What if flag was out of style?

There are lawn chairs lined up along the sidewalks on busy State Route 42, a stretch of commercial highway covered in strip malls, amusement parks and country music nightclubs.

The people are here to watch a convention of the Southern Rebels Hot Rodding Association. Part car show and part Southern heritage festival, there are Civil War banners hanging from the antennas of cars and painted across the grill of a '41 Chevy coupe.

The flag decorates coffee mugs, cigarette lighters and even the occasional bandanna.

As a native Pittsburgher who needs an Earth-To-Rural-America secret decoder ring just to communicate south of, say, Maryland, Gatlinburg is a mind-warp of the first order.

With this many self-professed rebels around, you'd expect a sense of evil and foreboding in the air toward black folks, but after three days here, open, confrontational racism remains elusive.

Confederate apologists I met along Gatlinburg's Main Street seem more interested in discussing carburetors and horsepower than the Battle of Gettysburg.

At one point, I jokingly remind Joe Sluder, of nearby Pigeon Forge, that his side lost the war.

He looks over and manages to laugh.

'This ain't about hate, man,' he says. 'We're just into our heritage.'

Sluder could easily win an award for Most Obnoxious Rebel Display.

Thanks to a hydraulic lift kit, Sluder's battered Ford pickup truck sits up higher than a Kenworth. The horn plays 'Dixie' and a pair of 6-foot Confederate flags flutter from posts mounted in the truck bed.

But Sluder uses the magic word: heritage. Around these parts, heritage is often used as a conversation-ender, suggesting that just about anything is OK as long as it has the weight of history behind it. Whatever Great Granddad did is to be revered, period.

Never mind that a huge part of the South's heritage included lynching, rape, race riots, discrimination and slavery. Today's rebels have distilled that troubled history into a single, unifying symbol.

But like any symbol, be it a swastika or a profane pop song, familiarity pretty much ruins its ability to provoke.

In the Black Bear Souvenir shop, for instance, a handsome, tanned counter clerk wearing a 'Gay Pride' hat is busy ringing up Confederate souvenirs. He has no problem endorsing both the stars and bars and a rainbow flag.

'Hey, there were some gay rebels, you can be sure,' he said. 'Somebody had to tell Scarlet O'Hara how to dress.'

After watching toddlers napping under Confederate blankets and seniors smiling politely from under 'The South's Gonna' Do It Again' baseball caps, the people of Gatlinburg don't so much seem scary as just painfully out of style.

If these so-called rebels really wanted to stir up the populace, they could wear 'Hillary Clinton for President' T-shirts.

A waitress in a TGI Friday's restaurant attempted to put the Confederate flag craze into perspective, explaining that those who display the flag expect people to get upset.

'If people stopped complaining about the Confederate flag, they'd probably forget about it in no time,' she said.

She's probably right.

Make a big deal over your 15-year-old's pierced tongue and odds are she'll wind up wearing jewelry in lots of strange places. Laugh at the same fashion statement like it's 50 years out of style and chances are you won't see it again.

Mike Seate is a staff writer for the Pittsburgh Tribune-review. He can be reached at (412) 320-7845.