Today is Robert E. Lee’s 200th birthday. Happy birthday General.
And from ROBERT E. LEE to ALL ABOUT ME: the shamefully unashamedly self-referential part:
Today is also the 26th anniversary of the events described in an autobiographical three part not terribly short-story called ME & BOBBY E. LEE. It’s based on a true story of an all day outing with my father and grandmother 26 years ago today when Robert E. Lee’s Birthday was a paid holiday for Alabama state employees (and for employees of most other southern states). For anyone particularly interested (or even for those who aren’t, for such is objectivity) an early draft of Part 1, ME & BOBBY E. LEE, Part 1: THE ADJUDICATION OF EGGPLANTS, appears here.
Since then I’ve revised it to include a soliloquy of sorts based on an actual spiel my father gave on that day when asked his opinion of the debates Alabama and other states were then having over whether or not to change the holiday to January 15th and celebrate it as Martin Luther King Day.
This past weekend I read this piece and others to my sister (who, for those who’ve read tales of my family melodrama, has now learned but not yet accepted the fact that I’m gay) as well as excerpts from the third part of the trilogy, ME & BOBBY E. LEE PART 3: THIS LITTLE MESSIAH STAYED HOME. My sister’s words were extremely true. First she said “God, that sounds *exactly like * Daddy…” (though in fairness she may have been referring to my imitation of our father [who art in the Ephesis Baptist Church Cemetery] as I was reading it), but then she added
I say, not just because it’s self-exonerating that she’s right. However, while there are fictional elements in the story (mainly I’ve made a composite character and condensed conversations and ‘audiences’ with the old man into a single day) the speeches he gives are the most accurate parts of the story. Also important to know is that while my father routinely incorporated quotes from Shakespeare, the Bible, Tennyson, Poe, etc., into his conversation, it’s very hard to accurately re-create his speech and not make him seen pompous and pretentious, for while he had many flaws pretension wasn’t one. He talked like this because he thought like this- he used exalted and odd speech when talking to his cows.
Also necessary to know perhaps: my father’s had very odd religious and spiritual views which he kept very private and rarely discussed. He believed in a Divine Being (he referred to it as “The Author”) but not the one described in the Old Testament or possibly even the New Testament- more Deist or Gnostic. He also believed in divinely appointed messiah who would ALWAYS die before their mission was was accomplished, and that messiahs had complete free will in whether to accept their commission when called. (The third part of the story deals more with this and his “revelation” that he himself was a messianic figure who, like Lee, had refused his commission.) While my father was not what you’d call a liberal (like most white southern men of his time he neither burned crosses or marched with MLK) he did believe MLK was a messiah (note lower case ‘m’), and though he didn’t like him he acknowledged once to me “A messiah is like the face of Teddy Roosevelt on Mt. Rushmore; it doesn’t give a tinker’s dam whether you like it or approve of it or accept it, but at the end of the day it’s still gonna be a giant rock face of Teddy Roosevelt carved onto a mountain”.)
Anyway, this is the foreshadowing of Part III that I added to Part I.
And one last piece of general trivia that’s not trivial to this: Martin Luther King, Jr., was born Michael L. King. He changed his name as a teenager to honor his father. To his oldest friends and his immediate family he always remained Michael. (The Godfather was born Vito Andolini in the village of Corleone, Sicily, in 1895, but that’s not relevant.) My father, who loved symbolism, met King on several occasions, referred to him as “Michael” when referencing the man and as “Martin” when addressing the icon he was then becoming.
Epilogue: The overarching theme of the ME & BOBBY E. LEE trilogy is transition. Lee’s Birthday is transiting to MLK Day, the day after Lee’s Birthday is the inauguration of Ronald Reagan (ending the Carter era), my father is dropping hints (as he did in life) that he will die soon, etc…
In the book as in reality my father dies one year later. He died during a blizzard when our pipes were frozen and the toilets only had one flush each remaining. In an irony and absurd wit too intelligent to be counted spontaneously arising the man who was “world famous in central Alabama” for his eloquence spoke his last words to me and they were
His funeral was held in an antebellum church where well educated and middle class black people (his colleagues) stared down at the family and the coffin from the former slave balcony of an antebellum church. As his funeral caravan (which was, no exaggeration, over a mile long) proceeded to the cemetery we noticed that there were far more cars and trucks flying rebel flags than usual (even for rural Alabama) and that almost every black driver had their lights on. At first we thought the former was coincidence and the latter was as a sign of respect to the hearse, but then we remembered the news story from the night before. The date was January 15, 1982, and black leaders had asked supporters everywhere to to drive with their lights on to acknowledge the nation’s first official celebration of Martin Luther King Day while redneck leaders urged the flying of rebel flags as a counter protest. Essentially my father, a historian of the Old South, was buried during an eclipse of the Middle South and the New South.
Point: Dolly Parton is 61 today, proving conclusively what I’ve always said, which is that Dolly Parton is southern and well over 50 but nowhere near as old as Robert E. Lee would be if he were still alive. And, that if Robert E. Lee were still alive in 2007, the basement under the chapel at Washington & Lee University would be one hell of a mess.
George Burns’ birthday is tomorrow. He also would have been 200 I believe.
A Southern joke:
Three couples are in the maternity ward of a small hospital in the South. Two of the couples are locals: one couple is white, the other is black. The third couple is white and is visiting from up North.
The fathers are sitting around talking, when a nurse comes in and says to the two white fathers, “There’s been a mix-up in the nursery- we’re not sure which of your babies is which. Could you come in and try to help us figure it out?” The fathers go in, and the white Southern father rushes past the two white babies, grabs the black baby, and says, “This one here! This is my baby!” The nurse looks at him and says, “Sir, that cannot possibly be your baby.” The Southern father replies, “Yes, but at least this way, I’m sure I don’t end up with no Yankee baby!”