Joel Kipper and Jane Labanz stand in front of rest of the cast performing “You’re a Grand Old Flag” in the musical George M!, at Theatre By The Sea, which runs through July 12.

Special to the Journal / Mark Turek

“You’re a grand old flag, you’re a high-flying flag, and forever in peace may you wave …”

From “You’re A Grand Old Flag,” by George M. Cohan

When I was a kid, the only electronic amusement on long car trips was the radio. You couldn’t listen to an iPod or play a Gameboy; they didn’t exist.

So, to pass the time, my sister and I would sing — Broadway show tunes, maybe, or current hits by the likes of Diana Ross or Simon and Garfunkel. And, of course, there were patriotic tunes.

Just as we would play a flag-counting game during car rides on national holidays, each looking out his or her window to see who could spot more American flags (“No fair! You’ve got a cemetery!”), my sister and I would create seamless medleys of all-American songs. “America the Beautiful” would blend into “You’re A Grand Old Flag” and then into “Yankee Doodle Boy.”

“Oh, I’m a Yankee doodle dandy, a Yankee doodle do or die. A real live nephew of my Uncle Sam, born on the fourth of July …”

I’m not sure how we knew these songs; they simply were part of our mid-century landscape. A certain reverence for the flag and patriotic tunes was built into us as we heard Kate Smith sing “God Bless America” on The Ed Sullivan Show or watched the Fourth of July fireworks near our aunt and uncle’s suburban home.

As for George M. Cohan, the World War I-era song-and-dance man who had written many of these songs, I had heard the name but didn’t know much about him. Even after I moved in 1978 to Providence, where he was born, about all I knew was that there was a boulevard named after him in Fox Point.

So when I heard that Theatre By The Sea in Matunuck would stage George M! — a musical about Cohan — and open it just before Independence Day to boot, I had to check it out.

THE THEATER was giving out flag lapel pins to the press corps as we picked up our tickets. I put the one I was given in my pocket — I didn’t want to appear unpatriotic by refusing to take it, but I didn’t want to seem to be losing my objectivity about the show by wearing it.

I wasn’t sure what to expect from George M! With Joel Grey of Cabaret fame in the title role, it had debuted on Broadway in 1968, right around the time when I was singing those patriotic medleys. But that was also the year that Hair, with its nudity and countercultural point of view, showed up on the New York stage. Which world view would George M! represent?

As it turns out, neither. George M! is no patriotic festival. But neither does it campily send up the patriotic songs Cohan wrote.

Instead, it’s a pretty standard, apolitical showbiz biography. The Cohan of George M! — born in Providence, yes, but to a vaudeville family that really lived on the road — is nothing more than a brash showman, so egotistical and consumed by his career that his wife must communicate with him by telegram to tell him their marriage is over. He becomes the toast of Broadway. He stops being the toast of Broadway.

He writes those patriotic songs, all right. But in the play’s world, they’re just show tunes, no more important than “Harrigan” or “Mary’s a Grand Old Name.” The theatrical Cohan’s patriotism is put on and removed as easily as the cast’s red, white and blue costumes, or the flag backdrop that falls behind the actors as they sing, then rises for the next scene.

SO WHAT’S IN a patriotic song? I still like to sing them, sometimes in the car. Occasionally, if they’re not too consumed with iPods and Gameboys, my kids may sing along. And we all still like a good fireworks display on the Fourth of July — accompanied by baseball, at Pawtucket’s McCoy Stadium, or with music at Old Mountain Field in Peace Dale.

But patriotism isn’t something that exists in a song or a flag lapel pin. It’s not something you feel once a year as the Roman candles are exploding overhead.

As it turns out, there was a time when George M. Cohan’s patriotic tunes were more than just an excuse for another production number (though they were always that as well). His march “Over There” — also sung in George M! — was a genuine phenomenon during World War I, its sheet music selling a million and a half copies, according to his New York Times obituary. “Joseph Tumulty, secretary to President Woodrow Wilson, sent him the following appreciation: ‘Dear George Cohan: The President considers your war song “Over There” a genuine inspiration to all American manhood.’ ”

Almost two decades later, by act of Congress, President Franklin D. Roosevelt presented him with a gold medal in recognition of his having written “You’re a Grand Old Flag” and “Over There.”

It’s a long-gone era, that pre-Vietnam time when popular culture celebrated American military might. You may not miss it. I’m not sure I do, though I feel a certain nostalgia for it.

But you can see just a glimmer of it these days on a stage in Matunuck.

“Over there, over there,

“Send the word, send the word over there

“That the Yanks are coming, the Yanks are coming,

“The drums rum-tumming everywhere …”

arosenbe@projo.com