Stars and Stripes Forever!

I’ve never thought of myself as overly patriotic. I mean, I grew up in the rebellious anti pledge of allegiance years. Pledge allegiance to the flag? Are you kidding? The only thing I was pledging allegiance to was my music. My idols. Bach, Beethoven and Brahms. Beatles, Led Zepp and The Doors.

All of that changed when I was 15 years old. Summer of ’71. We took a trip cross country. Five of us in living in an Airstream trailer for 2 months. Airstream living is not exactly roughing it, but in 1971 it was a very hip thing to do.

My Dad was a high school chemistry teacher so he had the summers off. We traveled every summer and Dad always put in an educational element to our trips. When my parents decided to do the cross country thing, they invested in the Airstream and we did a few shakedown trips before embarking on the BIG trip. Dad put a big map of the USA on the wall in his study and spent a good year researching the places we would go. He would say to my mom...do you want to go here? Or there? And then he would stick a pushpin in the map. When the entire map was loaded with pushpins, he connected the dots with a thread. This would be our trip. Across the top of the USA, hitting the middle as well and then down through Oregon and California and coming back across the bottom of the USA and back up to New York.

We went everywhere. We avoided places like Chicago and New Orleans for the wide open spaces. The National Parks. Mt. Rushmore? Yeah, I’ve been there. The Badlands. Yep. Been there too. Rafting on the Snake River. The Corn Palace. Wall Drug. Mesa Verde. And of course-The Grand Canyon. It was incredible. We managed a trip to Disneyland and spent time in beautiful San Francisco. Saw lots of Hare Krishnas. My mother kept a tight rein on me that summer. Me in my patched bell bottomed jeans and Dr. Scholl’s was very intrigued by the goings on in San Fran.

We traveled through the Dakotas and Wyoming and Utah. We passed through tiny towns that had signs saying Population 12. We met native Americans and my Dad talked to everyone. Dad loved conversations with strangers.

My parents had us keep scrap books and to this day I still have mine. We saved ticket stubs to museums, pamphlets and candy wrappers. We wrote every day about our experiences. We had a lifetime of experiences.

I live in an amazing country. This IS THE USA. It’s beautiful. To many…the United States consists of the East Coast, West Coast and a few places in between. The vastness of America is astounding. It’s beyond words. You just don’t know until you’ve experienced it. I would never live anywhere else. I am AMERICAN. God Bless America.

And by the way…my favorite holiday is the 4^th of July.

In memory of my Daddy, Alex D. Greenblatt

Feb. 23, 2012