He went to work the next day at age thirteen and saved enough money to buy a used twenty-two rifle and every day before and after school he hunted and brought home meat for the table. In summer he fished and planted vegetables, swapped catfish and turnips for eggs, sugar, and cornmeal. Swapped rabbits, deer, and squirrels for money to buy shoes and clothes for his sisters. It was understandable why Hamm was to grow up hard-pressed to understand why any man that could would not work. To have little patience with men who would not fight and die for what they believed. Just like his father and grandfather before him, within a few hours after Pearl Harbor he had joined the army as a foot soldier. Hamm’s total belief that he was put here on this earth for a purpose and would certainly not die made him the perfect soldier and leader of ground troops. His expert ability with a gun and his lack of fear caused him to do things that another man would not have. In war, if you want to live, these feats are rewarded with medals and offers of advancement. But even then, between battles, some in the deepest jungles of the Pacific, he considered his future. When the army tapped him for officers’ training, he declined. He knew that after the war, just by sheer numbers, a lot more enlisted men would be voting than officers. He made a lot of good and loyal friends while he was in the army. When he returned home he worked part-time and almost finished college, but after he and Betty Raye married he dropped out and went to work full-time, trying to save a little more money for a house. But in 1952 the urge to go into politics was too great, so he quit his job at the Allis-Chalmers tractor company and ran for Pettis County commissioner of agriculture.
Even though it was just a county election, their rented house was in constant upheaval. Phones ringing, people in and out, and after he won, Betty Raye made him promise not to do that to her again. He held that office for a year and did a good job. But he was anxious to move on. What Hamm wanted next was to run for the office of state commissioner of agriculture. All Betty Raye wanted was for them to buy a small home of their own and have some security. At the moment they did not have anything but a two-year-old baby and the use of a car the county had provided and now they were about to lose that. The county job had paid very little and they’d had to move from one rental to another. But Hamm was not thinking about a house or security. He was thinking about his future. He knew that if he could just win this one election it would get his foot in the door of statewide politics. All those years of selling tractors and shaking hands had to add up to something. But he would be running against a strong incumbent. He needed campaign money and a car. He tried to get a bank loan but the bank turned him down. He knew only one person who might be able to lend him the money. He hated to do it but he called his old army buddy Rodney Tillman. Rodney had been a top Pontiac showroom salesman before the war and now owned a few used-car lots outside of Sedalia. When Hamm got him on the phone, Rodney listened a few minutes without comment, then said, “How much do you need, Hambo? If I haven’t got it, I’ll get it.”
Hamm said, “I think I can do it with five hundred.”
“I’ll get you six.”
Hamm said, “I’ll pay you back.”
“I know you will.”
“I’ll never forget this, buddy,” said Hamm.
“Don’t worry about it. You just go out and win the damn thing.”
Once again they moved and again Betty Raye’s home life was turned upside down. As soon as he announced, the house was filled with men coming and going, day and night. When she went to bed there were men in her living room. She slept, got up, got dressed, got the baby changed, and by breakfast there were already four or five men sitting at the kitchen table, filling up the place with cigar smoke. She hardly ever saw Hamm alone. If he was not traveling, he was always with his pack of cronies. The house was in a constant mess and she spent most of her time cleaning up after them. There was only one bathroom, so all day long men were traipsing through her bedroom. And if she went into the bathroom she could never be sure that some man would not walk in on her. She tried her best but when she woke up with a strange man she had never seen before walking through her bedroom, that was the last straw. Hamm never understood why she was so upset. It did not bother him at all to have people around him twenty-four hours a day. In fact, he thrived on it. It seemed to energize him. This constant and relentless lack of privacy, however, was making a nervous wreck out of Betty Raye. She could not even find a place to sit down and cry by herself. Six long months later, it was all over: between the radio ads, the posters, and Hamm stumping all over the farm areas, he’d won. He was now state commissioner of agriculture.
Betty Raye was so glad when it was final. At last she could have her husband all to herself and they could get back to a normal life again.
Hamm and Rodney
THE PHONE RANG in the office of the Tillman and Reid used-car lot and Rodney Tillman picked it up. “Hello?”
A man’s voice said, “Hey, sport, what are you doing?”
It was his friend Hamm Sparks. Rodney said, “Right now I’m sitting here trying to figure out if I should kill my ex-brother-in-law or not.”
Hamm laughed. “What’s he done now?”
“We got the best-looking little forty-nine Chevy in here and he went out and started fooling around with the odometer after I told him not to and the damned idiot just put an extra two hundred miles on the thing.”
“Why don’t you just run it back the other way like you always do?”
“I would if I could, Hambo,” he said, glaring at his ex-brother-in-law, who’d just passed by, “but the damned thing’s stuck. What are you doing?”