(Tom Jirik wrote columns in several newspapers in Iowa from the late 1980’s to the mid 1990’s.  This column originally appeared in the The Boone Today in the spring of 1988)

Hi. My name is Tom Jirik.

I am a polka-holic.

It all started years ago.  My folks were both heavily into polkas and waltzes.  They called it “Old – time.”  They listened to Frankie Yankovic and his Yanks, the Six Fat Dutchmen, the Jolly fishermen, Polka Padre, Nebraskan boy al Grebnik and of the unforgettable Whoopie John Wifart.  I had no choice but to listen along.

As the oldest child, I had no older brothers or sisters to warn me of the dangers of polkas.  By age 5, I was hooked.  Time and time again, I warned my youngest brothers about the dangers of polka music.  “Listen to hard rock bands like AC-DC or KISS,” I would tell them.  “You don’t want to wind up like me.”

As a third grader, I totally lost control of my craving for polkas.  I had a small 48-bass accordion and took lessons from a nun, Sister Cecelia, who was 150 years old if she was a day over 20.

She tried to disguise the music, but it didn’t work.  Two months after starting lessons, I noticed that the song I was learning, “Vegetables on Parade,” sounded a lot like the “Too Fat Polka.”

I’m certain that Polka-holism is a hereditary disease.  My grandfather on my dad’s side was playing in a polka band by the time he was 15.  On my mother’s side, a great uncle was a Swiss yodeler and accordionist from a young age.  Destiny dictated that I too would become a polka-holic.

When I was in my early teen-age years, I went to my first polka concert.  Myron Floren was playing at the county Fair.  I still have the autographed album and tattered publicity photo.

When I was in high school other student musicians were experimenting with electric guitars and synthesizers.  Me?  I was polishing my new Italian-made Iorio electric accordion.

“Learn to play like Myron,” my dad would say, “And you’ll have the best accordion money can buy.”

I took lessons off and on for 5 years.  My parents always held high hops that I would become a well-known accordionist like Myron.  Every time he came with Lawrence Welk, they would hail me into the room so I could watch his fantastic performance.  Flashy rings!  Ruffles shirts!  What a life.  What a showman.

I never achieved accordion fame, but my father still holds out hope.  Nearly every time I talk to him on the telephone he asks anxiously, “Are you still practicing your accordion?”

I feel guilty when I have to lie, so I practice now and then.  I still don’t have control of my polka-holism.  Sometimes I just have to pull out my polka tapes and records and listen to them.

I strap on that big heavy accordion.  It feels good, hanging on my shoulders like an old friend, ready to sing to me.  When the whole world’s against me I turn to my accordion… and polkas.  Polka-holism almost got my brother, John, too.  He started playing tuba in grade-school.  But he’s kicked it now.  I don’t think he’s Oom-Pah’ed in more than a year

I wasn’t so lucky. That big accordion sits in the closet even now, waiting for me to pull it out and limber up the bellows.  I’ll always wear my watch on my right wrist instead of my left because on the left it hinders my accordion skills.

Sometimes, when I’m overwhelmed by polkas, I dream about becoming America’s next polka king.  I’d buy a big fancy Cordovox, the best accordion money can buy.  I’d have a tour bus and a whole band dressed in liederhosen to play Oom-Pahs in the background.

And after a concert or dance, we’d sit back-stage and clink our beer steins together in a toast to polka-holism.

 (Tom Jirik wrote columns in several newspapers in Iowa from the late 1980’s to the mid 1990’s.  This column originally appeared in the The Boone Today in the summer of 1989)

The U.S. Supreme Court says it’s legal to burn the United States flag in order to make a political statement.

Predictably, the country is in an uproar.  Veterans’ groups are outraged and President George Bush is calling for an amendment to the Constitution that would prohibit desecration of the flag.  Flag burning has become an emotionally charged issue that has captured headlines in nearly every newspaper.

In Boone, as in the rest of Iowa, citizens continue to fly flags with pride.  Each day Story Street presents a stunning array of red, white and blue as the twin rows of flags snap briskly in the breeze.  Schools, courthouses and other instititutions and businesses gently unfurl their flags each morning and take them in again in the evening.

There is a reverence for the flag in small-town America that is refreshing.  That reverence is missing in many areas.

While burning the flag is certainly a shocking act, the flag is desecrated each day in many places in a similar but much more subtle fashion.

Have you ever noticed how some of those big trucks stops and discount stores and other businesses fly rows and rows of U.S. Flags?  I think that it is commercialism rather patriotism that is the motive.  Often the flags are tattered, ripped faded or stained.  Is there honor and reverence in displaying the flag in such a state.

Elsewhere flags are flown at night without illumination or in the rain or snow or sleet.  Is this any less a form of desecration than burning?

As a reporter, I saw a flag nailed to barn walls and draped over tractors for “media events.”  When those events were over, campaigners wadded up their flags and casually threw them into the trunks of their cars-until the next stop.  We can only hope that the politicians who are outraged now will remember their love of the flag next time they take to the campaign trail.

As a young boy, I can remember anxiously awaiting my turn for flag duty.  I would rush to school so that my flag partner and I could carefully take the flag out to the pole, unfurl it and hoist it to the top.

Just before the end of school, we would solemnly lower the flag, being careful not to let it touch the ground, and carefully refold it onto its triangular package.  We considered it an honor to handle and display the flag.

I’ve always been appalled by those who fail to show proper respect for the flag.  Perhaps this flag-burning issue will cause some of them to rethink their actions and attitudes.

If so, perhaps Old Glory will fare a little better at the hands of her keepers- with or without a constitutional amendment.

It was a typical Sunday afternoon.  We were all sitting around my grandmothers apartment, visiting about events in the local community, the state, the nation, and the world.  My grandmother had an 8th grade education, but had one of the keenest minds that I’ve ever encountered.

When the conversation turned to the war in Iraq which was going on at the time (the first one in 1991), I remember my older brother John, twenty one years old and ripe for the draft joking, “Well I guess if they start the draft, I will just have to move to Canada.”

My grandmother got a hard look in her eyes that I had never seen before and looked at him, and with passion in her voice and said, “Then don’t ever come back.”

We were all a little surprised at grandma’s response.  This was a grandmother who loved and cared for us.  This was a lady that we all knew, loved, and respected.  Her country meant that much to her.

It shouldn’t have come as a surprise.

She wasn’t born a citizen of the United States, she was born in Bohemia, part of the now Czech Republic.  When she was born, it was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and still under a system of near fuedalism.  Freedom was what ever your local Lord would allow for you.

Her father risked it all after a hail storm to come to America.

He took a family of five, including an eight month old baby half way around the world to start a better life and seek for this mythical thing called liberty.

My grandmother’s brothers and husband fought agaist that same Austro-Hungarian Empire in the First World War.  Some of her nephews fought against it again in World War Two.  Her sons had served the country well in Korean comflict and through the cold war.  Her two sons served in all five branches of the military.

She had suffered too.

The years in this country were not always kind. My grandmother’s family scratched out a living in the harsh nothern plains.  She dealt with a lot of adversity.  The government wasn’t always kind either - taking a farm or two for back taxes from her relatives.

But the years and her life in this country were far better then they ever would have been had they stayed behind.  The Freedom to live as you like, to worship as you please, to educate your children, to vote and have a say in our future.

Grandma knew that freedom isn’t free, that liberty is bought with hero’s blood and toil.

She made sure that was a lesson passed on with her hard look and sharpe word, but more then anything, a love for family and country in her heart.