Wrapped & Rugged

A flag in the wind wears from the outside in. The fly end, the edge farthest from the pole, snaps hardest and frays first, and a flag left up long enough ends up looking like this one: stripes torn through, stars dulled, the cloth gone soft and gray at the edges.

The most famous flag in American history went through it. Mary Pickersgill sewed the garrison flag for Fort McHenry in 1813, 30 by 42 feet, with 15 stars and 15 stripes, for $405.90. It was flying over Baltimore harbor on the morning of September 14, 1814, after a night of British bombardment, and the sight of it moved Francis Scott Key to write the poem that became the national anthem.

Then it was cut up. The Armistead family, who kept it, gave pieces away as souvenirs, and one of its fifteen stars went with them and has never been traced. The flag now measures 30 by 34 feet, with fourteen stars. It went through a restoration that ran from 1999 to 2008 and is on display at the Smithsonian in Washington.

The flag in this picture is not that one, but it carries the same lesson. The stars are faded to the color of old bone on smoky blue, red stripes show through in torn patches, and the cloth ripples diagonally, caked with grit. Nothing in it is clean, and nothing in it has given way.