Field Trip by Robbi Nester (LANDMARKS Series)

Field Trip
by Robbi Nester

In third grade, our teacher led us single file
from the banana-yellow bus to visit Betsy
Ross. She wasn’t home, but we still saw
her house, climbing up the steep and
narrow stairs, so close together they
seemed fashioned for a child. The
ceiling wasn’t far above our heads,
and we were eight! We wondered:
how could Betsy live inside a doll-house?
But at the top the staircase opened
to an ordinary room. There was Betsy’s
bedroom and some ugly chairs, worn
and uncomfortable, the kind that might
make dinner guests eager to leave
without dessert. We heard that Betsy
earned her living covering furniture,
and that was odd, considering the sad
state of those chairs. She once sewed
on a button for George Washington.
The famous flag she made lay behind
a golden rope, draped on a green settee.
In fact, there were several flags, the
stripes and stars in different configurations.
At first the stars were splattered like paint
across the field. They had six points,
but Betsy, being practical, argued for
five-pointed stars, easier to cut, until
they finally settled on the flag we knew.
The stripes were narrower, colors reversed,
stars in a circle in the corner. Someone had to
use the toilet, but Betsy didn’t have one,
at least not in the house. That’s when we
learned that indoor plumbing hadn’t always
been a thing. We wondered what the world
would be like in a hundred years. Look at
Betsy’s kitchen! No stove or running water;
just a fireplace with a hanging kettle. Water
was outside. The teacher let us take turns
pumping. It took two of us to bring the handle
down. People then must have been so much
stronger than we were. The cellar was a cave,
no walls or floor. Dark and cool. It smelled like
dirt. Rough shelves held amber jars of honey,
jam from plums and peaches grown in Betsy’s
garden. The guide said we could buy some
at the store on the way out, alongside tiny
flags and books about George Washington.
That was the day I learned that I was part
of something larger than myself,
like history, something made of change.

PHOTO: The Betsy Ross house, 239 Arch St., Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Photo by Erix2005, used by permission.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Elizabeth (Betsy) Ross (1752-1836), was an upholsterer credited by her relatives with making the first American flag. Ross family tradition holds that General George Washington, commander-in-chief of the Continental Army, visited Mrs. Ross in 1776, when she convinced Washington to change the shape of the stars from six-pointed to five-pointed by demonstrating that it was easier and speedier to cut the latter. Ross made flags for the Pennsylvania navy during the Revolutionary War (1775-1783). After the Revolution, she made U.S. flags for over 50 years.

PHOTO: The Birth of Old Glory by Percy Moran (1917).

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Robbi Nester is the author of four collections of poetry, a chapbook, Balance  (White Violet, 2012), and three collections, including A Likely Story  (Moon Tide, 2014), Other-Wise (Kelsay, 2017), and Narrow Bridge (Main Street Rag, 2019). She has also edited three anthologies, The Liberal Media Made Me Do It!  (Nine Toes, 2014), Over the Moon: Birds, Beasts, and Trees, which was published as a special issue of Poemeleon Poetry Journal, and The Plague Papers,  which is currently being considered for publication. Her poems, reviews, essays, and articles have appeared in many journals and anthologies.