![]() Yes, got plenty of flags,” Castello was saying. People kept coming and the phone kept ringing. I feel like, let’s just stick a pin in everyone and erase history, because that’s how it feels.” “I can’t believe they’re taking ‘Gone with the Wind’ off the air,” she said, referring to a decision by HBO Max to temporarily suspend streaming of the film until it could be brought back with a discussion of its racist characterizations. She picked out a photo of Vivien Leigh as Scarlett O’Hara. “You got flags?” said Casey Britt, who began wandering the aisles, looking over the stickers that read “My Heroes are Confederate Soldiers” and “Dixie: Still One Nation Under God,” glancing at the secessionist flags, then stopping at the “Gone With the Wind” section. “I need a Reb,” said a man in jeans and boots coming through the door. “Yeah, that just pushed everyone over the edge,” said Castello, elaborating that the whole cultural tide was “denigrating everything that I am - white, male, Christian, gun-toting.” “Especially with that NASCAR nonsense,” a customer said. “Seems like it’s just boiled over here the last few days,” he said. ![]() RIGHT: Along with current military paraphernalia and the Confederate flag, stills from "Gone With the Wind" are available.īattle flag holsters, belt buckles, belts, boots, T-shirts, wallets, lighters, key chains, lanyards, lapel pins, toothpick holders, a homemade Rebel flag made from empty tobacco tins - it was all flying out the door so fast that Castello called in two clerks for reinforcement. LEFT: The store sits alongside a rural two-lane road. ![]() “Will this be all?” she said to a man buying a Rebel flag steering wheel cover, a Rebel flag hat, a Rebel flag hood cover and a Trump 2020 license plate, and all day long, customers slapped open the front door with a sense of urgency Castello had never quite seen. “Whatcha got?” the clerk was saying now as she rang up a customer buying a Rebel flag blanket, a Rebel flag shot glass and two etchings of the Confederate Gen. Inside was a shrine to all the Southern mythology being swept away. “That Talladega crap” is what some people were calling it in Heflin, population 3,400, where President Trump received 82 percent of the vote in 2016.Ĭastello, who figured he was “everything these liberals hate,” had started checking in with police about possible threats to his store, which appeared along a rural two-lane road as clusters of flapping Confederate flags, Christian flags, American flags and Trump flags bright against the Appalachian foothills. “The presence of the Confederate flag at NASCAR events runs contrary to our commitment to providing a welcoming and inclusive environment for all fans,” the NASCAR statement announcing the ban had read. Thirty miles away in Talladega, one of the most storied races in sports was about to be run for the first time in its 50-year history without Confederate imagery. Seventy-five miles to the west, the mayor of Birmingham had ordered a prominent Confederate monument removed, defying a state law meant to protect them. A hundred miles to the south in Montgomery, the newest monument to Southern history was a memorial to more than 4,400 black victims of lynchings that took place in the decades following the Civil War. This is how the great American reckoning was unfolding in recent days in a place as white, evangelical and Confederate flag-flying as anywhere in the country. “This one will fly better,” he said, showing him another one. “Well, 12-by-18 is huge,” Castello said, pointing to the enormous flag on the wall. “Yeah, the lady on the phone said you had one 12-by-18?” the man said, meaning feet, not inches. ![]() “You going to put it on the back of your truck?” said Bob Castello, the store owner. “I need a Rebel flag - a big one,” a customer was saying.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |