Strictly from Dixie

Southerners had adopted Buicks and bubble gum, telephones and two-pants suits, and even hired college athletes from Pittsburgh. But there was still a South the rest of the U.S. could not quite understand. That South loved buffoons, corny oratory and the smell of violence; its prophets were demagogues like "Tom Tom" Heflin, Huey Long, Senator Bilbo and the late governor-elect of Georgia, turkey-necked "Old Gene" Talmadge. Last week it got a new one--at least temporarily. Old Gene's heavy-lidded, 33-year-old son Herman (pronounced Hummon) claimed that he was now the governor of Georgia.

Even the South had never seen anything quite like the Caesarean operation by which Hummon was jerked out of obscurity, blessed by the General Assembly, bathed in publicity, and installed in the governor's mansion in his pappy's place. Neither had it seen anything like the comic opera alarums & excursions which followed it. During the week Georgia had endured not one but three governors. Both retiring Governor Ellis Gibbs Arnall and Lieut. Governor Melvin E. Thompson, once Arnall's executive secretary, had set up governments-in-exile. And Georgia had been all but inundated in a flow of tobacco juice and horrible verbiage.

The Question. In a sense, Hummon was the work of one Gibson Greer Ezell, an unknown storekeeper from little Monticello (pop. 1,746). One day just before last November's final election, Ezell ran a coony eye over the new Georgia constitution, discovered that it provided no clear answer to a question which had been bothering him and many other Georgians: "What if ailing Old Gene Talmadge died before he got inaugurated?" Ezell thought of an answer that suited him, and telephoned Hummon: "You better get some votes written in for yourself."

Hummon got busy. On election day, 675 hastily coached Talmadge backers scratched Old Gene's name off their ballots and wrote in Hummon's. This placed him second to Gene's 143,279. When Old Gene died, Hummon and an ex-Georgia legislator named Roy V. Harris set out to parlay this handful of paper into the governorship. They put their faith in a line in the constitution which read: "If no person shall have [a] majority (of the total votes cast) then from the two persons having the highest number of votes . . . the General Assembly shall immediately elect a governor." Their reasoning: if Old Gene was dead, he couldn't be a person, and if he wasn't a person he couldn't have a majority vote, even if the people had given him one.

Almost everyone else in Georgia was confused. Many a citizen believed that glib, liberal Ellis Arnall should just continue in office. Others, including Arnall himself, thought Melvin Thompson should assume the job.

Spit V Image. But Hummon and Harris were undismayed. They sent a reassuring message to the Atlanta "interests" who had backed Old Gene and to the country "wool hat" boys, who had elected him. The message: Hummon was just like his pappy. He chewed corn pone, had Old Gene's cowlick, and stood foursquare for white supremacy and the white primary.

When legislators began arriving in Atlanta for the election session, Harris set up headquarters on the 14th floor of the Henry Grady Hotel, began plying them with bourbon, cigars, veiled threats and glittering promises. Alarmed, the Arnall-Thompson forces followed suit, began an equally rough electioneering campaign. Wild rumors floated through the hotel lobby. The most titillating: blocks of six votes for Hummon were fetching $60,000.

Then came stage dressing. Hundreds of Old Gene's red-gallused wool hat boys invaded Atlanta to "see Hummon git it." After the legislature convened they jammed the galleries, carrying paper bags full of lunch. They jostled each other, talked loudly, and spat tobacco juice on the marble walls. They damned Governor Arnall. Bawled one: "Say, did you hear they give Arnall a medal at Noo Orleens for bein' the biggest nigger-lovin' governor Georgy ever had?" As the session dragged on, many took off their coats and slept.

Hooray for Hummon. They were rewarded. In the early hours of the next morning the legislature "elected" Hummon governor (161 to 87), and swore him in. Then, while crowds of the faithful ran ahead to pound and bay at the door of the governor's office, Hummon set out to get his rights. But Governor Arnall, a pudgy, cocky little man, stood in the way.

He met Hummon and his flushed and breathless followers in a paneled anteroom and announced: "I respectfully but firmly decline to surrender the office. I consider you a pretender."

Hummon turned pale, in the best historical tradition. He clenched his teeth, said, "We shall see," and turned on his heel. The crowd charged the door to the governor's office. Anteroom furniture was splintered and an Arnall aide had his jaw broken.

After that, the whole performance grew progressively more unbelievable, like something conceived late at night by three unemployed radio writers.

Pincer Movement. For three days the two governors jockeyed for capitol office space like raccoons snatching at pieces of cheese. On the first day Hummon got nothing better than a desk in a side office. But that night he had the locks changed on the doors. The next day he strode in at 7 o'clock and grabbed the desk in the executive office--from which Arnall had thoughtfully removed all his correspondence. Gathering impetus, Hummon also moved his family into the governor's mansion (which Arnall had vacated also), and left his wife and mother happily "unstopping the commodes" and hustling up meals.

Arnall beamed at the opportunity thus presented for speech. Cried he: "Last night under cover of darkness there was performed a perfectly executed pincer movement in which the locks were removed from these doors. This move was backed by the military forces of the pretender, Talmadge." Then, while the curious alternately booed and cheered and occasionally shot off firecrackers, he took over an information desk in the capitol rotunda.

He was denied even this. Hummon sent one Jimmy Dykes (237 boarlike pounds of smalltime politician) to sit at it instead. Said Jimmy, when Arnall arrived: "Ellis, you remind me of a hawg. Did you ever slop a hawg? The more you give him the more he wants and he never knows when to get out of the trough."

Rearguard Action. By now, Arnall knew it was time to get out--at least out of the capitol. He moved to a suite in the 17-story Candler Building, to continue his rearguard action. His most effective stroke: he sent Attorney General Eugene Cook into court to demand a permanent injunction against Hummon. Hummon had a quick answer--the courts just didn't have any jurisdiction over him.

During all this maneuvering, pedantic, plodding Melvin Thompson, the lieutenant governor-elect, kept as quiet as a porcelain nest egg. But at week's end he got himself sworn in as lieutenant governor. Thereupon, Arnall not only resigned but celebrated the occasion with a speech which surpassed all his previous efforts.

"I want you to know," he confided to a radio microphone, "that I have not tossed a hot potato to the people. The hot potato was tossed when thugs and ruffians descended on the people of the state. The hot potato was the time when I was barred from the state capitol by a man who had no right, except for claim to pugilistic endeavors, to usurp it."

While Georgians were presumably decoding all this, Thompson, a former schoolteacher, began to flap his wings in earnest. He dramatically proclaimed himself acting governor, announced that he was going to throw Herman Talmadge out of office.

Just what was going to happen next was anybody's guess. Mused one Atlantan; "Perhaps they'll ascend in balloons and pop each other with derringers." Hummon, in a moment of caution, began the new week by murmuring that he would obey the courts if they really decided he wasn't governor. The suit would come up in Superior Court on Feb. 7, would almost certainly go to the state Supreme court--which, Hummon cried, had been packed by Arnall.

To Georgians it looked only like the end of Act Two of the breathless melodrama. The third act might be even better.

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