Land of Lincoln

It's said that Europeans typically ask "Why?" while Americans ask "Why not?"
Maybe that's why they wind up with classy icons like the Eiffel Tower, which was originally called "useless and monstrous," and we end up with a 305-foot fiberglass statue of Abraham Lincoln. The city fathers of Lincoln, Illinois want the statue to lord over their town like a mutant prairie dog, visible for 20 miles and costing $40 million. They're still looking for funding.

Some might say a colorful collossus of the assassinated emancipator spilling watermelon juice onto the town might be in poor taste. At least this sculpture lacks the "rock of ages" pretentions of Mount Rushmore, which is a crime against nature enshrined as a national monument. My tip for settling the argument of taste is for the statue to describe a different scene from Lincoln's life.

The 16th president was fond of relating a story from his days as a young boy. From Herndon's Life of Lincoln:

His father had at home a little yellow housedog, which invariably gave the alarm if the boys undertook to slip away unobserved after night had set in -- as they often-times did -- to go coon hunting. One evening Abe and his stepbrother, John Johnston, with the usual complement of boys required in a successful coon hunt, took the insignificant little cur with them. They located the coveted coon, killed him, and then in sportive vein sewed the hide on the diminutive yellow dog. The latter struggled vigorously during the operation of the sewing on, and being released from the hands of his captors made a bee-line for home. Other large and more important canines, on the way, scenting coon, tracked the little animal home, and possibly mistaking him for real coon, speedily demolished him.

Ok, maybe this isn't the best subject for a 305-foot statue. I just wanted to quote the story.

Lincoln, by the way, learned a lesson from his pooch's death and was renowned with other children in later years for writing a convincing essay against cruelty to animals. But he still liked to tell the story when he got older.