Standing in the Rainbow (35 page)

“Now, folks,” he said, “I’m not gonna get here and try to fool you with fancy language. First of all, I wouldn’t know how, you have to be a lawyer to do that, and second of all, I think every American deserves the truth in plain English and I trust the people to know it when they hear it.

“Make no mistake, the big mules want your vote. Oh, they smile and grin at you and promise to love, honor, and obey. Trying to get you to the altar. But you should hear how they talk about you behind closed doors. . . . They think you’re stupid. They think you’ll fall for anything they tell you. They think they can just do anything they want up there and get away with it. It reminds me of when I was a boy growing up out in the country. My mother would open up the pantry and here would be all these mealy worms and moths eating away at our cornmeal and flour. And she would yell out, ‘Daddy, we’ve got pests in the pantry.’ Now, I’ve been up at the state capital for a few years and I’ve seen how that bunch up there is stealing the taxpayers blind, and folks, we’ve got pests in the state’s pantry right now and if you elect me I’m gonna get rid of every one of them. I’ll chop all that extra fat right off the budget and put that money back in the workingman’s pocket, where it belongs, not to pay the salaries of folks in the governor’s mansion to cook up lace-panty lamb chops and serve a lot of little sissy food on silver plates. Good old American hamburger is just fine with me.

“Now, I know my opponent, Mr. Peter Wheeler, claims his family goes way back. And that’s fine. But I ask you, whose family don’t? Oh, I may not have the poodle-dog pedigree behind me and I may not get invited to their little high-society pink-tea affairs. But I’d stack my momma and daddy and your mommas and your daddies right up there with the best of them. I know that bunch up in Kansas City, all dressed up in their furs and diamonds, driving in fancy cars to their million-dollar brick churches. But let me tell you this: A vote don’t care if you’re fat or skinny or if your socks don’t match or if you smoke store-bought cigarettes or roll your own. A vote don’t care if you listen to the Grand Ole Opry or sip your coffee out of a saucer. . . . Why, it don’t even care if you’re wearing silk drawers or flour-sack skivvies.” By this time he had the audience laughing and cheering. “A vote is the best friend we have. A vote from my momma and yours that walks to a little ramshackle wooden church in the country counts just as much as the rich man’s vote. Now, I hear some of you saying it don’t matter if I vote or not, the whole thing is fixed anyway . . . and you’re right, it is fixed. The man who gets the most votes wins—and I want your vote . . . I won’t lie to you. I could have gone after support from some of these big-money interest groups and be doing a whole lot better but I didn’t. Why? Because I don’t want to be in debt to anybody but you. So I’m asking you to give me a little something today, it don’t have to be much, just a little loan. What will I put up for collateral? Well, I don’t have much. I don’t own a house, my car’s not paid for. You can’t have my wife. But I’ll tell you what you can have is my word. My word that if you send me up there as your governor, I’ll work for you. And I want you to hold me to it. The only payback I want to have to make is to you people . . . and I’ll pay it back, law by law, road by road, school by school, and electric pole by electric pole.”

While the Missouri Plowboys played, the Finley men watched as every one of the farmers came up and put money in a big barrel that had
HAMM’S PEST CONTROL
written on the side and shook hands with him. When the lights went off and the projector shut down, Earl smiled. “This guy’s an idiot. We can beat him at his own game.”

The next day they hired for Pete Wheeler a huge Dixieland band to travel with him and brought in top entertainers from Hollywood and New York to appear at all his fund-raisers. At the big Kansas City “Peter Wheeler for Governor” dinner, they even flew big Kate Smith in from New York to open the evening by singing “God Bless America.”

The New Dog-and-Pony Show

N
ow, with all the parties, money, and efforts going into the Peter Wheeler campaign, Hamm started to worry. The more he thought about the promise he’d made to Betty Raye to quit politics if he lost, the more desperate he became. After being gone for a week he came into the bedroom around 3:00
A.M.
and tried to wake Betty Raye without waking the baby. “Sweetheart,” he said, shaking her.

She opened her eyes. “Hey . . . what time is it?”

He sat down on the bed. “It’s late. But I need to talk to you.”

“Is anything wrong? Has anything happened?”

“No.”

She sat up and switched on the light. “Are you hungry?”

“No. The boys and I stopped on the way home and got a bite.”

She reached for her glasses and put them on and looked at him in the light. She could tell by the worried expression on his face that something was wrong. “What is it?”

He sighed. “Honey, you know I never wanted to bother you with any of this. And I wouldn’t if I didn’t have to, but I need your help.”

He had never asked her for anything before except to marry him, so she knew it must be pretty serious. He looked so pitiful, she reached over and took his hand. He hesitated a moment and then said, “I hate to ask . . . but with all the big money being thrown at Peter Wheeler, I’m in trouble.”

“What can I do?”

“Well,” he said, “like I say, I hate to ask, but the boys were talking and they think that since your momma and the Oatmans have such a big following now, that if you were on the platform with me and let me introduce you to the audience it might help.”

