Atomictumor

I was a member of my high school marching band. I played the baritone and then the tuba. As far as high school marching bands go, we were OK. There were plenty worse and we even won an occasional competition. I can’t say that I enjoyed playing in the band. I was too worried about making a mistake to really have fun, but that’s beside the point.

I was thinking about these two guys who played saxaphone. One probably had some sense, but the other one was a real nimrod. He made it his task to school me in the ways of band from the very beginning. I bought into it for a little while, till I met some other folks and got on with my life.

What made me remember these two is the Confederate flag. They had one they liked to carry around and flourish on occasion. They usually brought it out on the bus ride home from away games when the teachers were too tired to care what was going on in the back of the bus. The zenith of their color guard was when they displayed the stars and bars from the hotel balcony in Daytona Beach where the band went for a competion. I looked up from pool side and there it flew with them right beside it.

If I didn’t know better, I’d figure that sort of flag waiving patriotism would stay in high school. I don’t get it. Sure there’s the occasional “south will rise again” bumper sticker (That sticker almost makes it seem like the South has erectile dysfunction.), but there’s something about hoisting the Rebel flag and waiving it. I don’t know. Evidently Old Miss University gave up waving the battle flag in 1983, but the state of Mississippi still flies the old battle flag.

Then there is the Warehouse Tavern here in Oak Ridge. They still fly the confederate flag. A friend of mine mentioned that he saw one flying there, but I had no idea it was on a pole, above Old Glory. Indeed.

Charles Bukowski writes that,

the only meaningful thing about

the South is that they lost

the Civil War and still can’t

accept it.

I wrote that line off to him being a crank, then I ran across the picture of the Warehouse Tavern in todays News Sentinel.

Maybe Bukowski is right.