellow school bus with flashing red lights consisted of this:

Let's send another child into the middle of the road. As a decoy. To hold a flag.

So, to review the thought process at the time--a time which included Magic 8 Balls Captain Kangaroo and Mr. Green Jeans:

1. It's dangerous for kids to cross the road in front of a bus with the occasional car oncoming traffic.

2. We must take extra steps to alert the drivers who can't see the big yellow school bus with flashing red lights (but no swinging stop sign).

3. Aha! Let's send another spindly kid out in the middle of the road to hold a flag, which consists of a sawed-off broomstick and a bandana.

4. At times there were lots of ping-pong balls raining down on poor exasperated Captain Kangaroo.

In conclusion, if someone were so distracted in rural Mathews that he could not see a school bus stopped (with flashing red lights) in the middle of the road, the chances were pretty darn good that he wasn't going to see a spindly-legged third grader waving holding a flag in the middle of the road.

Who else had the privilege of holding the flag?