aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Monday, May 28, 2007

Memorial Day in Red America

Coffins and Tom Collins.

The Wall Street Journal in search of the real Tom Collins:

Memorial Day wasn’t always on a Monday. Inaugurated shortly after the Civil War, the holiday was originally known as “Decoration Day,” and came to be observed in most states on May 30 of each year. Come the 1950s, NATO started militating for Memorial Day—and a slew of other holidays, including the Fourth of July—to be moved to Monday. This particular NATO, Frank Sullivan noted in a 1955 New York Times Magazine article, was not the defense alliance, but rather the National Association of Travel Organizations, a lobbying group that wanted to boost the number of three-day weekends. Sullivan wondered at the urge to travel on every holiday: “I always enjoy Washington’s Birthday immensely because I sit by the fire all day long, thinking how fortunate I am not to be out skiing.” Were Memorial Day to be on a Monday, he declared, he would “celebrate by spending the three days on the lawn, toying with a Tom Collins and watching somebody else mow the grass.”