The baby in the other room suddenly started to cry. Betty Raye got up out of bed and Hamm followed her. “All you would have to do is just sit there, honey, you wouldn’t have to sing or anything. And I’d get to be with you and the kids a lot more. . . . It would only be for a little while. . . .”

On April 6, Neighbor Dorothy reported to her listeners that the dessert cookbook had received an entry all the way from Lake Martin, Minnesota. “Mrs. Verna Pridgen writes, ‘Dear Neighbor Dorothy, I am sending you a recipe for a layer cake, some have called it a Minnehaha cake but while it is similar to the Minnehaha cake it is even nicer. I live out here on the Minnesota prairie and we call it a prairie cake.’ Thank you, Verna, but whatever it is called I can assure you it is a good one. And, let’s see, I got a call from Tot Whooten and she said to tell all her customers that the beauty shop would be opened back up this Wednesday. As you all know, last week Tot had a faulty dryer blow up and had to have all her wiring redone and it’s taken longer to fix than expected. Also, this morning I want to say how happy we were to see a picture of our little friend Betty Raye in the paper and to see how big Hamm Junior has grown. It seems like only yesterday when she was still in high school.”

For the next two or three weeks of the campaign, they moved in a caravan made up of a large black platform truck loaded with sound equipment, wooden folding chairs, and
HAMM SPARKS FOR GOVERNOR
banners, followed by three cars: Le Roy and the Missouri Plowboys in one, Hamm and assorted cronies in another, and Betty Raye, Hamm Jr., and the baby in the last car. And for Betty Raye it was also the last place in the world she wanted to be but she could not seem to refuse Hamm anything. They traveled up and down the state from sunup to sundown, sometimes making six or seven stops in one day. This was a grueling schedule for the men, but with two children to take care of, by the end of a few weeks Betty Raye was exhausted. Still, Hamm kept his promise. All Betty Raye had to do was sit off to the side in a chair and smile and wave as he introduced her as not only his wife but also the daughter of Minnie Oatman, the great gospel star, and the announcement was met with strong applause.

She did all of this without complaining but a week later, when Hamm did his speech in Clark County, he pushed her over the edge. Right in the middle of it, out of a clear blue sky, he paused and said, “You know, folks, I have a soft spot in my heart for Clark County. My wife and I spent our honeymoon right up the road here.” Then he looked over to where she was sitting and said, “So you might say that little Hamm Sparks Junior, there got his start in Clark County.” And if that was not bad enough, amid hoops and hollers and guffaws from the audience, he put his hand up and said, “That’s all right, folks, I assure you the pleasure was all mine.”

Betty Raye wanted to die right there on the spot.

She did not know if it was because she was so tired or because she had been so embarrassed but when she got back in the car she burst into tears. When Hamm finally came over, he was surprised to see she was upset.

“What’s the matter?” he said, opening the door.

“Why did you say that?”

“Say what?”

“About our honeymoon . . . all those men laughing, looking at me funny—and it’s not even true.”

He chuckled and climbed in beside her. “Oh, come on, sweetheart. Don’t be like that. Nobody was looking at you funny. It was just a little joke, that’s all, made them feel good. People like to feel like where they live is special. Nobody was laughing at you, honey.” He kissed her and put his arm around her. “Besides, if you think about it, it could have been true, couldn’t it?”

The baby started to cry again. Hamm said, “Aw now, look, honey, you’ve got the baby all upset.” He rolled down the window and called out, “Hamm Junior, come over here and give your mother a kiss and tell her to stop crying.”

Hamm Jr., who at five was already turning into a charmer just like his daddy, crawled in over him and put his arms around her neck and gave her six big kisses. What could she do? She was outnumbered.

Because he had gotten such a big laugh in Clark County, Hamm continued to use the same line everywhere they went in the next few weeks. After a while Rayford Fusser, the bass fiddle player for the Missouri Plowboys, who was not too bright, turned and asked Le Roy: “How many honeymoons did this guy go on?”

The big newspapers, who were all against him, always referred to him with derogatory names, such as Hamm “Pests in the Pantry” Sparks, Hillbilly Hamm, or sometimes even Honeymoon Hamm, but not one compared with the names he was being called by Earl Finley’s men when his numbers started to rise.

As Election Day grew closer, to counterattack Hamm’s constant charges that Peter Wheeler was nothing but a rich man’s son, a new slogan was added to his campaign ads. They began billing him as Pete Wheeler, “the little man’s friend.” But Hamm was smarter than they thought. He went on statewide television and made a statement right into the camera. “Folks, usually I try to remain friendly with my opponents but when Mr. Peter Wheeler says he is for the little man, I just have to take exception to that. Because, ladies and gentlemen, there’s no such thing as a little man or a little woman in America. According to the Constitution we are all supposed to be equal. I may not be rich like old Pete, but being called a little man sort of hurt my feelings.”

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.