In Louisiana: "We Got the Hook in 'Em Now, Bubba"

By Gregory Jaynes

The last time we saw Paris, we saw Sam Thomas, who is as native to Louisiana as a muskrat, dancing at Regine's, whither he had ventured from the George V, where he had a suite that he used as an office to organize a dinner at Versailles for 300 Cajuns, to make reservations at the Lido and the Crazy Horse, and to book the whole mob on planes and buses for a gambling sortie to Monte Carlo (he could have been doing all this at once; it is hard to say with Sam). When we caught up with him again this summer, he was on a train bound for glory, he hoped, rushing a gubernatorial candidate through 29 whistle- stops, roughly circumscribing the state of Louisiana in four days. Sam's wife Nita wishes he would take it a little easier.

Since that trip to France, three years ago this past winter, a degree of change has visited Louisiana as well as Sam. The oil and gas economy, crumbling badly then, is all but bust now. The man in whose name the fund- raising Parisian expedition had been made, Edwin Edwards, the Governor, has suffered two bruising trials on charges of making a small fortune through influence peddling, basically, and has been acquitted. Nonetheless, when looking at a possible fourth term, Edwards told Sam that maybe he should sit this one out. Sam agreed, thinking, "Ever since we carried him to Versailles, he's been acting like a king," and switched his support to Congressman Billy Tauzin of Thibodaux. Edwards eventually decided to run all the same. That is about where things stand now, except Sam had a heart attack a little while ago -- he is 57 years old -- and his wife wants him to slow down. And that is why we went to Louisiana to board Sam's train, to look in on his health.

In 1959, covering Earl Long's last race for Governor, the great A.J. Liebling wrote, "Politics is to the conversation of Louisiana what horse racing is to England's. In London, anyone from the Queen to a dustman will talk horses; in Louisiana, anyone from a society woman to a bellhop will talk + politics. Louisiana politics is of an intensity and complexity that are matched, in my experience, only in the republic of Lebanon." 1959 was the year Sam was working for Jimmie Davis, who wrote You Are My Sunshine and whose motto was "I Never Done Nobody No Harm," and who won. Sam, at 29, was made vice chairman of the commerce and industry board.

Sam Thomas Jr. has been a political junkie since he was a kid working for his father, who ran Sam Thomas Mercantile Co. ("The Poor Man's Friend") in Quitman. Nita first met him when he was 16, driving a yellow pickup, racing voters down dusty roads to the polls. They were married in 1950, and from there they went on to build a comfortable, prosperous life, largely through Sam's property dealings, and to have four children. One of them, Patti Harper, picked us up at the Shreveport airport with her own two offspring corralled in the back of her car, snarling for soft drinks. "We just had to do something about Edwin," Patti said, speaking of the incumbent Governor. "We were all tired of the jokes." Edwards' flamboyance, his taste for shooting craps and kissing pretty women, are legend. "There is such a thing as too much flair," Patti went on. "Anyway, Billy Tauzin is a solid family man."

We passed a hot, sticky afternoon in Shreveport, and in the buggy gloaming the train pulled in. There were ten cars, Pullmans and lounges from the past, cobbled together from museums and collectors at a cost of $100,000. For that price, you could buy a week's TV advertising in Louisiana, but Sam had argued the train was a better "hook." Indeed, there was a world of press aboard. This is Sam's genius, and presently he got off the train and took our hand in both of his and then thwacked us on the back and said, "We got the hook in 'em now, Bubba."

Directly, the candidate introduced his wife Gayle, his children, his parents and gave a little speech off the back car, the King Cotton, to a fair- size crowd of about 250. "How do you think Sam looks?" his wife Nita asked. We said kind of pale, otherwise all right. He's a big man, with a bald head the size of the moon, and we remembered he had more color that winter in Paris. Nita said she was trying to get him to embrace the foreign notion of rest.

We had a pleasant evening with a strong drink or two and went out next day into the steam bath they call morning in these parts and got on the train. Three long bleats from the whistle later, we were passing milkweed, / honeysuckle, blackberries, scrub pines, live oaks and town squares shimmering in the liquid heat. Our first stop was the village of Arcadia, where the feed store was having a sale on "baler twine and garden dusts." Gayle, the candidate's wife, spoke first because, after two days of nonstop speechifying, Tauzin's voice was worn raw enough to sound like the screech of a baritone cat. Sam, off the train, was working the crowd when a child shot between his knees. He said gently, without even looking at the girl, "Hey darlin', settle down," and went on shaking hands.

