Let your flag fly

So there I was, driving down Fir Street last Friday, about to turn into Melvin's for some of Cody's deeee-licious clam chowder, and as I looked up at Old Glory waving from the old post office flag pole something else caught my eye - a red shirt right below it.

"What in the..." I said to myself, and looked again. Sure enough the shirt was still there. So, to make sure it was what I thought it was, I took a gander through my binocs: For sure, it was a wild, red, faded, worn-out Hawaiian model.

American submarines during World War II returned to Pearl Harbor flying Old Gory with a broom under it - or the broom wired to the radio antennae - indicating while out on patrol they had made a "clean sweep." That is, they had sunk enemy shipping or achieved the goal of their patrol.

But an old, faded Hawaiian T-shirt, what could that mean? Maybe it was so stinky even washing it didn't help and someone hung it up on the flagpole to further air it out.

When I asked Melvin, he put it this way: "Well, you know when I had the other store over on Spruce Street years back, I wore Hawaiian T-shirts like this one. Some of them pretty colorful (an understatement), and especially the ones my mom made for me.

"People would come in and seeing the wonderful colors of the Hawaiian shirts, would say, 'Oh, I have a shirt just like that in my closet, but I never wear it; I'll bring it in for you' - and they did. Pretty soon I had over 56 of them scattered about, but I couldn't wear them all.

"I've found that when they sit around they shrink, or something is happening to them. I guess I'd better start wearing them before they all shrink, or I'll use one to replace that old one that's up on the flag pole now."

So, now you know as much as I do...