No Good Politicians? Take a look at these!

In the Jackson County Times it is usually up to the Managing Editor to beat the political drum, but just this time I want to tell the readers about four politicians that will always be in my memory,… for as long as I have a memory.
The first of these politicians was the closest to me. He was my father, Homer B. Hirt, Sr. Owner of a small automobile agency in a nearby town, he operated it as he thought it should be operated. In a time when there was a distinct division between the blacks and the whites, in the days of separate water fountains and restrooms, his business had one fountain (for everyone) and two restrooms (one for male and one for female). All employees were paid on the same scale. It must have worked, for the dealership stayed in the same family for fourty-seven years.
One day he was asked by the governor to fill the unexpired term of a county commissioner who had died. He agreed, even though his company would lose all county business. His pay was twenty five dollars a month. After three years of service he qualified to run for the job, but he never campaigned. He said that after three years the voters should know what he stood for. He was county commissioner for twenty-three years, and I have been told that the county did not owe any long term debt when he decided not to run again, and had more miles of paved roads per capita than any other rural county in the state.
Sam Mitchell was an athlete and a high school coach. Other coaches in his district complained that Sam took over the coaches’ meetings. He ran for the state House of Representatives and was elected, only to lose it immediately because of reapportionment. Undismayed he ran again and was once more elected. I met him during this time. We seemed to “hit it off”. On the day he took office he called me. “Homer, be at my office at 9:00 in the morning”. I did not ask him why, but I showed up. You did not say “no’ to Big Sam. When I got to the Capitol he introduced me to another freshman legislator who favored the completion of the Cross Florida Barge Canal, as did I. He and I talked for about an hour, and Sam listened. In a few weeks he had the opportunity to make his first speech, and he chose ……”The need for the Cross Florida Barge Canal”. He was chided for picking this “do not touch” subject, but his rejoinder was that “a friend of mine told me that it was a good thing, and I agree”.
Bob Milligan was a retired U. S. Marine general who got in his wife’s hair by trying to arrange their new home “Marine Corps style”. She told him to get out and do something. General Milligan decided to run for Comptroller of the State of Florida. The incumbent had over 5 million dollars in his war chest, much of it donated by those that his department regulated. Milligan had some handbills printed up and got in his Plymouth and drove over the roads of Florida from Pensacola to Key West, talking to citizens wherever he found them. He won the election and spent about $120,000 total. He was reelected and spent about the same the second time around. He supported his employees when they were right, and got rid of those that should not have been there. He saw that the people of Florida were served. That’s the way the Marines always do it.
Lane Gilchrist was a long time friend of mine. We were officers in the USS TWEEDY, a destroyer escort. Much of our time then was spent in or near Cuban waters during the run up to the Missile Crisis. Our ship was home ported in Norfolk, Virginia, and one day one of the married officers was told by his wife to bring a date home for her single friend. His first choice could not go, so Lane went. Lane and Suzi were married within the year.
Lane and I remained close friends, sharing our recollections and sometimes confiding in each other when we had problems. From his home in Gulf Breeze he took me sailing for my first time a year ago. For some years he had fought lymphoma, always coming back from the attacks. His resistance was low, though, and two months ago he did not come home from the hospital. The Pensacola News Journal, on its editorial page, expressed how folks felt about him. The title was “Quiet dignity will live on”. It read, in part:
“Born in 1936, he was a longtime public official who served honorably, and often quietly, in an era when too many elected officials give public service a bad name. Mayor Gilchrist, also retired from the Navy, was widely respected as a good man, good neighbor and good public servant. He held office for all the right reasons – to serve the city he loved and to represent the people who kept him in office. He served 17 years as mayor, in a small town where public service is more about making other people’s lives better than about creating a stepping stone to higher office.”
So there you have it. When politicians say “But that’s just the way it is”, it would be good to remind them of a businessman that treated people right and felt that there was no reason to remind voters of what he stood for. Perhaps we could tell them about the representative that put his political career on the line because a “friend said it was a good thing and I believe him”. As candidates ask for more and more money to run for office, someone should tell them about the Marine general that was elected twice to a statewide office, passing out handbills from a Plymouth. And about a mayor that held office “for all the right reasons” and made his community better and left many friends and a grateful public.

