The Best of Pickering

Representative

Representative “neil,” i said, shivering under a pile of blankets, “I have been bitten by the ›u, not the political bug.” “Sam, all I know is what I read,” he answered. “The Hartford Courant says that among ‘those now being mentioned’ as Republican candidates in the Second Congressional District is ‘University of Connecticut Professor Samuel F. Pickering, Jr., of Storrs, the model for Robin Williams’s character in the movie Dead Poets Society.’” “Neil, I will talk to you later. I’m going to be sick,” I said, adding as I put down the telephone, “I don’t care what the paper says. It’s wrong.” For two days I languished in and out of fever. Although I was occasionally so irrational that I imagined my new book becoming a best-seller, I did not dream at all about politics. Not only had I never met a real politician, but I knew few Republicans. In the last election the Republican lost the Second Congressional District by sixty thousand votes, and even if the party was having trouble chasing a sacri‹cial lamb out of the fold, I couldn’t imagine them nipping at the heels of an unknown, a black sheep who usually voted Democratic and said so. Politics was rarely discussed in my family. “The right people do not run for of‹ce,” Mother once said; “they are appointed.” For Father political matters were the ephemeral stuff of story, not life. When he was a boy in Carthage, Tennessee, state Democrats gathered for a week every August at the Grand Hotel in Red Boiling Springs. There they picked candidates for of‹ces, plotted legislative strategies, divided tax revenues, and parceled out rights of way for highways. The Grand was old, and Mr. Hawes, the owner, did not keep it clean. Going to Red Boiling Springs was a tradition, however, one of the few the Democrats had, and they didn’t consider changing towns or hotels. Besides, Father said, politicians were comfortable with dirt; ›ies, though, he added, were a different matter. A few legislators from big towns like Nashville and Memphis were bothered by the fat red-eyed ›esh ›ies that buzzed through the hotel like builders swarming over meaty contracts for state
27 construction. One morning as he was shaving, Coker Knox, who represented a smooth, silky district west of Nashville, turned to Squirrel Tomkins and said, “I just can’t stand to use the bathroom; the ›ies get all over me.” “That’s nothing,” replied Squirrel, who was from Hardeman County just above the Mississippi line. “If you’ll come up here at lunch or when dinner’s being served, you won’t ‹nd a single ›y in the bathroom , and you’ll be able to tend to your affairs in comfort.” For most of the year the Grand was practically empty, and when the Democrats held their yearly meeting, Mr. Hawes had to beat across Macon County looking for help, down to Gum Springs through Union Camp and Freewill and then up and over Goad Ridge to Green Tree Hollow. Although the people he hired were the salt of the earth, they were more accustomed to plain home fare than to the highly seasoned doings of the “Solons” at the Grand. Late one afternoon as he was returning to his room after drinking waters at the springs, Coker Knox, so the tale went, thought he heard the dinner bell ring. Seeing a hotel employee sweeping the walk out to the road, Coker approached him and asked, “Is that the second bell?” “No sir, Mr. President,” the man said, straightening, then leaning over his broom to think a bit. “No sir, that’s the second ringing of the ‹rst bell. We ain’t got no second bell in this hotel.” Dividing the spoils of of‹ce went quickly as dessert, and once the platter was clean, the politicians set about the serious business of having fun. Toward the end of the meeting each year “The Mighty Haag” circus came through Red Boiling Springs. With two old elephants trailing behind four horse-drawn wagons, the circus wasn’t spectacular. Its tent, though, provided the boys with an arena for antics. Each year some innocent young Methodist surprised the party bosses and got elected to the legislature. That August when he came to Red Boiling Springs, he was invited to referee a badger ‹ght—an invitation which he was told was really an initiation into the party and which...