Every summer, front porches across America commit the same crime. A plastic flag here. A generic wreath there. A doormat

Nobody woke up one morning and decided to make their porch look like a hundred years had happened to it.

The flags in these porches have been washed so many times they’ve gone soft. The wood has been sitting in

Your porch is doing the bare minimum. One plastic flag from the dollar bin, maybe a wreath that’s been out

The flag gets put out once a year and then everyone panics about what to do with the rest of

Somewhere between the fridge magnet and the garden sculpture lives the painted rock. Most people treat it like the former.

The runner goes down. The plates go on. The food arrives. Nobody has thought about whether those three things belong

Somewhere between the plastic tablecloth and the novelty napkin holder, patriotic decorating lost its nerve. It stopped committing to anything

Nobody is neutral about a decorated golf cart. Either you drove past a neighborhood parade and thought someone had too

The flag has been doing heavy lifting for this country’s front porches since before your house was built. And yet