We just celebrated Martin Luther King Jr. Day this third Monday of January , the 17th, which started me thinking about an anecdote I have been telling for years.
In the fall of 1983, much against the desires and better judgment of my now ex-spouse, I weaseled – and weasel is the operative word – my way back into her abode after a very long separation. I don’t remember exactly how long this particular separation had been, probably somewhere around 18 months. While we stayed together, more or less, for another dozen years, the marriage had been a tumultuous relationship nearly from day one. At one point in my life I spent a lot of time ruminating on the reasons this was so. The simplest answer is that mutual physical attraction will only carry a couple so far. We were never on the same page with our life goals or even our approach to life. At the time I thought we had a lot of values in common, but now I am inclined to say not so. Add to those components the fact that I was exceedingly, even excessively, immature when we married, and that immaturity created far too many problems. Adding it all together, it was not a formula for a successful relationship. But I ramble, that is not the purpose of this posting.
After moving from Oklahoma to her abode in Arkansas, I needed a job, any job. I took one with the Arkansas Department of Health as a County Sanitarian (Health Inspector) for a rural Arkansas county. The pay was abysmal, especially so if you considered the level of responsibility it entailed. But a check, even a small check, is better than zero. It did have the advantage of being a socially significant job, something that was and is important to me, and I was a medium size fish in a very small pond.
The state of Arkansas had been celebrating Robert E. Lee’s birthday on January 19th as a state holiday since 1947. In 1983 they also started celebrating Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday on January 15th. At the first of the new year the timekeeper for the County Health Department informed me that I had my choice of 2 of 3 holidays. I could choose between the two state holidays just mentioned and my birthday, but not all three. Even though I was raised to believe Robert E. Lee was a great man – my father used to make us stand for Dixie when it came on the radio – I was agnostic about which ones I took. It all depended on how they fell with weekends and other plans I might have had.
This rocked along for a couple years and in 1985 the state of Arkansas combined the two holidays into one to be celebrated on the same day as the national Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. At the time I remember thinking that those two were definitely strange bedfellows. But such is politics and such is the South and at times such is life.
While researching dates for this posting, I discovered that Arkansas finally dropped the combination holiday in 2017, and now they are just celebrating MLK Day. However, the states of Alabama and Mississippi continue to celebrate the third Monday in January as a combination remembrance of the two historical figures. Perhaps someone should whisper in their ears that the South is not going to rise again. I have read enough history by this point in my life that I no longer see Robert E. Lee as a great man, but as a tragic figure that made the horrendous decision to support his home state of Virginia against his nation. This was especially so as he was in the US Army at the start of the intramural hostilities, and I assume, like all service men, he had sworn allegiance to the United States.
I do still wonder, though, if Dr. King and General Lee have been rolling around uncomfortably in their separate graves for these several decades they have been so joined.
But so it goes.