How About Paying Some Respect To America?
View From The Middle
By Charles Rogers

I promised myself and the organizers of the recent Memorial Day parade and associated events that I wouldn’t do what I did a couple of years ago, that is, chastise them for cancelling the parade because of a miserable rain storm that inundated our community that day (I still stand by my feelings on that issue).

It’s beside the point now, however, because I can’t shut my big mouth about this year’s parade, despite the fact that it was a few weeks ago. This time, the organizers can be reasonably proud of themselves. They put an effort into it and not only did the weather cooperate, but everything they planned, with the exception of a mixup with the band, went quite well, from the Veterans Circle salute, to the cemetery Civil War Monument exercise.

It’s obvious, in other words, that the organizers and those who attended, marched, walked with, took part in various activities and gave proper input during the planning stages did their part.

Now that the congratulations are out of the way, there should be no reason to get mad at me when I raise a little more hell. Here’s why….

Patriotism. What ever happened to Canarsie’s patriotism?

While the Memorial Day activities were being handled by those whom we normally depend on to be organizers and coordinators, there were too many Canarsie residents who just didn’t give a damn! It was all too obvious that there were too many people who didn’t care about Memorial Day; who didn’t care about their neighbors marching through the streets or why they were marching; who didn’t care that the day was a holiday commemorating something decidedly American.

I had occasion last week, at least a few weeks after the Memorial Day holiday and a week before Flag Day, which was last Tuesday, to take a ride through some of the smaller communities and peripheral villages around the city. They happened to be in other boroughs, for the most part, although some were Brooklyn neighborhoods, and I saw something that has been missing here for much too long.

Patriotism.

There were flags hanging in windows and from staves pointing out from porches. There were signs of the love for one’s country all over. In one town — it was really a small community made up of various neighborhoods, not unlike Canarsie — where those small American flags were positioned about ten feet up on every other telephone pole along the main streets, commercial streets just like Rockaway Park-way and Flatlands Avenue and Avenue L. It was bright. It was brilliant and showy. It was dazzling! It was something special!

It was patriotic!

It said that the people in that town were proud of their country and that they wanted to show off their pride. I saw essences of that same kind of patriotism in other places too. Places where the prevalent ethnicity was as diversified as ours.

I didn’t see that here. Those other towns displayed their feelings even weeks after the holiday and before Flag Day, and I bet those flags and those wonderful feelings are still there. Even on the Memorial Day holiday itself, we didn’t have enough patriotism to show more than about one flag per block!

For shame!

There was a time....Oh, yes, there was a time.…when Canarsie had parades! There were people virtually lining the streets, watching and waiting for the parade to pass and waving flags and having the whole family come out and sit on the lawn as the marchers smartly trekked by on Remsen Avenue

We’ve always been a melting pot, of course. That’s what America is all about. But we were decidedly American then, no matter where our roots were. We would always pay proper homage to our homeland and proper respect for our ancestors and roots, but the new land was our new home and it too deserved, and got, respect.

There is indeed something wrong when, block after block, residents don’t even know or care that there is such a thing as a Flag Day or a Memorial Day, a day when we honor those who died so that we may be able to show our pride.

Those who organized and marched in the parade on May 30 showed their pride. Those who positioned flags in front of their houses showed their pride, although they were almost too sparse to mention.

Yes, we live in a very diverse community. But residents in too many of our fine neighborhoods seem to forget that the United States of America is their country now. They may pay proper allegiance to their homeland, but it’s time they recognized and embraced America and celebrated it and showed some pride in it.