January 8, 2010
Courthouse Envy
Letter from my late Uncle Ray (grand-uncle, if absolute accuracy is required) to the editor of the McKenzie Banner. As background, Huntingdon (pop. 4125) is the county seat of Carroll County, TN, and McKenzie (pop. 5357) is its neighbor ten miles to the north. The two towns harbor a fierce football rivalry, with the blue and gold Huntingdon Mustangs typically prevailing over the red and gray McKenzie Rebels. The letter is dated February 17, 2004.
Dear Reader,
I could not help but think of you tonight as my blood boiled to a blue and gold phrensy as I read the McKenzie Banner. As of this moment, the latest edition is not online but for your future reference: www.mckenziebanner.com will reach the article in question dated Feb. 18th and bearing the headline of McKenzie Library Supporters …
Lest you thought it was a forgotten issue, one of their leading citizens,in a rare unguarded moment of revelation, let the old bloody burr of their discontent show itself to the public. Until you can reach it online, I will provide the quote in an article generally bemoaning the “inadequate funding” of the library in McKenzie in juxtapositon to the Carroll County Library which to their eternal discontent is situated in the county seat.
“We furnish as many people (as the county library does). I don’t care about having the courthouse over here[McKenzie] but we ought to have our share of the tax money back for our town. And we do not want to be a branch of their library,” added Mrs. Sybil King.
This is rich stuff. I will eschew the temptation to postulate what would happen if every crossroads in Carroll County opened a library and demanded their fair share of tax money. Is there not a sense of alienation in her terminology of “their library”, the Carroll County Library? Perhaps a sense of privilege, elitism? You be the judge of that. That is not what caught my attention.
Yes, its all about the courthouse. They cannot get over it. Its as if all their inadequacies would be redeemed if only their square housed the county seat of government. It is constantly on their minds. Even if suppressed temporarily it is always there subliminally. If not, why else would it be blurted out in a Freudian fit of frustration? It is all about the age old dysfunction, courthouse envy. A curse that they have suffered from since Nathan Nesbitt staggered into what would become Huntingdon from his confines at latter day Maytown and sawed out the door of county government. McKenzie’s envy surpasses any of the ancient disputes over Holy Jerusalem.
It saddens me. Their isolation, their deep seated feelings of inferiority, their lust for domination and their undying hatred for the paradigm to their south. No doubt all of these feelings were exacerbated by the seeming success of their revived football program until it too was exposed as a fraud by the state champions. Salt in the wounds.
Where will it all end? If you have a modem, you probably have an opinion.
Over and out,
Ray
The letter was not published.
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Thing is, for time out of mind the courthouse was the locus of envy.
Now, it’s which municipality gets the new Walmart.
Or not.
Courthouse envy is an artifact of a time when people could write pungent letters to newspaper editors.
(She breathes out a nostalgic sigh.)
Huntingdon also has the Wal-Mart.
Someone’s got some pull down at the Courthouse.
[...] grew up in McKenzie TN, about which I have written as Christopher Walken (see “Courthouse Envy”). My first job there was in a factory that made mobile homes. I drove a dump truck. That [...]