I’ve Had It Right Up To Here

Pointing To The Top Of My Head…

Call me petty.

Call me Crass.

Call me a racist.

Call me an ASS.

What I want to know is—what the heck is going on these days with the idea of naming everything in sight for people like Martin Luther King or every other minor politician and so called “civic leader”?

Bridges, roads, football stadiums—you name it—there is someone out there lobbying to stick the name of someone “famous” on it. The latest victim of the “name game” is the “Governator”—you know...California governor Arnold Schwarznegger?

Apparently there is a football stadium in Graz Austria named for Arnold. It also seems like the local yokels, the powers what be, there in the Alps are pissed off that Arnold didn’t save the miserable hide of gang-banger Tookie Williams this week.

The Arnold Schwarzenegger Football Stadium in Austria's second-largest city Graz is to be renamed as a sign of displeasure with the city's most famous son,.

A majority of members on Graz City Council voted to rename the stadium after the Austrian-born governor of California approved the execution of Stanley "Tookie" Williams, according to newspaper Kleine Zeitung.

“It's getting on our nerves that we're again and again being criticised for Schwarzenegger's actions in California," said SP Vice Mayor Welter Ferk.

Well, I think that Vice Mayor Ferk is a jerk. I also think that Arnold should tell them to take a hike. After all, it’s not Arnold’s stadium, and if the people that own the stadium want to rename it for Don King or Michael Moore or Jesse Jackson, I say that they should have at it.

Knock themselves out if they will. Change the name on a daily basis.

Name it the Barbara Streisand/Nanci Pelosi Liberal Blowhard Pigskin Complex for all I care.

Meanwhile, back here in the good old USA you’ll be hard pressed to not find a road in every single town named for Dr. King. Did you ever pay attention to how that happened back in the 1970’s and 1980’s?

Generally they didn’t build a new road and name it "M. L. King", they just took a vote in the local city council and changed the name of an existing road. For every road with Reverend King’s name on it, many times there is another individual’s or another family’s name that was removed in the process. Many times the contribution of land and right-of-way for the original construction of the road is erased in the renaming process.

My own family has suffered exactly that injustice. Drive down to Elba, Alabama and look for “Taylor Mill Road” in downtown, if you will.

You’ll be driving around for a while because it’s not there anymore. Today that road is called ML King Boulevard. Why they call it a “Boulevard” rather than a road or street I’ll never know—it was always a “road” when it was named for my mother’s mother’s family back in the early 1900’s. A mile or two out of town the name changes back to Taylor Mill Road as it winds past the country club and the site of the old Taylor Grist Mill.

How easily memory’s fade and politicians trample over the landmarks respecting citizens that made substantial contributions to their community in their day. My grandfather lived to see the dirt road running through his property paved by the State of Alabama in the 1970’s. He donated all of the right-of-way to the state, and it is identified on maps as county road 97, and also known as John Rushing Road.

I’m wondering if my family would be willing to let the politicians name our Grandpa’s road for Governor Schwarznegger for one week each year as a consolation prize?

It seems like a good idea to me…