When I was in my teens, pre-9/11, I took flute lessons. The drive to my teacher's studio took me out on a semi-rural road near my hometown, where I would pass by the shed in the picture. In those days, though, it was just a white shed with a big black peace symbol painted on it. My budding-hippie-self always smiled to see it. I thought it would be there like that forever.
And then 9/11 happened. And then we declared war. And then later on we declared another war, this time against Iraq. And some time later in that school year, my senior year of high school, I drove home from my lesson, and where there had been a white shed with a black peace sign, there was a white shed, with a mostly-painted-over black peace sign covered by a freshly-painted-on American flag. That moment, that shed, printed itself indelibly in my mind, as the perfect symbol of everything that had suddenly gone so wrong in my world. I've always intended to go back and take a picture of it, to preserve the terrible sad contrast, of the symbol of peace abandoned and painted over in favor of the gaudy display of patriotism. After all, you can only have one. And we all know that a True American would rather have patriotism than peace.
Right?