The candidate had taken the microphone and was saying in his rasp, "Arcadia, listen: Louisiana is coming together like it's never been together before. Isn't it time we started cleaning up this place?" just as a gentleman tugged at our sleeve. We said, "Yes?" And he said, "These timbers you're standing on. They're historic. Bonnie and Clyde were laid out here May 24, 1934. They were embalmed up there in the furniture store. The historical society has a re-enactment every year." If the train had not threatened to strand us in Arcadia, we would have found out how one re-enacts a double embalming.

The alliteratively named Selma Sumlin, who introduced herself as Miz Sumlin, got on board in Arcadia for a joyride to the next town. She wore a sun hat and a floral cotton dress, said forthrightly that she was 75 and that she had baked the pound cake she was carrying. We asked her what was the biggest issue going in Arcadia. She said, "It's pretty quiet." Just then a big old boy named Jerry Dingler said, "Yeah, the mayor's not under indictment anymore."

"Hush your mouth," said Miz Sumlin. "He was acquitted."

"Yeah," said Jerry, "he was acquitted of stealing tires."

"Don't write that down," Miz Sumlin commanded us, and we didn't.

Sam was busier than a California smoke jumper. He had aboard 15 industrialists, investment bankers and businessmen from Japan, Korea and around the nation (read: this politician isn't just campaigning, he is introducing money to the state before the election), and the air conditioning was failing left and right. Jackets went first, then neckties. We made a car- to-car inspection in an effort not to melt, and were reminded of our Southern mother's line, i.e., Southern women don't sweat, they glow.

Next stop, Grambling. Sam was once treasurer of the college here, as well as treasurer of nearby Louisiana Tech University. He knew practically everyone ^ listening to the candidate, whose voice was a painful crack. The midday blast furnace was so oppressive our socks were soaked.

Next stop, Ruston. Sam was once president of the First National Bank here. He knew the crowd. The candidate, perspiring so you could see through his shirt, was comparing Louisiana to the train: "Rich in history, rich in heritage, not as shiny as it used to be, but able to get back on track." An elderly man of the soil sidled over to us and inquired, "Do you think he believes all that horse manure?" Back on the train, even the tap water came out smoking.

Then on to Monroe, where Sam had providentially organized an indoor speech, with finger sandwiches and factory air. Salt circles appeared on everyone's clothing. Leaving that building with its high brick walls and Boston ferns, shrimp on ice and tall, cool drinks was like being told you had won the lottery at lunch and then at supper being called an April Fool. When told to reboard, we fools fell in line like a chain gang.

A rare hour with Sam as we approached sundown and Alexandria: Nita had talked him into pulling off his shoes and lying down in a Pullman. "I don't golf, I don't fish. This is my recreation," he said. "I love it." He went into the offstage dealing you do to separate a candidate from the pack and make him a front runner, and if this were a political account we would put the tricks into the ledger. Moreover, on the next day, we would have a quiet hour with the candidate and find him an intelligent, well-intentioned man with pragmatic ideas and lofty ideals. But we don't know his fellow Democratic contenders -- Jim Brown, Buddy Roemer, Butch Baum, Tom Clausen, Speedy Long (and we do not wish to arm-wrestle the incumbent) -- or the lone Republican, Bob Livingston, so we are sticking with Sam, who said, "There are 4 1/2 million people in this state and if I can" -- here he put his palms together and moved them as you would to describe the course of a river -- ". . . well, you get the idea. If you can make people see things your way, there is nothing more satisfying. Call me crazy." Sam said the train idea was just the "perfect hook. You knew the media would eat it up."

That night we lived in the Bentley in Alexandria, a town some Louisianians call Alick. The great Liebling best described this hotel: "The Bentley was built in 1908 by an Alexandrian lumber king who thought Alick was destined to be a metropolis; like a parent buying clothes for a growing boy, he took - several sizes too large." We dined late in the old hotel and Sam, grown giddy with exhaustion, suggested we "order just one more bottle of wine and get snockered" just as Nita blindsided him and put him down for the night. By next day she had lobbied him into going home to Monroe to rest. The trip into New Orleans was much like the day before, only not the same without Sam in the orchestra pit. When we chuffed into the Crescent City at last, a retired railroad hand told us, "We were on seven different tracks. We had to satisfy four different railroad companies. We made a route that passenger cars had never made before. It was a logistical nightmare. If you'da asked me, I'da said it couldn'ta been done."

We gave him Sam's number and asked him to repeat himself, word for word.