Standing in the Rainbow - Fannie Flagg [122]
Hamm also announced that if elected he would ban all alcohol from the governor’s mansion and not allow it to be served at any state function. This was a good move. He knew that would sit well with the state’s large Baptist and Pentecostal population. Hamm also knew they would always vote dry as long as they were able to stagger to the polls. It was smart politics to give the church something to get behind and vote against.
The Earl Finley crowd found out the hard way that Hamm was a scrapper. Everything they threw at him he threw right back. When a hastily staged photograph of Peter Wheeler sitting in a field of corn on a tractor appeared in all the papers, Hamm made the best of it. At his next press conference he said, “Old farmer Pete must have been surprised when he ripped up all his corn with that big number four wheat thresher he was sitting on.”
On the morning of May 8 Cecil received a call from Coleman, at the advertising agency, who laughed and said, “Well, Cecil, where do I go and eat a little crow?”
Cecil said, “Oh, honey, I’m just as surprised as you are.”
What it all boiled down to in the end was not so much that Hamm Sparks won the primary but that more than a lot of people just did not warm up to Peter Wheeler. However, the next day a lot of people in the state woke up and said, “Who is Hamm Sparks?” Fortunately for Hamm, his Republican opponent in the election, incumbent Delbert K. Whisenknot, had a terrible voting record and the looks and personality of a hedgehog; but even still, beating him was no easy feat and the election was not a landslide by any means. Hedgehog or not, Delbert was at least a familiar hedgehog. Hamm and Delbert were neck and neck right down to the wire and Hamm won by only a narrow margin. In fact, he just barely squeaked in with a lot of last-minute help. In the rural counties the farmers backed him 100 percent, to the man. And late in the day, when it looked like he might lose, it was truly amazing how many goats, mules, bulls, and heifers showed up at the last minute to vote. One black-and-white sowbelly hog over in Sullivan County by the name of Buddy T. Bacon even voted twice. But this phenomenon was certainly no more amazing than the large number of deceased people around the state who suddenly rose from the dead and stuffed their names in the ballot boxes, voting for Hamm. And nobody knew more names of the dear departed than Cecil Figgs. It would not be an exaggeration to say that a lot of the polling places were loosely run. But none as loosely as the polling places set up in the Italian and Polish neighborhoods of St. Louis. One or two large fellows sitting outside the voting booth with a baseball bat more or less guaranteed a vote for Hamm.
The New Administration
Back in Elmwood Springs, Dorothy made it a policy never to discuss politics on her show or certainly never to brag about the important people she knew but she was so happy for Betty Raye she just had to say something. In early January 1957, after she announced the winner of the What Is Your Favorite Holiday and Why Contest, she said, “As some of you know, Mother Smith and Doc and I were lucky enough to be invited to the inauguration of our new governor and all I can say is we all can be mighty proud of the new first lady of Missouri. She looked as pretty as a picture in that stylish