I've always felt guilty on the Fourth of July. Take today - my next door neighbors, Kevin and Jan, have a row of about a dozen American flags lined up along the edge of the front lawn. In fact, when our town's little Independence Day parade marched past this morning, Jan had affixed an American flag-decorated Mylar balloon to her Yorkie's collar.

My house is flagless.

Every Fourth of July morning, I'm communing with myself over coffee and a crossword when suddenly, at ten sharp, I'm blasted from my reverie by the shriek of a siren from the Louisville Metro police car leading the parade.

It's a rather modest affair - a bunch of kids pedal their bikes festooned with red, white and blue streamers behind the squad car, a few grown ups march with them, tugging at the leashes of their dogs who are similarly bedecked, a few joggers carrying tiny flags weave in and out of the procession and a couple of hardy oldsters bring up the rear on their own bikes. That's it.

Rather than puff up my chest with patriotic fervor, I only mutter, Why the hell are these dumb sons-of-bitches making so much racket this early in the morning?

It's not that I'm a curmudgeon. Oh, alright, I am. But that's not the reason I'm so annoyed and then guilt-ridden by the day and the parade. It's just that I've never really been a flag guy.

The underpinnings of my political and world views developed in 1968. The year of Tet. The year the South Carolina Highway Patrol busted up a civil rights protest at a segregated bowling alley by killing three college-aged participants.

1968, the year a little man - no doubt financed by some pillars of society who objected to the cut of Martin Luther King's suit - pointed his rifle out the window of a Memphis shithouse and whacked the civil rights leader.

1968, the year Mayor Daley demanded that his cops shoot to kill kids carrying Molotov cocktails. You know, the same cops whose perception was keen enough to determine whether the bill folded neatly beneath a drivers license during a routine traffic stop was a ten or a twenty but who were unable to distinguish between little old ladies in tennis shoes protesting the Vietnam War in a church basement and the wild-eyed Mau-Maus who, those crack preservers of the peace were certain, lurked around every corner just waiting to ravish their virginal daughters.

1968, the year Bobby Kennedy, washed clean of his sins by the trauma of his brother's assassination, trying to redeem himself and the country by reaching out to the poor, the unfortunate, the Blacks and the Latinos, caught a bullett in the skull in a Los Angeles hotel kitchen.

1968, the year Daley's cops took off their badges and nameplates and pounded on the crania of protestors, news reporters, innocent bystanders - hell, anyone within range of their nightsticks - during the Democratic Convention.

1968, the year a couple of American runners, medal winners at the Mexico City Olympics, raised their black-gloved fists during the playing of "The Star-Spangled Banner" to bring attention to the racism poisoning their country. They were exiled from the Olympic village and received a flood of hate mail and death threats upon their return home.

I watched, read and heard about all this and concluded that Mayor Daley was a dictator, black guys who caused a ruckus got slapped down or worse, the United States was a bully, and there were too many goddamned guns floating around.

Yet guys like Daley loved the American flag. Black guys found themselves less infatuated by it and I understood why. I also noticed that those who backed the Vietnam War waved their flags around like Bonobos displaying their boners. And, of course, guns and the flag go together like straightjackets and the madhouse.

At the age of 12, I vowed never to stand for the anthem or salute the flag. One day, not too much later, I found myself in the Wrigley Field grandstands. The PA announcer asked everyone to stand and remove their hats for the national anthem. An idealistic, cocksure adolescent, I thought I'd be damned if I was going to take my cap off. I refused to stand as well. As the anthem played, I filled out my scorecard. Next to me, a kid my age nudged his father and pointed me out. The old man snorted and snarled, "Why, he's just an anti-American scum."

I'll never forget those words. I'm nowhere near as idealistic or cocksure now. Yet the flag and the anthem still represent nothing more to me than the utter contempt that grown man had for a dopey teenager.

I feel guilty for being such a potential buzz-kill to all the kids with streamers trailing from their handlebars and to my next door nieghbor Jan with all her red, white and blue. So I won't go out of my way to tell them how I disdain their flag fixation.

I only wish they'd return the favor by not blasting me out of my reverie with a police siren every Fourth of July morning.