I have framed, hanging on my living room wall, some letters that were sent to a member of my family in 1917. I discovered these letters buried in a box in my dad’s bedroom closet after he died. I have no idea why he had these letters. I have no idea how he got the letters.

They were written by young men from the Oakhurst, Texas area, and were addressed to Mary Royal. Mary Royal was one of my grandfather’s sisters. I never met her. For the most part, I never met any relatives of Grandfather or Grandmother Royal. I suppose that’s my loss.

Why I kept the letters, why I framed them, is the time frame and the locations from which the letters were addressed because the letters were all addressed to Ms. Royal in a timeframe from July to November 1917 and all letters came from troop carriers. The writers were men from the area who knew my great-aunt(?) and were now preparing to leave for Europe where they were going to join in the fighting of what is now known as World War One.

I don’t know if any of the men survived the war. Perhaps that’s why these letters were kept in the family, because they didn’t survive and these were their last memories, their last words. What I do know if that Mary Royal didn’t survive. She died in 1919. My guess is she was a victim of what we call the Spanish Flu which swept across the globe to follow up on what the war didn’t take care of.

Yesterday was Memorial Day, a holiday dedicated to the members of the Armed Forces who died in service of the United States. I have only one relative who died in service, my uncle Bobby who was killed in Vietnam. I don’t know of any friends or acquaintances of mine who died in the military, so maybe that makes me kind of a bad American which, I guess, is okay and can just be added to all of the other thousands of ways in which I’m a bad American.

I vaguely remember my Uncle Bobby as I was just a little kid when he died. I remember the trip to the airport with the family the last time he left the States. I remember the 21 gun salute at his funeral and being confused because I didn’t see 21 guns. I remember going for a ride in his car.

But I don’t really remember him. I wish I did. And I wish his life hadn’t been lost in Vietnam in what was basically a useless war that didn’t need to be fought. Then again, I guess that mean’s that I’m not really patriotic.

But that’s okay, the Lieutenant Governor of the Great State of Texas thinks he has a way to fix that thanks to a bill that just passed sailed through the Texas Legislature and is just awaiting the governor’s signature established the month July in Texas to be American Patriotism Month:

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who also started a whole beef against New York over the "liberal" nature of the name New York strip, celebrated the Senate's passage of HB 2703 on Friday.

"In a landmark move, HB 2703 passed out of the Texas Senate last week, making Texas the first state in the nation to formally designate the entire month of July as American Patriotism Month," Patrick wrote on X. "With this legislation, Texans are encouraged to observe July not only in celebration of Independence Day, but also as a month-long tribute to the ideals of liberty, democracy, and national pride. God bless the U.S.A.!"

I have relatives who won’t believe this, but I do love this country. The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are great written words establishing a form of democratic government with an established and evolving set of laws that are the envy of the world. One of the reasons that I became an attorney was because of how much I believed in those words. I’m not a military person. I’m not one for orders and regulations and standing straight and salutes, so this was my way of serving the country (and no matter the jokes and hatred, I love being an attorney).

I do hate false displays of patriotism. Because to me, if you have to force a person to wear a flag pen or say the Pledge of Allegiance or stand for the National Anthem before the start of a Chicago White Sox/Sacramento A’s regular season game on a blistering hot August night in Sacramento.

You can’t force patriotism.

What’s more I despise people who don’t believe in this country, don’t believe in its laws, don’t believe in the words in the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution, trying to force false patriotism down the throats of everybody else. They don’t care about the United States. They don’t care about anything but themselves, but they’re afraid of people knowing the truth, so they hide behind fake symbols and forced acts.

So yeah, yesterday I looked at those framed letters I had hanging on my living room wall. And I thought about those men and I thought about my uncle. I thought about them shipping overseas to Europe and to Vietnam to countries where they had never been because it was the right thing to do for the country because they loved their country and what it stood for.

I’ve always loved the movie Yankee Doodle Dandy. When most people think of Jimmy Cagney they think of his great roles as a mobster and crime boss. But I always think of him as a song-and-dance man extolling the virtues of the America in the biography of George M. Cohan.

I’ll likely watch this movie again come July 4th as it’s something I always try to do. It’s corny. It’s a bit dated. However, Cagney, Joan Leslie, and Walter Huston give superb performances. The most famous portions of this movie involve Cagney performing Yankee Doodle Dandy, but for some reason, it’s always been this scene where the character Cohan is playing on stage discovers he’s been cleared of a cheating in a horse race in Britain.

Give my regards to Broadway!
Remember me to Herald Square!
Tell all the gang at Forty Second Street
That I will soon be there!
Whisper of how I'm yearning
To mingle with the old time throng!
Give my regards to Old Broadway
And say that I'll be there, 'ere long!

So that’s my stab at patriotism and remembering. Until I write again.