Today is Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, or the holiday that commemorates his birthday or something like that. the highway scribe is torn between working in remembrance of Dr. King, a personal hero, and taking the day off in his honor.
Okay, maybe not so torn. the highway scribe is a very lazy man who works extremely hard, so today’s a day off.
In the meantime, highwayscribery directs all twelve of you to Kiko’s House, where Shaun Mullen, who has a more direct and personal remembrance of Dr. King and his times, has done the real work on this subject.
Mullen starts out his post talking about how in his days as a cub reporter, he was often dispatched to the home of an African-American boy who had just been killed in Vietnam. (the scribe was playing with his GI-Joe):
“I was always treated with respect because these were good people and they knew that I wold give their now departed son or brother a respectful sendoff in the next day’s Wilmington (Delaware) ‘Morning News’ or ‘Evening Journal.’
The living rooms always were modest and always had a photograph of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in a place of honor, often the same color rotogravure portrait scissored from an old ‘Philadelphia Bulletin’ Sunday magazine.
I have no idea how many times I sat on a lumpy couch, pen and reporter’s notebook in one hand, a snapshot of the victim in the other, with the wizened Dr. King looking down on me as I listened to the story of a young life snuffed out by war that none of us understood and few supported.”
Well, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Enjoy the post over at Kiko’s.
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