This is the Rhea County courthouse in Dayton, Tennessee - scene of the July 1925 clash between Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan. The Scopes Monkey Trial. Evolution versus intelligent design. Still unsettled eighty years hence.
I thought of this shot yesterday morning while answering my summons to jury service masquerading as number 0269 on the Monday list, to be specific. There we sat two hundred and fifty expressionless citizens assembled in a cold cheaply paneled amphitheater suspended in thick oozey atmosphere of complete resignation called to fulfill our civic responsibility. All sighed with relief to hear from the Monday spokesman Judge that, even while waiting to be called, our mere passive presence was inflicting a priceless contribution to justice far exceeding our sub-subsistence $15 per day recompense.
During the endless pauses between anxious calls to trial the gallery would erupt in a pinball cacophony of cell phone ring tones and glad chatter. I saw for the first time people wearing some techno-gizmo wrapped around and plugged into an ear for what alien reason I could not fathom. A vision of the Monkey Trial swept over me - the serious, the stately, the courtly. Hours later, while hanging around the bar at Manuel's Tavern I overheard Spencer Tracy saying he was o.k. with cell phones but Ipods had to be banned.
Title: © Rhea County Court. r0326-31
Series: Courthouses
Location: Dayton, Tennessee
Rhea County
Date: Friday 25 May 1990
It's funny that the case Clarence Darrow is best remembered for is one he lost.
I saw a television program a couple years ago about the Scopes trial. Apparently the whole thing was cooked up by a few local businessmen who thought the town could use the attention. Scopes went right along with it. Outside the courthouse, people were selling refreshments and hawking souvenirs; there may have been a dancing bear.
I have read some portioons of the Scopes transcript. Clarence Darrow is my hero. I would like to go to Dayton some day and have the court clerk pull the file and sit there for a few hours going through it.
Posted by: Jack Straw | 11 January 2006 at 07:56 PM
To each their own digital shilly-shally. Those dwarks had their bluetooth earpieces and you've got the gamma knob. It depends on whose ox is being pinged.
Posted by: rankin' rob | 12 January 2006 at 08:10 PM