It's the Law In Kennesaw

Stars and Bars. The Dirty South.

Upon inquiring to a colleague that I wished to see some "local color", I was pointed in the direction of Dent Myers and his shop "Wild Man Bills" (admission fee: 25 cents) in Kennesaw, GA, about 15-20 minutes north of Atlanta. So, some weeks ago, Jam and I headed out of town for our "mini road-trip". Take me away from the malls, these god-forsaken malls!!



Kennesaw has the nickname of "Gun Town, USA" due to a city ordinance passed in 1982 [Sec 34-1a] that requires every head of household to maintain a firearm with ammunition (wikipedia). The popular slogan "It's the Law in Kennesaw" has pretty much been the only thing to put this otherwise small little town on the map. Hey, you gotta use what you got.

Now maybe it was the fact that Mr. Myers was walking around with two firearms (loaded I assume;), or that there was active KKK literature laying around, or it could have been the adolescent delinquent dressed in a confederate uniform (probably an original from "The War of Northern Agression") talking about shooting yankees...but something, something, made us a little uneasy.



I must say the shop itself was in complete disarray and was more akin to an attic or garage sale, with all sorts of things scattered here and there. I kind of liked that. Different. Exploratory. But, there was also this real sense of coming to terms with such a dark part of history. Much of the material (which I won't mention here) in the shop was racist and evil, relics of an era that has passed, so I was hoping that it was more of a reflection than a promotion of that kind of backward thinking that unfortunately still persists today-although I still can't explain the KKK literature-or why the stuff was for sale. Who was buying that stuff? Maybe I ought not to venture far outside the Atlanta city limits!

I saw one mother and daughter there for her school project, doing some research on the civil war. Another older lady asked to hug Dent before she left, what was this some sort of cult? The whole thing felt strange, and after about 15 minutes, we decided it would be best to leave. As I was leaving one thing that struck me was a board of pictures of customers who had visited the shop in the past, all African-American. Maybe it wasn't so bad after all. I don't know, but I did leave a creepy taste in my mouth!

HA. Poor Jam, she thought she was going to a "muesuem". But, in a sense, I guess it was. She asked an interesting question concerning racism and sterotypes, etc. "While it's important to teach children about racism etc (those who don't know their history are forced to repeat it--except in the case of Vietnam;), does it just implant the ideas/notions into their heads? Would they even know about racism if we didn't teach them about the past?". It's an interesting question.