At various places on the courthouse lawn, food and refreshments were being served. The Lions Club was giving away slices of cold watermelon. The ladies of the garden club were selling homemade ice cream. The Jaycees were barbecuing ribs. The crowd huddled under the ancient oak trees and hid from the sun.
Mackey Don Coley had entered the race for Sheriff in late May. He had three opponents, the most popular of whom was a Clanton city policeman named T. R. Meredith. When Mr. Beets announced that it was time for the Sheriff candidates, the voters left the shade and swarmed around the trailer.
Freck Oswald was running for the fourth time. In the prior three he had finished dead last; he appeared headed for the bottom again but seemed to enjoy the fun of it. He didn’t like President Nixon and said harsh things about his foreign policy, especially relations with China. The crowd listened but appeared to be a bit confused.
Tryce McNatt was running for the second time. He began his remarks by saying, “I really don’t give a damn about China.” This was humorous but also stupid. Swearing in public, in the presence of ladies, would cost him many votes. Tryce was upset at the way criminals were being coddled by the system. He was opposed to any effort to build a new jail in Ford County — a waste of taxpayer money! He wanted harsh sentences and more prisons, even chain gangs and forced labor.
I had heard nothing about a new jail.
Because of the Kassellaw murder and the Hank Hooten rampage, violent crime was now out of control in Ford County, according to Tryce. We needed a new Sheriff, one who chased criminals, not befriended them. “Let’s clean up the county!” was his refrain. The crowd was with him.
T. R. Meredith was a thirty-year veteran of law enforcement. He was an awful speaker but he was related to half the county, according to Stan. Stan knew about such things; he was related to the other half. “Meredith’ll win by a thousand votes in the runoff,” he predicted. This caused quite an argument among the other guests.
Mackey Don went last. He had been the Sheriff since 1943, and wanted just one more term. “He’s been saying that for twenty years,” Stan said. Coley rambled on about his experience, his knowledge of the county and its people. When he finished, the applause was polite but certainly not encouraging.
Two gentlemen were running for the office of tax collector, no doubt the least popular position in the county. As they spoke, the crowd drifted away again and headed for the ice cream and watermelons. I walked down to Harry Rex’s office, where another party was in progress on the sidewalk.
The speeches continued throughout the afternoon. It was the summer of 1971, and by then at least fifty thousand young Americans had been killed in Vietnam. A similar gathering of people in any other part of the country would have turned into a virulent antiwar rally. The politicians would have been heckled off the stage. Flags and draft cards would’ve been burned.
But Vietnam was never mentioned that Fourth of July.
I’d had great fun at Syracuse demonstrating on campus and marching in the streets, but such activity was unheard of in the Deep South. It was a war; therefore real patriots were supportive. We were stopping Communism; the hippies and radicals and peaceniks up North and in California were simply afraid to fight.
I bought a dish of strawberry ice cream from the garden ladies, and as I strolled around the courthouse I heard a commotion. From the third-floor window of the Bar Room, a prankster had dropped down an effigy of Baggy. The stuffed figure was hanging with its hands above its head — just like the real Baggy — and across its chest was a sign that said “SUGGS.” And to make sure everyone recognized the butt of the joke, an empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s protruded from each pants pocket.
I had not seen Baggy that day, nor would I. Later, he claimed to know nothing about the incident. Not surprisingly, Wiley managed to take numerous photos of the effigy.
“Theo’s here!” someone yelled, and this excited the crowd. Theo Morton was our longtime state senator. His district covered parts of four counties, and though he lived in Baldwin his wife was from Clanton. He owned two nursing homes and a cemetery, and he had the distinction of having survived three airplane crashes. He was no longer a pilot. Theo was colorful — blunt, sarcastic, hilarious, completely unpredictable on the stump. His opponent was a young man who’d just finished law school and was rumored to be grooming himself for Governor. Warren was his name, and Warren made the mistake of attacking Theo over some suspicious legislation that had been “sneaked through” the last session and increased the state’s support for nursing home patients.
It was a bristling assault. I was standing in the crowd, watching Warren blast away, and just over his left shoulder I could see “SUGGS” hanging from the window.
Theo began by introducing his wife, Rex Ella, a Mabry from right here in Clanton. He talked about her parents and her grandparents, and her aunts and uncles, and before long Theo had mentioned half the crowd. Clanton was his second home, his district, his people, the constituents he worked so hard to serve down in Jackson.
It was smooth, fluid, off-the-cuff. I was listening to a master on the stump.
He was chairman of the Highways Committee in the state senate, and for a few minutes he bragged about all the new roads he’d built in north Mississippi. His committee handled four hundred separate pieces of legislation each session. Four hundred! Four hundred bills, or laws. As chairman, he was responsible for writing laws. That’s what state senators did. They wrote good laws and killed bad laws.
His young opponent had just finished law school, a notable accomplishment. He, Theo, didn’t get the chance to go to college because he was off fighting the Japs in World War II. But anyway, his young opponent had evidently neglected his study of the law. Otherwise, he would’ve passed the bar exam on the first try.
Instead, “He flunked the bar exam, ladies and gentlemen!”
With perfect timing, someone standing just behind young Warren yelled out, “That’s a damned lie!” The crowd looked at Warren as if he’d lost his mind. Theo turned to the voice and said incredulously, “A lie?”
He reached into his pocket and whipped out a folded sheet of paper. “I’ve got the proof right here!” He pinched a corner of the paper and began waving it about. Without reading a single word of whatever was printed on it, he said, “How can we trust a man to write our laws when he can’t even pass the bar exam? Mr. Warren and I stand on equal footing — neither of us has ever passed the bar exam. Problem is, he had three years of law school to help him flunk it.”
Theo’s supporters were yelping with laughter. Young Warren held his ground but wanted to bolt.
Theo hammered away. “Maybe if he’d gone to law school in Mississippi instead of Tennessee then he’d understand our laws!”
He was famous for such public butcherings. He’d once humiliated an opponent who’d left the pulpit under a cloud. Pulling an “affidavit” from his pocket, Theo claimed he had proof that the “ex-reverend” had an affair with a deacon’s wife. The affidavit was never read.
The ten-minute limit meant nothing to Theo. He blew through it with a series of promises to cut taxes and waste and do something to make sure murderers got the death penalty more often. When he finally wound down, he thanked the crowd for twenty years of faithful support. He reminded us that in the last two elections the good folks of Ford County had given him, and Rex Ella, almost 80 percent of their votes.
The applause was loud and long, and at some point Warren disappeared. So did I. I was tired of speeches and politics.