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234 Yellow Dog Politics Huddled under a kerosene lamp in our parlor one late summer evening in the mid-1930s, the candidate in the soft chair and one of his precinct workers on the floor pored over a handwritten list of names. It was hot, and a dank smell blanketed the room. Election day was approaching and things were heating up in other ways. The race, already close, was getting closer; each vote was critical . Children weren’t permitted at such gatherings, but I peeked out from my bedroom. Mumbled exchanges between the two figures went on into the night. Names of individuals and families were chosen at random, then came a long monotone, followed by questions, pauses, and muttered crossfire. An air of excited assertion issued from the figure on the floor. Pause, question, and repeated assertion: the conversation went on inexorably until the list was exhausted about midnight. From the other room, I could little mistake the words: “Mr. Bud, I ain’t got no better friend. Mr. Bud, I ain’t got no better!” The candidate was my father, J. L. “Bud” Hillman. On the floor was Sam Fairley, a well-known local political junkie who, every four years, sold himself to the highest bidder for “walking money,” Greene County style. It was my father’s first run at office, and he needed entrée to the Leaf precinct, called “the box” locally, in the southwest part of the county near the river by the same name. The list contained twenty-three voters in that box. Sam claimed to be friendly or closely associated with each one, all the Leaf swing-vote electorate. Leaf was marginal in Beat Five, the district of 350-plus voters, other boxes being at McLain, Neely, Unity, and Pleasant Hill. Father wound up receiving only five of Leaf’s twenty-three votes. He narrowly lost the election, conceding after the results were in from the remote box, Pleasant Hill, with its twenty-five votes, which Yellow Dog Politics 235 always was the last to report. (Later, whenever my father was uncertain about an outcome, he liked to say, “Wait till Pleasant Hill comes in.”) Leaf reported early, and during the counting of other boxes it became a drag on his positive sums. Votes in his favor elsewhere were insufficient to offset that disaster. This narrow defeat laid the groundwork for refining his political acumen, which eventually led to a long period of county service. His political career came after he had retired from teaching in the public schools. The election forgotten, Father later recounted with boyish avidity that fateful evening of political innocence: “Sam, do you really think he’s with us? How does his wife stand? Will the family come along and who will get them to the polls? Is their poll tax paid? Is money involved? Is he a Baptist?” His response to each name on the list was: “Mr. Bud, I ain’t got no better friend in the world.” Or, “Mr. Bud, he’s one hundred percent, with us all the way, I guarantee ya.” The voter was in Sam’s pocket. “I ain’t got no better!” Father came away from that unexpected defeat disappointed but gained an aphorism that got many laughs that reverberated down through the years. If we were looking for absolute assurance, someone would say, “But remember Harry Truman and his upset of Dewey in 1948?” Then another would yell out, “I ain’t got no better!” It became Hillman family lore: “I ain’t got no better!” I acquired a thick skin early and deduced that people must have a sense of humor to survive. I also learned to count votes, to be skeptical of political prediction, and to doubt professional pollsters. Little did I know how much I was learning about the discounting of human expectation. And I hadn’t even read about the Battle of Thermopylae. This campaign also etched on my childhood mind several other observations about politics, many of which have since become general clichés: Don’t get involved with politics; it’s a dirty, disappointing business. Never trust a politician; all politicians are liars. On a hopeful note: It ain’t ever over ’til the last vote is counted. And my mother’s favorite: Politics makes strange bedfellows. One particular adage of my father’s has stuck with me for a lifetime: “Son, there are two great imponderables in this world: Who will a man vote...

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