Kingfish The Reign of Huey P. Long

CHAPTER 1 1927 A WEDDED MAN WITH A STORM FOR A BRIDE Huey Long climbed onto a large bale of fresh-picked cotton and gazed out at a crowd of farmers attending a country fair. For a few moments he stood motionless, his shoulders hunched like a boxer waiting for the first bell to ring. Leaning forward to talk to the men in the front row, Huey began speaking in a whispery voice so quiet that the crowd shuffled closer to hear him. After a couple of minutes, he slowly raised his voice, a little louder each minute, until he roared to the gathering throng. He threw off his coat, rolled up his shirtsleeves, and slackened the red silk tie hanging around his neck. His voice booming across the dusty fairgrounds, Huey pummeled his audience with old-fashioned soapbox oratory and hell-for-leather political bluster. He whooped and hollered, pounded his fist, and punched in the air at imaginary enemies. His face turned the color of a ripe tomato. Twirling his arms above his head in the sweltering Louisiana heat, perspiration pouring down his cheeks, he quickly captivated the audience with spellbinding charisma and homespun guile. It was the summer of 1927 and Huey was running full speed for governor of Louisiana. At every stop on the campaign trail, he treated his listeners to a boiling mixture of snake-oil salesmanship, burlesque tap dancing, evangelicism, and blistering billingsgate. He would preach to the crowd, holding a Bible in his hand in holy uplift and quoting from memory lengthy passages of the Scriptures. From Galatians he taunted his adversaries. "Am I therefore become your enemy because I tell you the truth?" More often though, Huey spewed a torrent of abuse upon his foes. He branded his political opponents with epithets like "low-down vile and slanderous men," "thieves, bugs, and lice," "grafters and money boodlers," "graveyard robbing politicians," and "blackguards in full-dress suits." His audience, mostly rural folk who took their politics raw like corn whiskey, could not get enough. "You tell 'em, Huey," the farmers yelled back. "Go get 'em." Huey's crowd of farmers looked up at a man in his thirties, of medium height, approaching pudginess with a round face, puffy jowls, and skin glowing pink like a fresh sunburn. An unruly mop of chestnut-colored hair topped his head, with a curly forelock that tumbled down. An oversized nose jutted from his face and his brown eyes were large, round, and expressive, shifting from jest to rage in a twinkling. When he walked, he jostled along "like a saddling pony." As Huey dazzled his audiences, at times he appeared almost childish, spoiled, and "like an overgrown small boy with very bad habits indeed." In an instant, however, his face could turn exceedingly hard and cruel. A dominating egotist, Huey hungered for the spotlight and could not bear to share it with another. "The only kind of band in which Huey Long could play," one newspaper editor wrote, "was a one-man band." A skillful speechmaker, he craved the microphone. "I can't remember back to a time when my mouth wasn't open whenever there was a chance to make a speech," he remarked. He could not stand to be ignored by the newspapers, admitting that "I don't care what they say about me as long as they say something." He knew that Louisiana voters would cast their votes for a known thief before they would vote for a name they did not recognize. Desperately wanting to be noticed, he dressed in a dazzling mix of pastel suits, purple shirts, flamingWhite, Richard D. is the author of 'Kingfish The Reign of Huey P. Long', published 2006 under ISBN 9780812973839 and ISBN 0812973836.