If anyone reading this went to Andalusia High School in south Alabama for any period of time, this won’t be news. But for those of you who are unfamiliar with Southern contradiction, read on. My high school fight song was a bit unusual, even back in the 1970s. They still sing it, I assume, at pep rallies and football games and other such events. I have no idea who wrote it or when, but I’ll put it up against anybody’s for knock-down, wham-bam content:
(Sung to the tune of the Notre Dame Fight Song)
Corn, Corn for Old Andy High
You bring the whiskey
I’ll bring the rye
Send those Juniors out for gin
Don’t let a sober Senior in
We stagger on but we never fall
We sober up on wood alcohol
When we’re through
We’ll burn the school
For the Glory of A. H. S.
Think I’m lying? Check it out for yourself:
http://www.andalusia.k12.al.us/AHS
(Click on Tradition on the left.)
In an ultra-conservative state that is still fighting to keep the Ten Commandments in courtrooms, that little dittie must stir up some dysfunctional grief between the pews and the greenfront (slang for Alabama’s state-owned liquor stores). But there it stands, a fight song that could certainly cause a butt-tangling conflagration amongst all kinds of people these days.
I remember standing on a football field and hearing that rousing tune bouncing off my back from the packed stands as we beat some hapless team half to death with our grinding wishbone. I wonder now what those teams across the field thought as they were being systematically run over by a team whose fans were singing, “We stagger on but we never fall! We sober up on wood alcohol!” at the top of their liquored-up lungs?
We filled up the old stadium every Friday night back in the day, too. SRO. Not sure it was the constant winning that lured them to the lights (we went six years without losing a regular season game) or the fight song (with promises of corn squeezins and rot gut shine). But if you wanted to rob somebody, Friday night would have been the time to do it because nearly the entire 10,000 people who lived in Andalusia would be at Municipal Stadium, — Home of the Andy Bulldogs (Andy was short for Andalusia, in case you haven’t deciphered that shorthand yet). It was a glorious time made all the more glorious because most of us never gave even a rudimentary thought to the words of that fight song. We just sang it.
Now, 30 years later, I read those words and try to imagine my kids singing that song at games today. No doubt, some politician with a compunction to get crossways of the lyrics and the power to do something about it will scrape those old, stinging words off the song and replace them with the most politically corrected, group-thunk, pansy-sounding, vanilla verbiage imaginable. And then when I go back one day as an old man, I’ll get to hear this:
Rah, Rah for Old Andy High
You bring the sugar-free, diet soda
I’ll bring the ice
Send those Juniors out for fast food
Don’t let an academically ineligible Senior through
We carry on with high SATs
We say the right thing and aim to please
When we’re through
We’ll blame the school
Cause we have no guts anymore
I vote to leave it alone. After all, who is really listening to those words anyway? It took me 30 years to look at them.
