Last night I took a stroll throughout my neighborhood to walk off the huge amount of food I ate for the Thanksgiving feast.  It was a quiet, peaceful night.  As I made my way down the street I noticed something that I hadn’t seen in a while.  There were two houses next to one another that displayed American flags.

This took me back years earlier to the immediate post 9/11 period in which it seemed everyone in my then neighborhood proudly displayed somewhere in the front of their homes.  It was such a beautiful sight back then as it almost looked as if they were Christmas displays.  The red, white, and blue flowing in a slight breeze, often lit up by a floodlight.

It wasn’t just on my block, it was on blocks around.  They were everywhere.  Back then, there were record flag sales if I can remember correctly.  That means that many of us today should own our own flags.

Today I rarely see  flags displayed.   They aren’t nonexistent by any means.  Some people still will, nine plus years later, proudly have their flags unfurled out front.  But it’s far and few between.

Why is that?  Why have they been put away?  Or not been replaced?  Is that spirit that I so proudly saw nine years ago now gone?  If it is, why?