It was textbook obnoxious.

The boozed-up beefed-up crew-cut knucklehead was making an ass of himself. He knew it, too, and he didn’t care. We were standing shoulder-to-shoulder as the Old Crow Medicine Show played on the Orange Peel stage, and he was coming up short in both etiquette and class. He was shouting out loud, talking through songs, sharing maudlin sloppy drunken toasts with his friends whenever his throat got dry. He ratcheted his voice up above the guitjo and slide guitar, making sure he was heard far and wide. During one instrumental workup with a bluegrass feel, he started singing the theme to the Dukes of Hazzard. When nobody laughed, he sang twice as loud.

I rolled my eyes and moved to another part of the room. I had had too many shows compromised by standing in the company of louts, and I wasn’t keen to let it happen again. Throughout the night, I saw him bobbing and weaving through the crowd, strutting when he had the chance, and never missing an opportunity to crow. “Some people,” I muttered to myself, “act like the whole damn world belongs to them.”

It was late in the show when Old Crow frontman Ketch Secor pulled a slip of paper from his back pocket, a crumpled note that had been passed up to him from the audience. He dedicated the next song — the Vietnam protest number “Big Time In the Jungle” — to a soldier in the room, a sergeant just back from Iraq. A mighty roar went up from a corner of the crowd, and in the middle of it stood the loud-mouthed object of my scorn. The crowd cheered wildly — not just for the song, but for the crew-cut knucklehead who, it became clear, was celebrating his return to a land he must not have known if he would ever see again. He was celebrating his return, and his friends, and the pluck of banjo strings, and the great good fortune of being drunk and safe and happy on a Friday night. He was celebrating survival. I drank a toast to him then.

I am no fan of bumper sticker patriotism, or of Bush’s foreign policy, but it doesn’t really matter what I think of Georgie’s war or the lies he told to take us there. The soldiers on the ground have my respect and support. They didn’t start this fight, but they’re going to have to finish it. It’s a good bet that not many knew Basra from Biloxi when this war started — few of us did — but you can bet they know it now. And you can bet they won’t all come home in as good shape as this one did. Good luck to ‘em all.

That doesn’t excuse this soldier’s behavior, not completely. Obnoxious is obnoxious, no matter how you slice it. Plenty of vets come home without stepping on anyone’s toes. But I had no problem granting him a free pass that night. Heck, he can have a week, a month, however long he needs. I’ll bear no grudge.

Some people act like the whole damn world belongs to them. And on some nights, it must feel that way.

(Jay Hardwig can be reached at smardwig@charter.net)