A Hundred Miles Down the Road

My neighbor, a kind elderly Jewish woman with a Jack Russell Terrier named Fauci, knocked on our door last week, offering an American flag stapled to a little balsa wood stick. It was a version of the Betsy Ross flag, with thirteen stars in a circle and “250” in the center of the circle. As “block captain” of the neighborhood association, it was her job to distribute these free flags to everyone on our cul-de-sac. I suppose they had ordered a few dozen of these flags off of Amazon to help everyone get into the semiquincentennial spirit.