I Yield, At Last

I just don't know.  Is it a sign of the times, or a symptom of a sickness yet to further rip apart the fabric of decorum and civility in our society?  Yes, I'm ranting a tad today.  Any other post from me would be far more positive and focused upon some historic food or personage, but today I don't have it in me.  I feel much too drained to think upon the highlights of history when I come out leveled low.

Now most of y'all reading, well, maybe a few folks are reading, don't know much more about my community than I've told you in my articles.  Those were subjective topics with a concentrated effort to share the best, not the worst, while in real life it seems I wind up battling a pervasive community spirit of hostility that ultimately brings out the negative aspects of my nature.  After a point, it's hard to conjure up a "Polly Anna" attitude in your writing when you feel knocked down and trampled on.

That's sort of where I am today.  It's a grey, gloomy, chilled-to-the-bone kind of fall morning and it just plain reflects my spirit of late.  I often compare myself to the town's own Don Quixote, charging windmills of outrage that most don't see or don't mind to tolerate. In other words, LETHARGY.  Often times for me the charge is to save and preserve our past, a daunting challenge in a town that gives lip service to tourism yet fights the notion of a tourism commission. Other times I see the blatant wrong-doings that others avoid by the blinders they wear which keep them in good standing and good grace with all of society.  And when I see, I say, and that, clearly, makes me the enemy.

Please remember, we're 2,700 people "strong" situated about 30 miles from the center of the state and about 7 miles from a major interstate and have two components of a national park with a declared "scenic highway" connecting us for some 20 miles with one of Kentucky's best known state historic parks.  Sounds bucolic, right?  Well, on the surface, perhaps, in dim light and if you squint real hard.  But look past the pretty veneer and you see a community that is pretty self-centered and lazy when it comes to recognizing potential or retaining its own cultural legacies, much less doing the right thing for all the people and not just our selfish selves.

Besides the refusal to properly promote ourselves through tourism, a result of an isolationist attitude developed from long-term jealousies of some surrounding counties, arrogant self-righteous superiority of some, and a kicked-dog, tuck-tail inferiority complex in the shadow of one, our people are "historically" lazy when it comes to history.  Back in 1909 we pretty much sat back and decided to fan our selves in the shade of the National Parks, letting them be the keepers of the gates to the past.  What a mistake!  By the 1940s the Department of the Interior went on a purge campaign to rid their parks of the influence of the local yocals.   They decided not to tell OUR story, but rather sterilize and spit back to us, and all the world, their own.  So, for over 70 years now we here have neglected our past, forgotten who we were, and passively swallowed a watered down version of things concocted by strangers in D.C. who cared naught for us.

Now mix in a Jim Crow era racism that became ever more subtle and simpler to accept & accommodate.  For you see, we present to the world our claim to fame as the place where Abraham Lincoln was born and in doing so trade off forever our birthrights of individuality, forsaking all  other history of our people, the good, the bad, the crazy, the genius, allowing Federal bureaucrats to dictate and extrapolate what they wish and throw out the proverbial baby with the bath water as good bureaucrats do.  We sit back and say "thank you!" for preserving "OUR" past without noticing that Washington's version of who we were is an all-white novelette of about one single chapter that neglects most any characters in the drama with any real interest, and cuts out anyone of color!

This is where a true historian feels the pain of obvious racist omissions.  Once a county of Virginia, our origins were never all white.  From the first day our beginnings were black & white, but we somehow let that fact slip our collective memories.  So, it's easy for the Parks to actually tell visitors there was no African-American presence in our community, and certainly no impact upon a future President.  No body is in the wood pile, for we burnt up the birthplace cabin that housed slaves longer than it did a future politician who left as a child and had virtually no impact upon this little burg's people.  But the Federal Government tells us we was white as snow, y'all, so it must be true, and the "Cradle of Emancipation" is somewhere off in Illinois or DC, 'cause nothing here took root in the memories of a child destined to end slavery in America.

So be it.  I have fought the NPS long enough, begging and pleading that they acknowledge a black and white, free & slave culture that shaped the earliest years of Lincoln.  Even their own African-American historian turns a deaf ear to the pleas that her own race be recognized as the rightful heirs of Lincoln's legacy.  In truth, you just can't fight anything alone, so it's no surprise that my solitary challenge was a failure.  But then I could never rouse the ire of our local black community to see and be indignant of this slight.  They are pacified with their entire local legacy being summed up and symbolized by a cheap pair of Taiwan-made reproduction slave shackles, the intent of National Parks, declaring to the world that their past is one of bondage and that no lasting contribution was ever made.  Well, if that's good enough for them, it's good enough for me.

And on that note, why keep up the fight anyone when no one, of any race, really cares?  Why continue when your own community leaders not only reject your contributions but even attack them?  What impetus is there to salvage the past for a people who continue to throw it away and refuse to support your dedication of retrieving it?  You sure can't shame the hot air out of a bragging politician, this I have learned.  Instead, I have to hold my head up as our local leaders shut their eyes to the truth given them and go on a campaign of attack of one of their own constituents, sometimes belittling me publicly, attacking my credibility and my ability, taking from me my solitary contribution to the place I make my home, my gift of a story salvaged from their own gutters.  These mock historians and their exclusive committees and boards used wrongfully to shun me are now far better read and articulate than I, finding fault and error at every page I might complete.

Do I seem bitter?  I am, of course, and hurt, as such was the intent.  But through all this personal affront  I maintain my sense of self and the understanding of my own talents, and I see these leaders for what they are, jealous, flawed and afraid.  So, I'll continue to do my own thing, for me, not them, not for my neighbors, not for those of a different complexion to wrong old rights, not for those whose story remains untold, only for me, for that is the Hodgenville and LaRue County way, selfish, self-absorbed, for me and my own.  And in rejecting a claim on this place, perhaps they will eventually stop their petty efforts to reject me.  But, then, it doesn't much matter.  They've cut the ties for me, and they can't be repaired.  I have no sense of place, but I do keep my esteem and sense of self.  So, a new introvert, I live the remainder of my days oblivious to the community and county in which I reside.  The history I seek will be entertaining for me, or perhaps my own people's saga without tie to this wretched little place and its wretched little people.  I assimilate to your selfishness, and give to you no more, Hodgenville and LaRue County, Kentucky.

gdg