Old Bob is coming out of the shadows, where he usually sits, (because you all know more than he does, and usually say it better), because the discussion in the 4th of July/Colonials thread hit a bit close to home for him.

Bob and his family had differences with a white haired old Uncle on a certain little war, so they headed crossed the nearest foreign border to a land where the beer, whiskey and cigarettes were better, and the people never told you to get a haircut. Course things being what they were, the Uncle still found ways to mess him, and so Communist Bob, his brother, with guitar, banjo, and backpacks headed out for ever more remote countries.

Well, we boys wandered a bit, from one country to another, call us exiles or refugees, or fugitives, or as many did(and occasionally do), cowards. Hot countries, cold ones, neat countries, messy countries, countries where you could speak out, and countries where you kept your mouth shut.

Well, here is the point of the story, about everywhere we went, we were among sympathetic types, and sat up all night talking about the war and imperialism and every damned thing. And almost everywhere we went, after we were all talked out, usually about 4 am, someone would start to talk about how the country we were in was really the cradle of intellectual freedom and political change and had been the one true home of everything wonderful, beautiful and good, from art to poetry to to social equality to the invention of the wheel.

Well, of course, we were guests, and didn't ever dare say a thing when this flow of patriotic half truth and shellac started to flow. The thing was that it happened just about everywhere we went, and it came from people who, we knew, pretty radical political and economic views.

When Gerry Ford gave the invite, we caught the next tramp steamer. Bob wishes he could say that Amerika (as Bob spelled it, in those days) was the most wonderful thing he had ever seen, but the truth was that in the middle 70's, everything and everybody looked like Hell, still, it was Bob's Hell, and that counted for something.

To this day though, Bob fights all the urges to say stirring and patriotic things, especially after big meals, and especially on holidays. He knows there may be a couple of people at the table who see it for what it is.