No. 66

Chas. in 1883 & The Flag

Stewart King c/o

John C. Davant, Attorney

501 Cleveland St.

Clearwater Florida

December 14, 1938

Dear Stewart,

I remember one time in 1895 when I was still learning how your mother liked me to pull in the laundry line of pantaloons, making sure we got to it so the neighbors could not see it. This day we talked about this old letter from Charles.

Apr 4, 1883

Dear M—Cannot attend mother’s funeral. Esther pregnant taking sickness hard. Found home with C. C. Knapp in Cedar Falls. Write me c/o Knapp. He has old, closed farmhouse. Rent manageable will stay permanent only if terms negotiable. Want to get closer to town. Yes, I saved the flag.

Yours affectionately, Chas.

Your mother said that Mr. Knapp was the mayor and did insurance on the side. It was a good thing that Charles had access to a man of such quality and influence.

She said, “No one else would put up with his lack of organization but someone who was the sort who would never place himself in such a risky spot and without paperwork to protect his assets.”

The flag in question was an old relic from the presidential campaign for Harrison, a sentimental family heirloom. This had been loaned to Charles.

She said, “We are from noble Knickerbocker stock. The kind that can track the line to worth and character, the line of purity for not its race but its systems of prudence, temperance, and innovation that elevates entire villages from illiteracy and gambling." And she said something else, probably about how her new mansion was coming to shape and how it would improve or keep up this side of Clinton.

I imagine your mother was still talking about influence or indulgence or other tangent, as I sat on her bed and folded her clean undergarments, but in a short time I myself was thinking like that flag.

When the house was on fire, Charles knew where that relic was. He knew how to save it because he knew where it was at all times. If one needed to rest in a faith that it represented, that line of heritage--not stock, exactly--but, what is the right word or phrase, Stewart, that I wish to convey? Well, it is not even a word at all, but his action, his motivation that now dismisses words entirely. It was not a sentimental gesture, a planned ceremony with pomp of the flag or what it was meant to represent back in 1846 or whenever, but an internal, timeless gift. But you say it was just a campaign flag? A novelty? Or was it the other way around? Was his own life just a novelty, something short-lived?

I imagined how Charles risked his life for that flag. And when I came back to reality and started to catch what your mother was saying, in the real, here was your mother still flapping about it, in one way and, I suppose, here I was flapping and dreaming on the other side of it, both of us doing the same thing and both of us doing nothing and the breeze, or some burnt offering, taking it away.

--Miss Minnie

2025 Copyright Christine Friesel