It’s The Truth…As Far As It Goes

I grew up in Chattahoochee, on the east bank of the Apalachicola River. There is always a question about the origin of these two names. Here is the truth, as I understand it. A white man asked an Indian what the name of the river was. He replied “Apalachicola”, which means “I don’t understand your question”. The white man then asked about the high bluff overlooking the waters. The Indian replied “Chattahoochee”, which means “I still don’t understand your question”.
My father owned a Ford dealership there, opened by him in 1923 and operated by our family until 1971. This era stretched through the Great Depression, World War II, the Korean police action and most of the Cold War.
The construction of Jim Woodruff Dam brought in a time of prosperity. Men came to work, and their families followed. After completion of the dam and the lake in 1956, the town settled down.
I returned home after four years in college and five in the Navy to work at the dealership and later in other professions. I learned about barges and ports, not only on the Apalachicola but on many other waterways, gaining enough knowledge so that one day a lady who was writing a book about the river called me for an interview. We agreed to meet in a local cafe. Faith Eidse arrived with her tape recorder and a lot of questions. I began by telling her how it was to grow up in this small town.
And then I saw Dave coming. Dave hung around his wife’s shop across the street, but made several trips a day to the café. He would step out, pause, look both ways, study the sky, and then amble across to the other side. He always had a toothpick in his mouth. He was one of the few men that I knew who picked his teeth before he ate.
Dave was full of knowledge about kinfolk. If you hung around him for long, he would manage to make you kin to almost anyone who was from Jackson or Gadsden Counties. Once he announced that “Robert” and I were kin. He arrived at this by reasoning that since Robert was once married to the elder daughter of a local man and I had dated the younger daughter for a time we were “almost brothers-in-law”. I did not mind this convoluted thinking, but Robert did not speak to him for over two years.
Dave strolled up and asked “What’s going on?”, eying both Faith and her tape recorder. I quickly explained. “Has he told you that he owned the last house of ill repute in town?” he asked. (Only he used the “w” word.)
“Why, no, he hasn’t” said Faith, shocked. “Well, he did”, Dave went on, and described an establishment that would rival the glory of the infamous Mustang Ranch. He explained that this was puzzling to him, since I drove around in a Thunderbird, and was not bad looking, and could have been successful with “most of the single women”, thus implying that I patronized my own establishment. He sidled away, watching my expression, which radiated pure hatred.
As soon as he left I explained quickly. During the construction of the dam two couples moved into a very small frame duplex apartment just behind our dealership. The men worked the night shift, and the women soon decided that there was money to be made in the evenings, so they began “accommodating” men. One of the husbands asked his wife about her sudden affluence, and she explained that she and her friend were bored and were taking in sewing to earn some money. He was impressed and, on the next shift, bragged to his fellow workers about his industrious mate and probably recommended that their wives follow suit. Hence the name “Sewing Circle”.
There was quite a range in their customers. Dave’s own father-in-law was known to frequent one of the duplexes. A man who would be known today as a “little person” had been seen there. But the construction ended, the workers moved away, the Sewing Circle served its last customer, and the duplex was abandoned.
When I came home I worked in the dealership as something of a jack of all trades, doing my father’s bidding. One day he called me in and said he would like to expand our service department. The need to buy and move the duplex was obvious. He had already negotiated the price. I understood all of this, but I could not see why I was being involved. It soon became clear.
My father, who was chairman of the county commission, felt that his owning the “Sewing Circle”, even if it were for just a few days, would not be appropriate. But I, as a young man, would probably outlive any taint.
And I almost did. But I was the owner of the last brothel in Chattahoochee. On the day of the interview I had truly hoped that no one else in town would recall this fact. Dave remembered.
Ms. Eidse left, and later sent me the verbatim interview transcript, in all its detail. Mercifully in Voices of the Apalachicola she edited that part out. I recommend that you read her book. It is well done and part of this region’s history.
But I have the real transcript. Just try to get that!

(Note: I have changed all names except Ms. Eidse’s. The other characters in this article are very real.)

Elephants Have Feelings, Too!

