"What So Proudly We Hail..."

"What So Proudly We Hail..." by Day Keene is a story where an 18th-century man named Ephraim Hale mysteriously travels to 1950 after a night of drinking and struggles to understand the transformed world. Awakening disoriented in Central Park, he meets a woman named Gertie and is confronted with unfamiliar technologies, strange social customs, and confounding concepts like income tax. He deals with the humor and difficulties of fitting into this new reality, and he must decide whether to accept the advancements of modern life or yearn for the simplicity of his past. The narrative blends time travel with cultural observations, contrasting the beliefs of early America with the rapidly changing values of the mid-20th century.