I guess we were all vaguely aware that, technically speaking, we were breaking the law. At the time, though, it just seemed like the perfect thing to do.

It was the summer of 1983. Gasoline was $1.24 a gallon, “Gandhi” won the Academy Award for best picture, and I was connected at the hip to a group of friends I wouldn’t have traded for the world.

We were a tightly knit pack of teenagers and early 20- somethings, roaming the streets (well, street) of Georgetown, armed with fishing poles and surfboards and wandering in and out of each other’s homes as easily and frequently as today’s young folk send text messages.

It was indeed a blissful time in my life. Summer days lasted forever, and responsibility consisted of remembering whose turn it was to ask their parents if the rest of us could stay for supper.

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At the time, the large rock face at Route 127 and Seguinland Road was marred with some sort of graffiti. I don’t remember the exact nature of it, nor which of us came up with the idea to paint a flag there instead — it easily could have been Peter Gray, son of local artist Kay Gray. It also could have been the other pack members, Allen Goodrich, Samantha (Moulton) Wilkinson, Scott Barabe or even me. I do remember a group discussion, though, that an American flag was a good choice because people would be unlikely to deface such a patriotic symbol.

With that, the plan was hatched and the details fell into place quickly. The money we needed to buy the supplies, less so.

My kid brother Johnny came to the rescue. He was too young to come out with us after dark, but he was a responsible kid even back then and had saved up enough from his lawn mowing gigs and a part-time job at the Five Islands Wharf to offer up the $20 we needed to buy a few cans of spray paint.

Oddly, Johnny remembers it differently, claiming the phrase “offered up” isn’t quite as accurate as “My older brother and his friends threatened my life if I didn’t hand it over.”

This minor technicality will likely be debated around the Thanksgiving dinner table for years to come, but the end result was that Allen, Samantha, Peter, Scott and I walked out of Sears that night with an armload of spray paint, a secret plan, and not a dime of John’s hardearned money left over.

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Except for the glow of the streetlight, we painted the rock under cover of darkness, darting into the woods to hide every time a car passed by, fearful that our “crime” would be detected and we’d get into serious trouble. We laughed, we spray-painted the rock, we twisted our ankles diving into the underbrush, and then we laughed some more, giggling the way friends do when they’re completing a secret mission.

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When the Stars and Stripes were done and the Flag Rock was born, we stood there in the darkness looking at it for a long time. We couldn’t have known it would become the landmark that it did, we couldn’t have realized that 30 years later, no one in Georgetown could give directions to Reid State Park, Five Islands or the various bed and breakfasts without mentioning the Flag Rock, but we knew, on some level we couldn’t quite articulate, we had done something big.

Not altogether legal maybe, but big.

As it turned out, the town adopted the Flag Rock in the same way each of our parents adopted the other pack members 30 years ago — warmly, graciously and with the realization that it would probably hang around for a very long time. Many townspeople and vacationers alike thought the folk art was just what that corner needed. Our fears of punishment quickly faded.

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Thirty years later, my young friends have now become old friends. We have more pounds, less hair, and some of us even have kids of our own who travel in packs and show up at suppertime. We’ve survived serious illness, injury and the loss of loved ones. We grew up, though we swore we never would.

Time took its toll on the Flag Rock, too. The paint faded, shrubbery encroached, and the rock that we stood in the darkness and stared at for so long on that summer night 30 years ago now just looked drab and forgotten.

Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who noticed it. Sam’s text message came out of the blue: “We have to fix the flag. I’m calling your brother to get $20.”

And so it began again … same plan, different decade.

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We did our best to include the original cast of “hooligans” in the restoration effort, and thankfully some volunteers stepped up to help. Barabe brothers Todd and Jason threw themselves into the project along with Allen, Ralph and Samantha Wilkinson and, of course, my brother John, who didn’t make the project possible this time but certainly made it much more fun.

We met up at the Flag Rock, in broad daylight no less, and cut, hacked, chopped, pulled, shoveled, raked and cleared away 30 years of overgrowth. The rock looked better immediately. Todd spent quite a few evenings laboriously chipping away at the many layers of old paint that had been applied by others in touch-up efforts over the years, and I went to work measuring and cutting stencils for the stars, figuring out how wide the stripes had to be in proportion to the union, and basically, as Sam put it, dragging the cold, wet dishrag of math into the task.

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A couple weeks before our self-imposed July 4 deadline, we met up again and applied the blue and white paint. Our biggest obstacle was Mother Nature, as it’s hard to plan a painting project when rain is constantly in the forecast.

On the evening of July 3, we worked as a team, some of us carefully taped off the white background while others painted the red stripes and used stencils to apply the 50 stars to the dark-blue Union.

It sure seemed like more work than it had 30 years ago, but the Flag Rock was once again taking shape. When we were nearly finished, we quickly decided that our offspring should be responsible for future upkeep.

After the 50th star was applied and the 13th stripe brushed on, we couldn’t wait to peel off the tape and admire our handiwork.

We were not disappointed — the flag looked FANTASTIC!

We think we looked pretty fantastic too, as we hugged and cheered and clapped each other on the back and posed for photographs until it got too dark to see.

In a time when our country’s patriotism is too often obscured by political polarization, it sure did lift our hearts to see so many passersby waving and beeping their horns in acceptance of our efforts to revitalize a symbol that means so much to so many, in a place that has become, to some of us, a little bit more than just a street corner.

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In the early morning hours of July 4, Todd Barabe made sure some touch-ups were completed and did a general cleanup of the area.

Flag Rock was ready. Happy Independence Day, Georgetowners, and thanks for making it such a landmark!

As if they hadn’t helped enough, Jason and Todd Barabe also built a totally amazing, life-size Flag Rock out of paper mache and chicken wire, and then pulled their creation, the “30th Anniversary Flag Rock Tribute Float” in our town’s Fourth of July Parade. It certainly was a sight to behold.

At the time, I guess it just seemed like the perfect thing to do.

THE WRITERS live — and paint — in Georgetown.