We were all little patriots at Oak Grove School, maybe just a little scared. Back in the early 50s, when we heard aircraft droning overhead late at night, our wiser older sister speculated that it just might be the Russians coming to bomb us. Billy Graham was no help either. He always sounded like the jig would be up in just a year or two. There were many signs, he said.
It was a special duty every morning to run the flag up the pole in front of our one-room schoolhouse. You had to be at least in the fourth grade to qualify for the week-long assignment. Much better than hauling water for the drinking fountain. One day somebody screwed up and hung the flag upside-down without noticing and it drew a motorist off of Highway 29 to ask teacher what the emergency was. International distress signal and all.
There never was an actual emergency at Oak Grove, unless you count the time teacher forgot her high-blood pressure medication and scared the hell out of everyone as she huffed and puffed her way to the phone in the back of the room.
Mostly we weren't that scared though. Every morning, right after teacher led us in song and we got down to business, we stood to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Never missed. It was sort of reassuring.
These memories were stirred today by a $100 question on the Discovery Channel's Cash Cab, which is a favorite game show of ours, especially during low wind chills and high snow drifts.
Ben Bailey asked a question something like this. "After a campaign led by the Knights of Columbus, what change was made to the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954?" Sure enough, I remembered the answer. Back then we called it the "New Pledge."
I don't remember that there was any explanation given at the time, only that instead of saying "One Nation, Indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for All," you were now to say "One Nation, Under God, Indivisible with Liberty and Justice for All." It felt awkward at first, of course, and if you didn't concentrate you would stumble, but young minds incorporate swiftly.
But for a while, reciting the New Pledge gave you the same kind of odd sensation you got when you'd hear the Catholics say the Lord's Prayer on the radio. They didn't say "For thine is the Kingdom and the Power and the Glory Forever and Ever" like we did. They just cut straight to "Amen." How could that be? We did get an explanation for that.
Wonder if it will ever come up on the Cash Cab.
