A quintessential “Made in America” scene on the quintessential “Made in America” holiday:
Shortly before 10 a.m. tomorrow in downtown Marietta, a driver will slowly turn a classic 1950 red-paneled firetruck onto Roswell Street. Behind that shiny civic icon, a walking contingent of Boy Scouts, beauty queens and veteran Lions Club-bers will patriotically seed the 1.5 mile route of the city’s annual Fourth of July parade, pressing American flags into every outstretched hand they see.
It’s an event that marks the apex of flag season all over metro Atlanta.
Flag season? Yes, flag season — that fiercely patriotic period each year when our citizenry’s collective pining for Old Glory hits fever pitch.
At the Flag Co. in Acworth, the six-week stretch is sometimes referred to as the flag “trifecta,” a holiday threesome that starts with Memorial Day and builds to a state of outright banner-waving delirium on July 4th.
“Some people overlook Flag Day [June 14] in the middle, but it’s there,” said Vicki Lawrence, co-owner with husband Mike of the company that printed flags for Atlanta’s Olympic stadium in 1996 and currently bills itself as the largest supplier of flags online.
“It’s funny, but we do have three national flag holidays, one each month, in May, June and July.”
And that’s usually where flag season ends every year.
But this isn’t every year. In September, we will mark the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that culminated in New York; Washington, D.C.; and a field near Shanksville, Pa.
“With this being the 10th anniversary of 9/11, we are really geared up for the fact that we think we are going to see an extraordinarily long season,” said Bob Rosenthal of Atlas Flags in Tucker.
Atlas Flags is probably the largest manufacturer of “stick” flags in the country, Rosenthal said; they sold about 800,000 in the first three weeks of June alone.
In the days after Sept. 11, 2001, the demand for flags was unprecedented, but manufacturers’ stock was low that year, since flag season already had come and gone.
This year, Rosenthal said, “I bought a lot more material and dowels to keep on making flags.”
Meanwhile, flag season has even more resonance these days, for reasons that raise mixed emotions in many Americans.
These past few years, demand for Flag Co. products has increased significantly around Memorial Day, which has gradually evolved from a day of remembering the war dead to one honoring all veterans.
With the United States at war for much of the past decade, Mike Lawrence pointed out, “A lot more veterans are being created.”
Still, it’s July Fourth that’s most associated with flag-waving literally and figuratively — a development more in keeping with the spirit of the day than the actual history surrounding it.
When the Founding Fathers adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, “there was no specific [American] flag used,” Dave Martucci, an antique flag expert and former president of the North American Vexillological Association, wrote in an email.
That hardly seems to matter to someone like Janey Lowe, who just spent $1,100 on flags that she hired teen-aged boys to stick in the ground next to mailboxes all over her Garden Hills neighborhood.
A Realtor at Beacham & Co. in Atlanta, Lowe says that what began as a patriotically seasoned PR effort years ago has morphed into something much more meaningful and fun for everyone involved.
“It’s who we are, it’s our identity as Americans, and the Fourth of July is when we celebrate that together,” said Lowe, who accidentally skipped a block last year and got good-natured complaints from some of its flag-deprived residents. “Who waves the flag where they’re not smiling?”
The process leading up to 1.5 miles of smiles in Marietta tomorrow actually began last winter at the Flag Co.
The 22-year-old company makes some of its own products — for instance, it’s the No. 1 producer of toothpick flags, those just-like-it-sounds teeny flags on toothpicks that are stuck in everything from World Cup viewing party cupcakes to meatballs at political fundraising events. The company also orders from other manufacturers to fully stock its warehouse with flags of every size representing all 50 states, the U.S. and seemingly every other country you have and haven’t (Vanuatu?) heard of.
The Marietta parade’s handsome, 12-by-18-inch flags are printed in Tennessee, then attached to sticks back here in metro Atlanta.
“The flag is pristine and it says ‘Made in America’ [on the stick],” said John Beale, 67, co-chair of the parade committee for the Marietta Lions Club, which coordinates the flag operation along with the city’s Parks and Recreation Department. “And we buy ’em locally, so really it’s a perfect situation.”
Well, it is, if they don’t run out.
A few years ago, Beale said, they ordered 8,000 flags to pass out along the parade route and at a festival held afterward in Glover Park on the Marietta Square. Last year they upped the order to 10,000. This year, Beale said, the waver-enabler force is coming armed with 12,000 flags and has another 1,000 in reserve, just in case.
That bad?
That good, said Grady Holcombe.
The longtime Lion, 86, sits on the back of a vehicle following the historic firetruck and transfers bunches of flags to the contingent passing them out to people in the crowd. Not all of whom are content to wait their turn, apparently.
“They run out from both sides of the street and grab ’em,” Holcombe said, laughing about this temporary outbreak of flag frenzy. He diagnosed the only possible cause: “It’s the Fourth. It’s the one.”
Until next flag season.
Fourth of July events
Marietta Independence Day Parade
10 a.m. July 4, downtown Marietta, beginning on Roswell Street, 770-794-5601, www.mariettaga.gov.
Stone Mountain Park
Three days of fireworks, Saturday through Monday. Free with $10-per-vehicle access to the park. 1000 Robert E. Lee Blvd., Stone Mountain. 770-498-5690; www.stonemountainpark.com.
About the Author