By Homer Hirt
Regular readers of the Jackson County Times will have no problem understanding why I am writing about elephants and their feelings. To catch others up on the plot, I recently acquired a “life size” baby elephant statue, standing four feet high and extending from butt to tip of trunk a length of six feet. I had a reason behind this purchase, and I can assure you that it is a good one.
My action was not impulsive. I admit that I had harbored some resentment against the stylized “aardvark” symbol foisted off on us by our Party. I seethed inwardly for a time, and then began telling my fellow Republicans that we deserved something better.
I researched the matter.
The elephant as the Republican symbol was created by Thomas Nast, a political cartoonist that drew for Harper’s Weekly in the 1800s. He wished to differentiate between the two major parties and settled on the pachyderm for us and the donkey for the Democrats. In my favorite cartoon he depicts the elephant, wild eyed and furious, mashing Tammany Hall and breaking political planks labeled “Reform”, “Inflation” and “Repudiation”, while the donkey, clad in a lion’s skin and labeled “Caesarism” flees in panic. So there is no historical reason for the Republican Party to retain the aardvark as its emblem.
Here is another reason for us GOP folks to return to the real elephant as our symbol.
Elephants are very intelligent. They have the largest brain of any land animal. It is said that they never forget, something like the way that your wife never forgets. A month after Theresa and I were married, a shipmate came by and spent a couple of days with us. He and I sat with a bottle between us and spoke of days gone by, storms weathered, submarines chased, seaports visited and, eventually, girl friends. For days after his departure Theresa would get a strange look in her eyes and ask: “And just who was this___________?” Most of the time I would not recall, and I was smart enough not to tell her even if I did. I understand elephants never forgetting, but I have never figured out how a woman can have a memory like this. It is both retrospective and uncanny.
Elephants have a deep political significance, more than the bull moose, which was that “Republican’s Republican” Teddy Roosevelt’s animal of choice when he ran for office on a third party ticket and lost.
Once a very wise man said that getting something through Congress is like elephants making love: it is accomplished with a great deal of noise, anything nearby is in danger of being trampled, and it takes almost two years to see results. Unfortunately, some presidents have the ability to push harder for the results, but the first two similarities still hold true. And elephants have not changed, just Congress.
Elephants were the original proponents of “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it any more!” Here’s proof.
Male elephants, no matter how hard working and patient, eventually go through a time known as “musth”. When the moon is just right and the stars align, and the food is just so-so, a strange fluid begins to run out of a gland under each eye. This is when he gets moody and breaks his chains and steps on friends and enemies alike. If I were going to compare this to humans, I would paint this picture: Billy Bob comes home a couple of hours late, just as he has done for most of his married life with Sue Nell. Only this time he drives up in the yard of their double wide and stomps up to the door. His key doesn’t work. He looks around and his clothes, fishing tackle and shotguns are out in the yard. Sue Nell has had enough.
Billy Bob goes to the local jook, where the sawdust on the floor is what is left of the furniture from the night before. He begins drinking and trying to reason out what has happened. He gets past the reasoning and feels that it is time to strike. He orders a “long neck” beer, not because the beer is better than what he has been sucking down, but because a “long neck” makes a better weapon. He looks around the dim, dark saloon and picks out the nearest man and lets go with the bottle. After a long and satisfying fight, he ends up in jail, and the next day he sobers up and does not understand what has happened. He has been in “musth”, just like a bull elephant. And, just like the elephant, he goes back to work, and eventually his wife takes him back, and he is all right until the moon and the stars and the beer align once again.
So what do we call my elephant? I have decided on “Ron”, for Ronald Wilson Reagan. That is not his name, it is just what we will call him. My friend Boudreaux from Cut Off, Louisiana had a ratty looking dog. “What’s yo’ dog’s name?” asked Arseneaux. Boudreaux replied: “I don’ know his name, but I calls him Fideaux”. So I call mine “Ron” until I find out his name.
Every day we in the “Grand Old Party” hear about how we have become disorganized and lost our bearings. These problems may be traced to a seemingly innocuous logo. But here in Jackson County we are on the cutting edge of change. Ron the Elephant is leading the way. Just save us all from that dreaded time called the “musth”.
And from Sue Nell.

Collecting is Not for the Fainthearted

By Homer Hirt
In the July 30 edition of the Jackson County Times there appeared a picture of me and my statue of a baby elephant, and underneath it was a short piece written by Managing Editor Sid Riley. Sid is called the “managing” editor because he manages to take Thursdays off to play golf. He leaves Stephanie to do the real editorial work. This probably is the right way to go. Stephanie looks out for me and has always used a picture that shows my good side for my column. She also proofreads my columns and thus makes them readable and sometimes logical.

