Wildman, 84 and going strong. Love him or hate him (hard to do!) -- he is a part of Civil War relic collecting history.
http://mdjonline.com/view/full_story/26725345/article-Civil-War-memorabilia-store-selling-out-of-Confederate-flags?Civil War memorabilia store selling out of Confederate flags
by Hilary Butschek
June 28, 2015 12:43 AM | 3746 views | 2 | 3 | |
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Wildman’s Civil War Surplus owner Dent Myers talks about his time in business in Kennesaw and offers his opinion of the recent removal of the Confederate battle flags from neighboring state capitals and Georgia’s own flag, during an interview Friday. Myers said people don’t know the true history of the flag, which he has been selling like hotcakes the past few days. The store sold hundreds of the flag this week and is shipping them all over the United States through Web orders. / Staff-Kelly J. Huff
DENT MYERS
KENNESAW — Dent Myers, 84, has invested half his life into his Civil War surplus store, Wildman’s, in downtown Kennesaw.
“I’ve got an interest in excavating,” Myers said.
Although the hole-in-the-wall sized shop on North Main Street sells hundreds of different items related to the battles of the Civil War, the Ku Klux Klan and Southern pride memorabilia, the most popular item last week was a polyester Confederate flag.
“From the amount we’ve sold I think every person in the country will be flying a Confederate flag. We’ve sold about 300 to 400, which is more than we normally sell in a year,” Myers said.
That flag has stirred up controversy in South Carolina, where politicians and residents are calling it a racial symbol, but Myers, a Civil War enthusiast and former Confederate Army re-enactor, said that’s not how he sees it.
“It’s a Christian flag. It’s just the cross of St. Andrew with stars on it,” Myers said.
Although the design is simple, Myers said it means a lot more to him than its association with the KKK.
“The flag is a part of me the same way your feet are part of you. It’s not physically obvious, but it’s part of my physical and mental makeup,” Myers said.
Myers blames the politicians for not standing up for their history when they allow people to criticize the Confederate flag.
“It’s a Christian flag that’s why they have such consternation about it. Some people say it’s racist, and all the wannabees go to their side, and then there’s all this hullabaloo about it. I cannot understand for the life of me how such a large segment of the populace can be so upset about an inanimate object. They don’t have a clue, and they don’t have a clue about any of the history either,” Myers said.
The store Myers runs seven days a week is packed to the brim with everything from metal bullet casings to KKK gowns and pro-segregation posters to country music CDs.
Former Gov. Roy Barnes spoke out this week on his view that the South should be ashamed of parts of its past. He said he thinks Confederate Memorial Day on May 30 and Confederate History month in April should be banned.
“One of the Confederate battle flags was called the ‘Stainless Banner,’ and it was white and red, and everybody acknowledges the white was for white superiority of the races, and that is gone from our society — or at least it should be. And why do we go back and try to use that as a time of nostalgia? As I said, education and life experiences can change a lot of things,” Barnes said.
Barnes dismissed claims the Civil War was not about slavery but instead about high tariffs imposed on the states from the federal government.
“I’ve read those succession ordinances, and I haven’t seen, ‘We’re leaving here because the U.S. government is trying to put too high of tariffs on us.’ In not one of them is (that) mentioned. Everything’s about slavery,” he said.
It’s the history that the store holds that Myers said is missing from the modern world. He believes everyone should learn the truth about their history, a story that is hard to find nowadays, Myers said.
“It will help in the long run if you’ve got false history then you’re a false person. You have false information and then you’ll pass it on and it’ll be false too and then you’ll have a world of falsities.”
The shop attracts locals who chat about the events 151 years past. Walking the aisle of the shop, a visitor could overhear conversation about the “real meaning of the Civil War.”
“People don’t know what Civil War means, so I asked this fellow here to tell me,” said Paul Steele, a retiree who lives in Kennesaw.
Steele pointed to Robert Nelson IV, a retiree who lives in Kennesaw, who had just given Steele a history lesson.
“A Civil War is when one faction takes over another faction. In the South, we just wanted to leave. And, listen to this, we never surrendered to the North. An armistice was never signed. When we surrendered, it was an army that we surrendered with, not a government,” Nelson, a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.
Nelson repeated that the South had never really given up the war.
“It just means the South is still an entity,” Nelson said.
Nelson later began talking with another customer inside Wildman’s, Danny Field, an electrician who lives in Paulding County. Field had just purchased Wildman’s last cotton Confederate flag in stock. Its due to receive another shipment this week.
“I’m going to hang this up on my front porch right next to my American flag and just dare somebody to come up and say something to me about it,” Field said.
Nelson said the Confederate flag shouldn’t spark outrage.
“Everyone says it is a racial symbol. It is not. If you look at the neo-Nazis and the skinheads and the KKK — they all took it and distorted it. The KKK originally came about because after the war all the carpetbaggers from the north were coming down South and raping and pillaging. So, the KKK started as a vigilante force. They were part of the Confederate Army, so they used that flag,” Nelson said.
The flag is a part of the heritage of the South, a symbol he would fight for, Nelson said.
“The North doesn’t have as many monuments and battlefields up there, so to them it doesn’t mean anything. The North has never understood. The Northerners come down here and say, ‘What’s the big deal? Why can’t you just take it down?’ Well, for the people here who had people die in the war, it means a lot to us,” Nelson said.