"What can I do for you?"
"Honey, I need you to do me a little favor."
"Sure, what do you need?"
"Could you take a look at someone for me on the Q.T. and tell me what you think?"
"Absolutely. Be glad to. Who is it?"
"His name is Hamm Sparks and he's running for governor. I'd like to help him if I can but I don't know a thing about politics."
"What is it that I'm looking for?"
"Just see if you think anything can be done to enhance his public. You know about those things, I don't."
Arthur wrote the name down. "Hamm Sparks? Isn't he that hicky-looking guy with the bad hair?"
Cecil sighed. "Yes, that's him."
Two weeks later Coleman called Cecil with his report. "I checked out your man." He laughed. "You sure picked yourself one hell of a wingdinger there, Cecil, but he's colorful, I'll give him that."
"What do you think he should do?"
"Honestly? Not a thing."
"You don't think that maybe it would help if he got a suit that fits and maybe cleaned up his English just a little?"
"No. From a public-image point of view, I wouldn't mess with him a bit. This guy is all natural and if you try and fool with him at this point it will just confuse him."
"So you wouldn't suggest changing anything?"
"No. He has good instincts and he's doing just fine the way he is. And as far as the whole package, it's not bad two kids, a nice little wife and-mother type who doesn't get in the way… but now, Cecil, you do know that this guy doesn't stand a chance in hell against Wendell Hewitt, don't you?"
"Yes, but thank you anyway."
"Anytime. But I am curious. What made you decide to back this particular candidate?"
Cecil said sincerely, "I don't know, honey, I wish I could tell you. But I really don't know. Just a hunch I had, I guess."
Wendell Hewitt, clearly the people's choice for governor, took the lead in the polls right from the first day of the race and kept it. He was a six-foot two affable, hard-drinking man with an eye for the ladies who was not only a good solid politician with a law background but an independent thinker. Most importantly, people liked him. However, the state Democratic higher-ups did not like him, and did not support him.
They wanted a party man they could control and Wendell Hewitt was not it. As far as they were concerned, he was a loose cannon. Peter Wheeler, a wealthy, well-educated, rather effete insurance executive from Kansas City, was their man. But they had a problem. Their man was a bit stuffy and could never win against such a popular choice as Wendell.
Behind closed doors, Earl Finley, the head of the party, agreed it would be best if Hewitt were to be out of the race altogether. A month later, by some miracle and a lot of money exchanging hands, their prayers were answered. A photograph of Wendell Hewitt leaving a motel room with someone other than his wife appeared in the Kansas City Star and was picked up by papers all over the state. Wendell and his staff assumed it had been the Republicans that had done him in but he took it like a good sport and did not whine about it or try to lie his way out of it. In his television address he said, "Due to recent events I have no choice but to withdraw from the governor's race because, ladies and gentlemen, if my opponents are going to continue to stoop so low and use beautiful young blondes as bait… I can tell you right now they are going to catch me every time."
With Wendell out of the race, Pete Wheeler was a shoe-in. Or so they thought.
To Earl Finley and the boys, Hamm Sparks was a man they had never considered as anything more than a joke, some pie-in-the-sky candidate thinking he could fiddle his way into the governor's mansion, running around the state with his half-baked, pseudo-cracker-barrel philosophy and hillbilly singers. But during the weeks they had been concentrating on getting rid of Wendell Hewitt and pushing Pete Wheeler forward, the Hamm Sparks dog-and-pony show had crisscrossed the state and hit every small town, farm community, creek bed, and railroad crossing with a vengeance.
Hamm more or less did the same speech everywhere he went but it seemed to hit a nerve with the farmers and with the people in the country towns he spoke to. As his numbers started to rise, Earl Finley started to wonder about him and sent out a man with a newsreel camera to see just what in the hell he was doing and saying. The man caught up with the Sparks campaign, such as it was, at a stop outside of Cooler, Missouri, close to the Tennessee-Arkansas border. What the big boys saw on film later was a shot of a dirt-road farm town where about seventy five to eighty country people had all gathered around the back of a flatbed truck where Hamm stood speaking into a bad microphone.
Every time he made a point or told a joke, someone in the crowd rang a cow bell The audience seemed to be hanging on to every word he said.
The men in overalls and John Deere caps, the women in cotton dresses and bonnets laughed and nodded and seemed to agree with what he was telling them.
"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 win sand 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."
Now, 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."