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

Thugs and Jackasses

153 Thugs and Jackasses Like all fallen governments, the Old Hickory political cabal saw exile as only the planning stage of its return to power. At fifty, Jake Sheridan had attained what he wanted from public service— financial independence. Now he had more interest in fishing bait and racehorses than politics. But Garner was as interested as ever in minding the public business. Not only was he planning his own comeback, he foresaw a political future for the next generation of Robinsons. No matter what political office he held, Garner was always an undertaker first, and the base of his political operations had always been the funeral home. So giving up his badge and moving back there was not traumatic. He took his entourage with him, save the incorrigible jail prisoners he’d habitually favored in picking trusties.As sheriff, Garner had selected the con man Whim Wham to drive his children to school. As his own driver, he had chosen a killer and stickup man named Sonny Boy. “Daddy just loved a thug,” recalled his daughter Muriel, who would follow him into politics. “We always had them around.” Just as he had at the courthouse, Garner wanted his children around him. For them and some other members of the younger generation of Robinson’s political friends, the funeral home became a hangout, as Boss’s store had been thirty years earlier.“You have nothing to fear from the dead,” he told his twin daughters. “It’s the live ones you have to watch out for.” Preparing the dead and attending funerals became as routine as milking cows and feeding chickens were for farm kids. But the main attraction was the camaraderie of the colorful assortment of cops, saloon owners, gamblers, and political habitués who made Phillips-Robinson their headquarters. Thugs and Jackasses James D. Squires 154 • • • One of Garner’s two lifelong friends, the wallet retriever Dick Jones, who had been his shadow in the sheriff’s office, performed the same function at the funeral home. But the other, Dave White, was not the mortician type. Careening through town in a speeding ambulance was okay, but Dave clearly lacked the sensitivity and decorum required of the professional funeral director. For one thing, he found humor in death not often appreciated by the bereaved. For instance, he tended to see movements and hear noises from the dearly departed. And sometimes he posted the names of live Robinson family members or funeral home employees among the public listing of those in repose. Because such irreverence was not in keeping with the PhillipsRobinson policy of quiet respect, Garner preferred to keep Dave planted somewhere in the world of lawmen and law violators as his set of political eyes and ears. Keeping a man of Dave’s temperament happily employed was never easy. Accustomed to rank and privilege not possible on the county patrol under Sheriff Cartwright, Dave went back into motel management, which he found equally boring and unfulfilling the second time around. This made Dave adventuresome—and, now and then, drunk and dangerous. One Sunday afternoon he and Verna, accompanied by daughter Billye and her husband, Johnny, now a hawk-faced man of thirty-five, drove out to a roadhouse near Carthage for dinner. In the glove compartment of Dave’s new red Pontiac was a pint of Jim Beam and a nickel-plated snub-nosed revolver. By the time they finished dinner, the pint was empty. As they emerged from the restaurant, Dave noticed a group of small donkeys in a roped pen nearby.“Come on, Johnny,” he said,“let’s ride a jackass.” When Dave stepped over the rope, a large and angry man—the owner of the donkeys—stepped from behind a truck. “What the goddamn hell do you think you’re doing, you sonofabitch?” The Secrets of the Hopewell Box 155 Dave returned the hard look. “No use cussing us,” he said. “Don’t you see these ladies present here?” The donkey man looked at Dave’s wife and daughter like they’d crawled out from under a rock. “Well, goddamn your ladies. Get your goddamn ass outta that pen, you sonofabitch.” Dave punched the man in the stomach and doubled him over. Then he hit him in the ear and knocked him to the ground. The man got up, retrieved a sledgehammer from his truck, and raised it menacingly above his head. Dave...