This is an opinion column.

If you’ve driven south along Interstate 65 at the state line with Tennessee, you’ve seen it. It’s hard not to. At the rest stop there, a Saturn 1B tells visitors they’ve crossed into Alabama.

Don’t check your GPS. You didn’t make a wrong turn.

This is Alabama, too — home of rocket scientists.

Imagine that. A roadside attraction in Alabama that boasts of something we should genuinely be proud of, not another embarrassment.

If only the Sons of Confederate Veterans would take down their giant failure flag north of Prattville, we could keep this highway branding up all the way to the beach.

Unfortunately, the Saturn 1B will probably come down first.

After 44 years of weathering Alabama weather, the Saturn rocket isn’t safe for such a display, officials have said, and it has to come down before it falls over and kills somebody.

Fixing it could cost as much as $7 million, and we’re too cheap for that.

The news has left a lot of folks sullen, including state Rep. Andy Whitt, R-Huntsville, who promised to fight the decision in Montgomery.

If only there were some kind of law … but hey …

The Alabama Memorial Preservation Act would seem to apply, and a number of folks have gotten excited that the law, passed in 2017, might protect something worthwhile for a change. The rocket seems to meet the law’s definition of a monument.

Only there’s a catch.

“According to the law, they are supposed to pay $25,000,” state Sen. Mack Butler told my colleague Greg Garrison. “It would be somewhat comical if the state had to pay it to themselves.”

And there it is.

You see, Alabama’s monuments law was never written to protect Alabama’s monuments. It was designed to stop cities and counties — especially those with Black elected officials — from messing with Confederate lawn ornaments littering their parks and other public spaces.

If Birmingham decides to move a monument, as it did in 2020, the courts have said it must pay a $25,000 fine to the state. It didn’t matter that folks got so fed up with it, they tried to tear it down. It didn’t matter, by finishing the job, Mayor Randall Woodfin probably saved somebody from getting crushed by the granite block.

If Montgomery changes a street name from a dead traitor to a living civil rights hero, as it did last year, the law applies there, too. Never mind that Jefferson Davis was from Mississippi and attorney Fred Gray actually grew up on that street.

That’ll be $25,000, too.

But if the state moves a monument, it must pay the same fine — to itself.

You can picture it easily enough — Gov. Kay Ivey writing a check out of the Alabama General Fund to the order of the Alabama General Fund.

But for the few seconds it takes the governor to sign a slip of paper, it wouldn’t cost a thing.

And if she could do that for the rocket, she could do it for a lot of things.

Like the statue of James Marion Sims outside the Alabama Capitol.

That statue honors Sims as the “father of modern gynecology” but neglects to mention the enslaved women he used for his experimental surgeries without anesthesia. The man’s own notes describe the gruesome experiments. Despite protests from folks who say that’s not OK, Sims’ graven image is still there.

But now one thing is clear.

That statue doesn’t stand in front of the capitol today because it’s been frozen in place by the law.

That statue is there because our elected officials are fine with a monument to a monster in what should be a place of honor.

But a rocket on the roadside? They’ll take it down and make a lot of excuses for why they can’t make it work.

Alabama has no shortage of outrage, but somehow we always direct it at the wrong targets.

In Alabama, we memorialize failure.

We penalize those who object.

Meanwhile, actual accomplishments are free to be forgotten.

Kyle Whitmire is the state political columnist for the Alabama Media Group, 2020 winner of the Walker Stone Award, winner of the 2021 SPJ award for opinion writing, and 2021 winner of the Molly Ivins prize for political commentary.