“Old Dixie’s Rebel Flag”

lyrics to a song I wrote a long, long time ago — with a brief comment at the end

[no appropriate image available on “unsplash” — though I admit I did not scroll through all 22,000+ “results” each for “rebel flag,” “confederate flag,” or “confederate battle flag” (though all looked to be pretty much the same)]

[Also, I could not defeat the default formatting built into Medium.]

OLD DIXIE’S REBEL FLAG

by Stephen Cotton [my songwriting nom de plume]

I wandered to a nightclub

where jeans’re standard dress

The band was playing Waylon

and Willie and the rest

And ev’rywhere I looked, yeah

From tags, to bags, to rags

There was that blamed enigma, yet

old Dixie’s rebel flag

2nd verse:

It started me to thinking

about what folks have pinned

Upon that tattered banner

divides so many men

For some it stands for glory

for some it stands for shame

But few are those among us, now

for whom it makes no claim

Chorus:

That rebel flag

What does it mean

Is it the emblem

Of a dream we’ve never seen

Or is it but a symbol

For the ign’r’nt and the mean

Or is it just another patch

For our faded-out blue jeans

3rd verse:

And yes, I understand why

some people take offense

For whom it stands for bondage

and so much suff’ring since

But when I gaze upon it

I can’t help but recall

The pride, so rare for Daddy, when

he told me of Stonewall

This song is autobiographical. I went to that bar. My Daddy did tell me about “Stonewall” — in the Martha Washington Inn in southwestern Virginia. He was born in 1910. That was forty-five years after the end of the Civil War. For perspective, the Vietnam War officially ended forty-five years ago this year. As tender as the feelings about that war still are, for this country it was to ‘The War of Northern Aggression’ as Brasstown Bald* is to Mt. Everest.

*the name of the mountain with the highest peak in the state of Georgia