A Glorious Idea to Wave Today : It’s easy to find flags for patriotic displays. But it can take a touch of American ingenuity to fly them properly.

It is Memorial Day and this land of the freeway and home of the brazen is aflutter with the old and the glorious.

Yet most of it is five and dime store patriotism.

Blame that on our inability to escape the $9.95 American flag kits that some may rank alongside Lucite champagne flutes and nouvelle Tex-Mex as the victory of cold commerce over warm tradition.

Proud burgees and fine flags should fly only from staffs or poles.

A kit flag comes with a skinny, bending tube that began life as a patio furniture reject.

Its truck (that’s flagspeak for the pulley block at the top of a flag pole immediately beneath the finial that can be a halberd, guidon or eagle) usually is a plastic gumball with a loop for a pulley. With parcel twine for a halyard.

A brochure is tucked inside each kit. It says July 4 and Veterans and Memorial days are good times to fly the flag. But don’t trail the flag in the mud, never fly it at night and the square with the stars should be in the top corner next to the pole.

All of which is reminiscent of those somewhat patronizing Welcome-to-America-and-Consider-Yourself- Lucky leaflets contained in naturalization packets. I know. Mine also included a two-inch biography on George Washington with a telephone number of the local chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution.

But we digress. Now, the kit flag itself is a passable piece of merchandise because nobody has sufficient sense of desecration nor depth of avarice to produce a ceremonial-size Stars and Stripes on vinyl.

Yet assembled, attached to string and tube, the whole still forms a short, squeaky, impermanent, semi-impotent flap barely able to breathe the wind from any front porch.

There are alternatives, of course, in the Yellow Pages under Flags and Banners. Major league, store-bought squares are sturdy and of superior quality and if you want Admiral Perry’s 1813 flag (“Don’t Give Up the Ship”) or the Alamo flag of 1836 (carrying the date of Mexico’s constitution) they’ll have them.

But flag and banner boutiques, oddly, seem to be short on good poles.

You can buy some towering aluminum thing for several hundred dollars. But if God had wanted us to have aluminum flag poles, he would have given Betsy Ross some Reynolds Wrap.

There are store-bought poles in the hard woods. But the tall ones seem too spindly to survive a stiff Santa Ana and the short ones stand too stubby for pulleys and cleats.

Stores do carry elegant, spar-varnished staffs that unscrew into pieces like a pool cue. But they are stuck into stands and obviously are more suited for photo opportunities in mayors’ offices than for the outdoor celebration of today--and tomorrow, which would have been John F. Kennedy’s birthday.

So I decided to make my own flag pole. Or rather two poles for those days when dual citizenship tugged.

They would have ropes and pulleys for the ceremonial hauling of Old Glory high. With brass snap shackles to keep the hoists straight and true. With cleats that would moor firm an admiral’s barge.

Close your eyes alongside my flag staff, I vowed, and you will hear taps and remember Khe Sahn or see the slap of thick linen over the sloop Ranger when John Paul Jones sailed into Nantes.

And in the true spirit of revolution and innovation that has made America and Woodland Hills what they are today, my poles would be crafted as the founding fathers built theirs--from bits and pieces previously condemned to duller duties.

The poles--thick and strong but with enough flex to survive the blast of a Pentecostal sermon--were the easiest to find.

Quick. What comes in 8-foot lengths? What is tough enough to hold the weight of 50 shirts, five suits, a dozen pairs of pants and several mothballed uniforms? Of course. The pole that goes across a closet. Cost at most hardware stores: $7.50 apiece.

Now the trucks. Even simpler than the poles. Because the ends of any closet pole slip into wooden caps (they do come in plastic but we chose to ignore such modern filth) that fit flat against a wall. Cost: $3 a set.

The halyards--50 feet of nylon laundry line. Cost: $8. Halyard pulleys--the same pulleys used to carry the aforementioned laundry line. Cost: $3 apiece. Snap shackles--usually in the hardware bin next to the pulleys. Cost: $4 apiece. Cleats--in the bin next to the shackles next to the pulleys. Cost: $2 apiece.

The finial--the ball, that spike or star atop the truck and staff--presented a problem. Think. Roam the hardware store. Visualize. Think again.

Got it. I don’t know what it’s called, but when opening a door, there’s a spring screwed into most base boards. It prevents doorknobs from punching holes in the wall.

For those who don’t like springs, the buffer also comes as a blunt, semi-flexible spike--just the thing for screwing through truck into pole for a traditional and quite perfect finial.

A lick of paint. Two screw eyes and four wood screws for attaching pulleys and cleats to the poles. Sew and tape the laundry line to the snap shackles for attaching to the flags.

Total cost for two poles: $50.

So today, by golly, I’ve got the Stars and Stripes in priority on my left pole. On the right, by jingo, is the Union Jack of my birthplace.

I’m even planning a small flag locker.

There will be the flag of Mexico for Cinco de Mayo and the flag of Canada for Victoria Day. On April 1, on its birthday, I’ll fly the Royal Air Force ensign and buy a Los Angeles flag to celebrate our city’s anniversary. I’ve found a store where there are less nationalistic banners to fly--for Father’s Day and Dodger victories. Long may that one wave for Tommy.

And I swear that when a policeman or a firefighter or a friend falls I will privately fly my national and state flags at half staff.

That’s just an idea.

Just something to run up the flagpole.