To the Editor:
In response to the lack of respect for the National Anthem, the American Flag and the American heroes who have given their lives for this country by a bunch of ungrateful millionaires in the NFL, I submit the following: That Ragged Old Flag By Johnny Cash I walked through a county courthouse square … and on a park bench an old man was sitting there.
I said, “Your old courthouse is kind of run down.” He said, “No, it’ll do for our little town.”
I said, “Your old flagpole is leaning a bit and that’s a ragged old flag you’ve got hanging on it.”
He said, “Have a seat” and I sat down. “Is this the first time you come to our little town.”
I said, “I think it is.”
He said, “I don’t like to brag, but we’re kind of proud of that ragged old flag.”
“You see, we got a little hole in that flag there
when Washington took it across the Delaware and it got powder-burned the night Francis Scott Key sat up watching it writing, “Oh say can you see.”
“And she got a little rip down in New Orleans with Packingham and Jackson tugging at her seams and she almost fell at the Alamo by the Texas flag, but she saved on though.”
“She got cut with a sword at Chancellorsville, got cut again at Shiloh Hill, there was Robert E. Lee, Beauregard and Bragg and the south wind blew hard on that ragged old flag.”
“On Flanders Field in World War I, she took a bad hit from a Bertha Gun.”
She turned blood red in World War II, she hung limp and low by the time that one was through.”
“She was in Korea, Vietnam and the Middle Eastern sand, she went where he was sent by her Uncle Sam.”
“And the Native American Indians, the blacks, the yellows, and the whites, they all shed red blood for her stars and stripes.”
“And all through the land here, she’s been abused, she’s been burned, dishonored, denied and refused and the very government for which she stands has been scandalized throughout the land.”
“Ya, she’s getting threadbare and wearing kind of thin, but she’s in good shape for the shape she’s in, cause she’s been through the fire before and she can take a whole lot more.”
“So we raise her up every morning and let her down slow at night.”
“We don’t let her touch the ground and we fold her up right.”
“On second thought, I guess I do like to brag, cause we’re mighty darn proud of that ragged old flag.”
God bless our men and women in the military, our blue and our first responders.
Charles Kromer
Harlingen
