White Flags

I watched him stick the first of many white flags in our front yard. Made from wire coat hangers and a bed sheet, the miniature flags, over a week’s time, filled our postage stamp yard and it soon looked like a putting green. No one ever asked him what they were for.

On Saturday, he invited the neighbor over for late afternoon beers and BBQ. Earlier in the day, I was treated to a top down drive in his Berkley, a chain driven British sports car that rarely ran, and slot car racing at the Hayes Hobby Store in Fayetteville. We raced a blue Ford GT 40 with a Cox hand control. It also rarely ran. I wanted to ask about the flags…but didn’t.

Later that afternoon he and the neighbor are drinking beers on the patio when the neighbor laughingly asks, “What’s up with all those little flags in your front yard?” He takes a drag off a Marlboro, looks the man in the eyes and replies through a blue stream of exhaled smoke, “That’s where your dog shits in my yard.”