Gruff McDaniels wanted some fanfare, wanted colors. In short, he wanted a flag to wave that would herald his newly incorporated hometown of Warhaven. While parades were not in themselves militaristic, for the former officers who were his peers on the Warhaven City Council, they cared little for this need of Gruff’s. Yet he persisted and had his way and was appointed chair of a committee of three to craft a city motto and design a flag. Gruff, which he rarely did, beamed with satisfaction. This was 1871.
Now, it is a fact reader, that cartographers have had a field day with Warhaven, situated as it is along the Big River, hence oriented with its prime physical boundary to its north. Throughout the decades any and all local map makers have placed the mammoth free-flowing river at the bottom of their practical art, essentially turning our world upside down. This history is indeed important for it sheds some light on the strange, busy, Warhaven pennant on which we all marvel as it passes us on our several parade days during each year.
Carrying the town’s standard is an honor. For Independence Day this distinction is bestowed by the City Council, and one which is rarely awarded twice to any neighbor, regardless of real or imagined privilege among us—but that is another episode in life at the confluence of the Big and Rushing rivers.
It is not this writer’s intention to take you on a serpentine path, yet here we are. Back to the banner’s creation — and apologies, dear reader, for any resultant convolution, fearing one might find this insulting, disrespectful, or merely distracting. Consider it the writer’s lack of discipline. Onward, straight and exacting!
Gruff sat one night at his kitchen table mumbling, scribbling ideas with his nub of a pencil, the kerosene lamp flickering at the mirror. What were the themes of the town’s short, idealistic life?
“From the battlefield rises Phoenix?’ he wrote is his stiff cursive.
“Life from abundant waters?”
“Something Biblical?”
“Something Latin?”
Yes, this process was to be crafted and completed by a committee, but Gruff McDaniels had been a noncommissioned officer in the Union Army during combat, bloody, merciless, hand to hand combat. Surviving battles and rescuing the Republic had given him doses of self-righteousness. And he had always been a bull in a china shop, so he intended, at least, to be fully prepared for the meeting the following afternoon at the picnic grounds along the Rushing River.
He felt he knew what was right but remained indecisive. The image he sought remained elusive to his vision, yet he could see himself in his Grand Army of the Republic uniform marching proudly up and down Via Valhalla, flagstaff in hand, banner aflutter in the summer’s soft breeze. For your imagination, note that a special crooked flagstaff needed designing in order to support the high vortex of the pentagon shape which the committee selected.
Gruff’s mother, back in Indiana, had been a schoolmarm at a women’s academy; he knew his Shakespeare and Cicero, his Dialogues of Plato and Aeschylus; he could quote the axioms and theorems of algebra and trigonometry; he knew the countries and empires of the world and their capitals, yet the war came and he volunteered and this willing scholar was transformed quickly into the rough and ready character we know of him today from city chroniclers of the past. But I digress.
He wanted color; he wanted flair; he wanted patriotism. Perhaps he wanted blood, the color of blood on this flag. Certainly shouldn’t red, white, and blue be heart and soul of this new town’s ensign?
Well, the committee met and it was amicable, for largely, Gruff got his broad-stroke ways. They agreed upon a Latin expression in bold red script along the bottom of the two foot wide pentagon base in its field of royal blue, “In omnibus actibus, simul ut unum,” or “In all acts, together as one.”
Centered would be a round yellow sun with rays pointing upwards and outwards 80 degrees from the orb’s apex. In the sun itself were two green forearms and hands, outlined in white, shaking. Just below the pentagon’s apex would appear in white a compass rose with N at the bottom, S at the top, W to the right, and E to the left. At each of the five angles, also in white would be placed initials for the five voting districts, from lower left counterclockwise, D for Downtown, U for Uptown, WH for West Hills, P for the Plateau, and C for the Craggy Mountains.
To this day for those of us in Warhaven, here flies our strange but striking symbol of community — and commonweal. In the Memorial Day parade the flag is carried by the Warhaven High School senior class president, followed directly by the entire class, all in their Mighty Sequoia’s sky blue mortar boards and hunter green graduation robes. For the Labor Day parade, the Chamber of Commerce’s Employee of the Year is the carrier. This past Fourth of July, Tootie McDaniels was elected by her peers to be the town’s flagbearer, a moment of prestige for which she had privately hungered since childhood.
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