Dispatch From Disneyland
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Few things say America as emphatically as Main Street USA at Disneyland. So it was with patriotic reflection that Andrew thought to himself how weird it was walking down Main Street again. The last time he had been here he was 12 years old. Young, wide-eyed and full to the brim with youthful exuberance.

He had wanted to ride everything then. And while his parents sat at a restaurant on Main Street and listened to the ragtime piano there, he and his older brother raced around the park trying to ride everything at least once.

They failed. The park was very busy that day. It seemed that every time they needed to cross the park to get on another ride a parade or something was going on and they couldn’t cross the parade route. But they certainly tried and had a great time doing it. At the end of the day only Dumbo and ‘it’s a small world’ were left, and those main because neither of them wanted to go on them.

Andrew thinks about the shoe box full of guides, buttons, and photos from that trip. One of his most cherished possessions now is that paper cut out done on Main Street. It features his and his brother’s profiles cut out of one sheet of paper. He still looks a little like that, even now that it’s 8 years later.

With a conscious effort Andrew pushes those last 10 years from his mind. He’s at Disneyland now with his three and a half year old and it’s time to relax, let junior enjoy the sights and sounds, and help mom have some fun herself. Andrew knows that in two days he’ll be back on a transport plane headed for the battlefield. It will be at least six months before he gets to see his family again. Again, he tried to push that from his mind and just enjoy himself.

•  •  •

It looked like it would be another lonely evening at Flag retrieval. Chap took his role on the Flag detail seriously, however, he couldn’t blame the average guest for not paying much attention to it.

It wasn’t too long ago, Chap reflected, that the Disneyland Marching Band provided a live soundtrack to the ceremony. The march up Main Street and a few minutes of patriotic music always drew a sizable crowd. But now all they had was an announcement in town square, and sometimes even that was forgotten by sound control.

Chap thought back to the first time he was chosen to serve on Flag Retreat. He had trained as backup for a few weeks and worked crowd control when he could. A few nights later when he was covering a friend’s shift, one of the three usual crew left work sick. As Chap was the only one in park who had been trained and, importantly, in the right costume, he was chosen.

Joe, the Security Sergeant that night, took him back into the dressing room at the office behind the Mr. Lincoln theater. While Joe helped Chap add the dress elements to his uniform, they went over the fine points of the ceremony one more time.