I have a friend who had an American flag attached to his car antenna to show his support for our country. Parked his car and went to work. When he came out of the building to go to lunch, he discovered that somebody had ripped his flag off.
Question: Is stealing a flag supposed to show some kind of patriotism? “Hi…I love my country so much I practice theft.”
I have one of those flags that you attach to the top of your car window and is anchored when the window is rolled up (another question for another time)…should I leave it there? Is it likely that someone will shatter my window to get my flag, leaving my car exposed for less…“patriotic” thieves?
Anyone else have a problem of “disappearing” flags?
Another issue: I work at a store that had a flag on display (before the tragedy took place) showing that we sell them. We, like everyone else, sold out of what flags we had pretty quickly…we don’t sell “floor models” of items, prefering to take orders on things that are out of stock.
One guy came in and wanted to buy our last flag. I told him we couldn’t sell the floor model. He argued with me and I apologized, reiterating that we do not sell our display.
He called me a fucking moron.
Is it a patriotic thing to do? Of course not. But I bet some smug little putz will jump in and say it’s an “American” thing to do.
Some assholes will steal anything - not because they want it, not to make a statement, but just because they CAN.
As to whether anyone else is having the problem…a few local businesses got together and lined the streets with smallish American flags, and quite a few of them have disappeared.
Unfortunately I don’t have a cite and don’t have time to search her on-line archive, but Dear Abby has run several letters (during the Gulf War, which also had a flag shortage) about people who had flags stolen from their porches. I remember one in particular that the writer claimed it was from his brother’s Vietnam-era casket. I’m sure there are many equally anecdotal stories.
Izzy, I can’t access that without registering, and, well, I’m not gonna mess with all that.
Here in Louisville, the nieghbor of the guy over the cubicle wall from me was flying the flag the VA gave her when her husband was buried and that was stolen off of her front porch this week. The VA has offered to give her another flag, but damn! I mean, seriously, is somehone going to feel good about themselves flying a flag they stole from someone? WTF?
The afternoon of Tuesday the 11th, the city of Salem put flags up on the Center St. and Marion St. bridges (one-way bridges that go into and out from town, respectively). Wednesday morning, on the commute to work, I noticed half the flags on the Center St. Bridge were missing and remarked then that I hoped they were taken by people who wanted flags instead of just being dumped in the river (not that I support stealing flags, but it seemed like the lesser of the 2 evils). Thursday morning there were hardly any flags left on the Center St. bridge, though there were still plenty on Marion St. Thursday evening my mom told me she heard on the radio that the cops had caught some guy dumping the flags into the river, but most had been recovered. Friday morning the flags were all back on the bridge, which was being patroled by security guards.
I noticed that the city took the flags down this week. Seems a little soon to me, but I’m not surprised.
Fortunately, nothing has happened to the flag we hung in front of our house.