Osler's Razor

In the summer of 1989, I was was working for a law firm in Chicago as a summer associate. Those were the golden years of summer associating-- low expectation, high pay-- and it was a great summer. We were treated to a lot of great meals, ball games, and good times One Friday evening, a friend and I decided to drive down to Memphis. I think our goal was to see Graceland, though it was a little murky at the time.

We headed down south, the full length of Illinois and a bit more, and arrived in Memphis in the wee hours of the morning. We were looking for a place to stay, just wondering around, when we saw the blazing lights of a perfectly preserved 1960's motel. We parked and were going to walk across the street to it when we realized that it was... not quite right. The cars parked in front were vintage 1960's cars, and the motel itself seemed almost too clean. Just then, it clicked in my mind. This was the Lorraine Motel, where Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot.

Suddenly, it was a very serious moment. They were converting the motel into the National Civil Rights Museum, but were not quite done. It was one of those moments where something unexpected happens, and you don't quite know what to say to the person you are with. We sat on the curb for a while, maybe even an hour, and didn't say anything. It looked like such an average place in some ways, but I knew that it never had been. It was a black-owned motel, a place where African-Americans could stay in a time when segregation ruled. That segregation, itself, was part of what Dr. King stood against. I remembered in Richmond seeing the faded outline of "White" and "Colored" signs over the restrooms at a theater, the fact that sometimes Thurgood Marshall could not use the water fountain outside the courtroom where he argued.

I don't know if we ever did say anything, but that we did just drive back to Chicago, and somehow being a cake-walking summer associate seemed a little silly.