I say it's tarnished because it's been through the ugliness of the sixties, what with the divisiveness the Vietnam War caused.

I have an acquaintance who has a t-shirt that says "these colors don't bleed" and then shows the American flag.

I say they're bleeding now because of the unnecessary blood shed by our boys in Vietnam mixing perhaps with the red blood of America as symbolized by the red stripes on the flag. All because there were these chicken-**** draft dodgers, at least in my own opinion, who with their squawking about serving seemed to egg the war on and on and the unnecessary bloodshed it caused.

I do respect the symbolic nature of the beauty of the American flag and can recall when I was still rather patriotic suggesting to my father, a retired West Point combat army colonel, to get a flag pole in our front yard at one of the houses we lived in the Champaign-Urbana area and fly the flag every day long before it was done even in other parts of the country.

I could be wrong there. Anyway there was an article in the local paper about it that near as I can remember implied that or else it was at least a first for Champaign-Urbana according to what they said.

I think I'm getting patriotic enough again to definitely want the flag to not be burned, etc.

Yeah, me and the flag these days