AN INSTALLATION EARLY ON. . .

To Peter Regli: Looking at some of your work on the WWW reminded me of an anonymous art installation I did in 1941.
I attended the final two years of High School in Hampton, Va. We were the smallest Class "A" High School in the state of Virginia. All that meant was that we often got beat on the football field, etc, we were relatively a small institution.
It was a two story building nestled along side a standard football field, of course. The building had a flat roof protected by on three sides by a four foot wall. At the front of the building, that wall rose up with conventional masonry curls and curves to a graceful peak about eight feet above the flat roof surface. Atop the peak was a twelve foot flag pole, with appropriate rope and pulley to raise a flag.
My project was to fly a different flag for a day, and one which no one would ever forget. I begged a pair of girl's panties and a brassiere from cousin Cookie, my age and my favorite of a large batch of female cousins. Using coat-hanger wire to make the garments hold their shape and fishing twine to lash them to the flag pole, a friend and I prepared to fly the new flags; bra at the top, panties below.
Then we hid atop the proscenium arch of the stage in the school auditorium as the school security people locked up the building for the night. After dark, we went up on the roof. My sturdy friend climbed up on the peak of the wall-parapet, stood up against the flag pole wrapping his arms firmly around it, and then I climbed up the parapet and them climbed up him, to stand on his shoulders and lash the wired pants and bra to the top of the flag pole so that they would fly bravely outstretched like a flag-in-the-wind for all to see in the morning when school opened again.
The next morning, the impact of the new flag display was everything I had hoped for. Instead of the usual Stars and Stripes, there waved America's most powerful fertility symbol.
Superb. So well fixed it stayed up there all day. No one ever discovered who provided Hampton High School such an inspiring installation.
As always -- afraid of heights.
----h