Teaching the Pig to Dance: A Memoir Read Online Free PDF Page A

Democrat. Pa Thompson never voted for a Republican in his life and thought that FDR had saved their lives. In later years they laughed and talked about, during the Great Depression, eating a thin gruel called “Hoover gravy,” named after President Hoover. Politics was a matter of looking out for the “little man.” And in rural Middle Tennessee in the 1930s, my folks were very “little” from an economic standpoint. When Dad would take me to the barbershop when I was five or six years old, he would say, “Tell them what you are, son.” He had coached me to say “a Democrat.” It was probably my first lesson on how to get a laugh.
    However, by the 1950s, politics in Lawrenceburg were not a matter of ideology or party policies. It was a matter of the ins and outs. The outs wanted to be in, and the ins did not want to be out. The Democrats controlled the local and county political machinery and the patronage that went with it. That was basically a holdover from the Civil War. In Tennessee you could almost tell the politics of the county by the lay of the land. In mountainous East Tennessee, where slavery was rare and several counties never did secede from the Union, it was heavily Republican. As you got over to the rolling hills of Middle Tennessee, including Lawrenceburg, and especially West Tennessee, where the terrain became flatter, it became cotton country and was Democratic. In Lawrence County, since there were not enough Republicans to succeed as a party, some independents and some disgruntledDemocrats formed a “coalition” party. Dad was a coalition man.
    The coalition ticket gradually gained some traction in county politics, where voters determined who controlled the courthouse and the main offices, such as sheriff, trustee, county court clerk, circuit court clerk, and county register. During election season, rallies would be held in every community in the county. Little country-music bands would play as the speechifying of politicians filled the hot night air and vice versa. It seemed that the energy and acrimony expended were in inverse proportion to the importance of the office. It was amazing to me how much excitement could be generated over the burning question of who was going to be elected to register deeds at the courthouse for the next four years.
    The group most interested in these elections were the free-market purveyors of illegal spirits, otherwise known as bootleggers. And they were interested in only one job: sheriff. Whether or not a sheriff was going to be broad-minded with regard to their business endeavors was of primary importance to these folks. It was always assumed—and occasionally proven—that they ensured this broad-mindedness with a little money from time to time, and I am not just speaking of campaign contributions. In fact, over the years the relationship between some of the county sheriffs and the bootleggers was more of a partnership than anything else. Soit made for heated campaigns and plenty of “walking-around money” on Election Day.
    All of this, of course, was well known to the coalition coffee drinkers at the Blue Ribbon Café, whose owner, Dudley Brewer, was the town’s leading and most respected Republican. The coalition had never elected a sheriff, and they needed to nominate someone whom people liked, was preferably honest, and who looked plausible standing behind the badge. Fletch was their man.
    Initially, Dad’s biggest hurdle as a potential candidate was explaining to Mom how the sheriff lived “
in
the jail,” as Mom would put it, or “
at
the jail,” as Dad described it. Dad saw it as a terrific rent-free benefit and pretty exciting. The ancient two-story brick building on the edge of town looked like Davy Crockett had built it, or perhaps Davy Crockett’s father. The jail cells were on the second floor, and the sheriff’s family and offices were on the first floor. Dad never did really understand why Mom didn’t think this was a great setup. She