The Secrets of the Hopewell Box: Stolen Elections, Southern Politics, and a City's Coming of Age

The Destruction of Chicken Man

James D. Squires 252 he could say or do, including renouncing his friendship with Garner, that would change things, and renouncing Garner was the last thing he would ever do. Dave stood up, sucked in his stomach, and placed his patrol cap on his head, at a jaunty angle.“Well, thank you for your time, Flip,” he said, with a familiarity he hadn’t come in with. “If that’s the way you feel about it, you can just take those sergeant’s stripes and stick ’em up your ass, you old pustule-gutted sonofabitch, you.” Dave White stomped out of the hardware store without looking back, at either Flippen or the career he’d left behind. He never took the sergeant’s exam again or pestered anyone for a promotion. Instead, he got that safe desk job Ann wanted him to have, as a clerk at the auto impoundment lot, where he worked until he was seventy-one years old. The minute he retired as a patrolman in 1975, hung up his uniform, and put away his gun, he began to die. The Destruction of Chicken Man “A big vote is necessary today to smash the old Robinson machine, drive its influence out of the courthouse and put important public offices in the hands of competent public spirited men,” declared the Tennessean. “The struggle . . . is between the powerful old county machine which has been on its last legs and, on the other hand, a group of able, dedicated candidates who want to bring a breath of fresh air into the courthouse.” It was primary election day 1966, but the words could have been taken verbatim from the newspaper’s pages twenty years earlier. The old habits were ingrained. Despite its new leadership the Tennessean still felt most comfortable lumping whomever it opposed with its old nemesis the “machine,” now personified by Garner and The Destruction of Chicken Man The Secrets of the Hopewell Box 253 GovernorFrankClement.Afterallthoseyears,politicalmachines— real or imagined—still made the best enemies. Little Evil Jacobs, Big Evil Hoffa, and Tommy Osborn had all gone off to jail, and the Camelot men of Nashville were still out in pursuit of dragons. Two years earlier the newspaper had elected a liberal successor to Estes Kefauver and had come close to electing a blind man sheriff, only to have him lose at the last minute to the roly-poly Robert R. Poe, a former constable from Garner’s side of town running as an independent. With a veritable orgy of elections taking place in 1966, filling every office from constable to governor with enlightened, progressive young people aligned with the Tennessean was not only possible but, in the mind of the newspapers, imperative. This included the powerful county prosecutor’s office being vacated by retirement and the now near-worthless offices of sheriff and of Metro trustee. The new political powers began anointing their candidates just as the old machine bosses always had. Bright young Thomas H. Shriver, Jr., whom the Honey Bee had promised to support four years earlier, was a first-rate lawyer who would have been at home in any Kennedy administration. The Tennessean wanted him as prosecutor. But the people in the prosecutor’s office liked someone else better—young Gale Robinson, who was already on staff as an assistant district attorney.Gale was hard on the bit to run, but he knew opposing the Tennessean’s candidate could complicate his father’s reelection for trustee. He went to see Daddy at the funeral home, where family matters were often taken up in one of the viewing rooms before only a single embalmed witness. Expecting a request to postpone advancing his political career for a year or two, Gale diplomatically began by offering to do so. “I’m young,” he said. “I have plenty of time. I can wait.” “No,” the old sheriff told him without hesitation. “You’re ready to run—and I’m not ready to quit. We’ll both run and I’ll help you any way I can.” Garner knew Ben West was planning a comeback against Beverly James D. Squires 254 Briley in the nonpartisan Metro election in May, a month before the June Democratic primary for county offices. He also knew that the Tenneseean’s lawyer John J.Hooker,Jr.,was planning on running for governor in the statewide party primary later in August. With elections...