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That night I took Lyda [http://www.oilpaintingscn.com oil painting] ,to see the house where I had spent my first four years and the wooden railroad overpass where I’d played. The next day we went out to the cemetery to visit[http://www.oilpaintingscn.com oil paintings] , the graves of Mary Holt’s family, and I showed them my father’s and grandfather’s graves.
I treasure the memories of those road trips. I [http://www.oilpaintingscn.com china oil painting],was used to being bossed around by women, so we got along well, and I think I was useful to them. I changed flat tires, helped a[http://www.oilpaintingscn.com handmade oil paintings], family get out of a burning house, and got eaten alive by mosquitoes so big you could feel them puncture your skin. We[http://www.oilpaintingscn.com oil painting reproductions], passed the hours of driving by [http://www.oilpaintingscn.com Painting From Photo],talking about politics, people, and books. And I think we got some votes.
Not long before the Hope rally, the[http://www.oilpaintingscn.com/michael-jackson-oil-painting-946_949.html Michael Jackson painting], campaign decided to put on a fifteen-minute TV program featuring the students who were working for Judge Holt; they thought it would position him as the candidate of Arkansas’ [http://www.oilpaintingscn.com/michael-jackson-oil-painting-946_949.html Michael Jackson paintings],future. Several of us spoke for a couple of minutes about why we were supporting him. I[http://www.oilpaintingscn.com/decorative-painting-oil-painting-864.html Decorative painting] , don’t know if it did any good, but I enjoyed my first TV appearance, though I didn’t get to watch it. I had to speak at yet another rally in Alread, a remote community in Van Buren County, [http://www.oilpaintingscn.com/group-painting-oil-painting-865.html Group painting] ,in the mountains of north-central Arkansas. The candidates who made it way up there usually got the[http://www.oilpaintingscn.com/abstract-oil-painting-866.html Abstract oil painting] , votes, and I was beginning to realize that we needed all we could get.
As the hot summer weeks passed, I saw more and more evidence that the Old South hadn’t given up the ghost, and the New [http://www.oilpaintingscn.com/impressionism-oil-painting-867.html Impressionism oil painting] ,South wasn’t yet powerful enough to chase it away. Most of our schools were still segregated, and resistance remained strong. One county courthouse in the Mississippi Delta still had “white” and “colored” designations on the doors of the public restrooms. When I asked one elderly black lady in another town to vote for Judge Holt, she said she couldn’t because she hadn’t paid her [http://www.oilpaintingscn.com/animal-oil-painting-872.html Animal oil painting] ,poll tax. I told her that Congress had eliminated the poll tax two years earlier and all she had to do was register. I don’t know if she did.
Still, there were signs of a new day. While campaigning in Arkadelphia, thirty-five miles south of Hot Springs, I met the leading candidate for [http://www.oilpaintingscn.com/floral-oil-painting-873.html Floral oil painting] ,the south Arkansas congressional seat, a young man named David Pryor. He was clearly a progressive who thought if he could just meet enough people he could persuade most of them to vote for him.[http://www.oilpaintingscn.com/landscape-oil-painting-874.html Landscape oil painting] , He did it in 1966, did it again in the governor’s race in 1974, and again in the Senate race in 1978. By the time he retired, much to my dismay, from the Senate in 1996, David Pryor was the most popular politician in Arkansas, with a fine progressive legacy. Everybody thought of him as their friend, including me.
The kind of retail politics Pryor mastered [http://www.oilpaintingscn.com/nude-oil-painting-875.html Nude oil painting] was important in a rural state like Arkansas, where more than half the people lived in towns with fewer than five thousand people, and tens of thousands just lived “out in the country.” We were still in the days before television ads, especially negative ones, assumed the large role in elections they have now. Candidates mostly bought television time to look into the camera and talk to voters. They also were expected to visit the courthouses and main businesses in every county seat, go into the kitchen of every café, and campaign in sale barns, where livestock are auctioned. The county fairs and pie suppers were fertile territory. And, of course, every weekly newspaper and radio station expected a visit and an ad or two. That’s how I learned politics. I think it works better than TV air wars. You could talk, but you had to listen, too. You had to answer voters’ tough [http://www.oilpaintingscn.com/seascape-oil-painting-876.html Seascape oil painting] ,questions face-to-face. Of course, you could still be demonized, but at least your adversaries had to work harder to do it. And when you took a shot at your opponent, you had to take it, not [http://www.oilpaintingscn.com/streetscape-oil-painting-877.html Streetscape oil painting] ,hide behind some bogus committee that expected to make a killing from your time in office if its attacks destroyed the other candidate.
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