[Interviewer]: John, you wrote a song for us and I think you may have written it while you were in the Air Force called Ragged Old Flag

No, I wrote that in 1975

[Interviewer]: Did you?

In Binghamton, New York

[Interviewer]: I saw you do it on the Fourth of July, several years ago, at Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Could you do it for us right now?


Ragged Old Flag
I walked through a county courthouse square
And on a park bench an old man was sitting there I said, “Your old courthouse is kinda run down.”
He said, “Naw, that'll do for our little town”
I said, “Your old flagpole’s kind of leaned a little bit. And that's a ragged old flag you got hanging on it
He said, “Have a seat,”and I sat down “this the first time you've come to our little town”
I said, “I think it is.”
He said, “I don't like to brag. But we're kinda proud of that ragged old flag.”
I said, “I think it is”
He said, “I don't like to brag. But we're kinda 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 say can you see
Got a bad rip in New Orleans
Packingham and Jackson tuggin' at its seams
It almost fell at the Alamo
Beside the Texas flag, but she waved 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
Ragged old flag
On Flanders Field in World War One
She took a bad hit from a Bertha gun
She turned blood red in World War Two
She hung limp and low by the time that one was through
She was in Korea, Vietnam
She went where she was sent by her Uncle Sam
The Native American Indians, The blacks, the yellow, the white
All shed red blood for the stars and stripes
And in her own good land here she's been abused
She's been burned, dishonored, denied, refused
And the very government for which she stands
Is scandalized throughout the land
And she's getting threadbare
And she's 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
Bring her down slowly every 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 I'm mighty proud of that ragged old flag
Ragged old flag