Sid “Got it Right” as far as he went. I did purchase a baby elephant statue, made of resin and weighing about 100 pounds. The statue is six feet long, four feet high and has the trunk raised, which is a sign of good luck. I did bring it back from North Myrtle Beach, accompanied by my fifteen year old grandson Stuart, who seemed somewhat bemused and amused by my actions. By now, though, he has learned to expect the unusual from me.

The statue is, as Sid stated, for the purpose of energizing our local Republican Party. We don’t need revitalizing. We have had a steady growth in members for several years, and are over 7200 voters strong. We do, however, need another “mascot”, one that does not look like an aardvark. An aardvark is an anteater, and he sucks ants up from the ground and according to my sources, makes a snuffling sound. As an aside, any animal that sucks ants up is almost bound to make a snuffling sound, or worse. An elephant pulls branches down from tall trees and steps on things on the ground, probably aardvarks and people that annoy him. This is why there is usually a pink squishy substance between an elephant’s toes. It doesn’t pay to argue with an elephant. He also trumpets loudly, both before and after stepping on aardvarks and people.

I have not, however, started collecting elephants, or anything else. I have known some strange collectors in my time. One of the most unusual was a fellow sailor in Utility Squadron Five on the island of Guam. Every night he would lie on his bunk in our Quonset hut and, with an empty aspirin bottle in one hand and tweezers in the other, carefully remove belly button lint from his navel and put it into the bottle. His avowed purpose was to stuff a pillow with the material. I lost track of him, thankfully, but I suspect that if he was successful he has a collectible that would set the “Antique Road Show” on its ear. He has probably been married and divorced at least four times. The divorces would follow his answer to the question from his brides: “Honey, what in the world is this pillow stuffed with?”

My wife Theresa collected Elvis Presley things, as did many young women of her time. When we got married I rented a small house in Chattahoochee and one day we began unloading her truckload of possessions. “Be careful of those boxes” she said, as I picked up one of two cardboard cartons. “Glassware?” I queried. “No, Elvis stuff” she replied. She had never mentioned Elvis to me before that day. Two years before I had broken up with a young lady, partly because she liked Elvis and I did not. And here I was married to an Elvis fan and had no way out. No, make that an Elvis “fiend”. For forty-two years I had to listen to Elvis music. He had songs for every occasion: Christmas and New Years, Easter and Passover, Fourth of July and Washington’s birthday, and countless other events thrown in. He even sung one about a hound dog or something, and some strangely colored shoes that he seemed to care for greatly.

Theresa’s sister in Maryland collects salt cellars. These are the little containers that look like miniaturized chamber pots, and show up in front of you at formal dinners. She has them stowed on shelves and in cabinets. I have not visited her for at least ten years, but I suspect that during this time she has added on to her home at least twice to accommodate the overflow.

But I am not a collector, except for some Navy and Civil War items. I am moderate in both of these, and I do not intend to begin collecting elephants. It is true that I showed up at our last Republican Club luncheon with an image of an elephant about twelve inches long and six inches high. I held it up and asked the assembled people what it was, and almost everyone shouted “AN ELEPHANT” and of course they were wrong. It was a statue of an elephant. The only person to get it right was David Carrel, who has a weekly column in the Times. Now, there’s the man to go to for financial advice. He can tell the difference between an elephant and a statue! Think about how sage he will be on his investment advice.

And now I have a much larger statue, a life size baby elephant, properly colored and soon to have pink paint between his toes to symbolize his ability to walk on folks that get in his way. And I did buy 100 lapel pins that look like elephants, with trunks raised on high. On the Internet I found a life size statue of a bull Indian elephant, complete with tusks, and, I assume, with pink squishy stuff between his toes. And if you have a bull elephant it follows logically that you would need a cow elephant. Africa also has elephants, and a full sized pair of those are available. The prices are a little high, but shipping is included for each, which is a positive point. The company guarantees satisfaction, although I cannot ever imagine not being satisfied with an elephant, as long as the trunk is in the air and the pink squishy stuff is in its proper place.

But collect them? Never!