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Faubus lived in a beautiful big Fay Jones house...
Posted on 2010-Feb-12 at 12:10
Faubus lived in a beautiful big Fay Jones house his supporters had built for him when, after twelve years, he left the governors office with no moneyHe was then living with his second wife, Elizabeth, an attractive Massachusetts woman who still wore a 1960s beehive hairdo and who, before her marriage, had had a brief career as a political commentator in Little RockShe was extremely conservative, and was in stark contrast in both looks and outlook to the governors first wife, Alta, who was a good hill-country populist and the editor of the local paper, the Madison County Record
Hillary and I were ushered into the Faubus home and seated at a big round table in an all-glass alcove looking out on the Ozarks and the town belowFor the next four or five hours, I asked questions and Orval talked, delivering a fascinating account of Arkansas history and politics: what life was like during the Depression and World War II, why he was still defending what he had done in Little Rock, and how he thought President Nixons problems might or might not affect the congressional raceI didnt say much; I would just ask a new question when Faubus finished answering the previous oneHillary didnt say anythingSurprisingly, for more than four hours Elizabeth Faubus didnt eitherShe just kept us supplied with coffee and cookies
Finally, when men's rolex watch it was obvious the interview was winding down, Elizabeth Faubus stared hard at me and said, This is all very well, MrClinton, but how do you feel about the international conspiracy to overthrow the United States? I stared right back and replied, Why, Im against it, MrsArent you? Not long afterward, the Faubuses moved to Houston, where Orval was distraught after Elizabeth was brutally murdered in their apartmentWhen I was inaugurated governor in 1979, I invited all the former governors to attend, including FaubusIt was a controversial move among my progressive supporters, who felt Id given the old rascal new lifeThe way it played out proved them right, a classic example of the old adage that no good deed goes unpunishedStill, Id do it all over again just to have the Red-menace exchange with Elizabeth Faubus
After Hillary left, I went to see Dean Davis, told him I wanted to run for Congress, and promised to keep up with all my class work and to make time for the studentsI was assigned to teach Criminal Procedure and Admiralty in the spring term and had already done quite a bit of the preparation workTo my surprise, Wylie gave me his blessing, probably because it was too late to get anyone else to teach the courses
Arkansas Third District comprised twenty-one counties in the northwest quadrant of the state and was chanel paper bag one of Americas most rural congressional districtsIt included the big counties of Washington and Benton in the extreme northwest; seven northern counties in the Ozarks; eight counties in the Arkansas River valley below; and four in the Ouachita Mountains in the southwestThanks to Wal-Mart, Tyson Foods and other poultry companies, and trucking companies like JHunt, Willis Shaw, and Harvey Jones, the towns in Benton and Washington counties were growing more prosperous, and more RepublicanEventually, the growth of evangelical Christian churches and the influx of retirees from the Midwest combined with the success of the big companies to make northwest Arkansas the most Republican and most conservative part of the state, with the exception of Fayetteville, where the university kept things in closer balance
In 1974, Fort Smith, on the Oklahoma border, was both the districts biggest city, with a population of 72,286, and its most conservativeIn the 1960s, the city fathers had turned down urban-renewal funds, which they believed were the first step to socialism, and when Watergate figure John Mitchell was indicted a few years later, his lawyers said Fort Smith was one of only three places in America where he could get a fair trialWhat he would have gotten there was a heros welcomeEast of Fort Smith down the Arkansas River, cartier pasha and in the mountains to the north, the counties tended to be populist, socially conservative, and pretty evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats
The mountain counties, especially Madison, Newton, and Searcy, were still fairly isolatedA few new people moved in, but many families had been on the same land for more than a hundred yearsThey spoke in a unique way, using vivid expressions I had never heard beforeMy favorite was a description of someone you really dont like: I wouldnt piss in his ear if his brain was on fireThe rural counties in the southern part of the district tended to be more Democratic but still conservative, and the largest county, Garland, with Hot Springs as the county seat, usually voted Republican in presidential elections and had a lot of new Republican retirees from up northThe congressman was very popular there
There were very few blacks, most of them concentrated in Fort Smith; Hot Springs, the districts second-largest city; and in the river valley towns of Russellville and Dardanelle in the southeast part of the districtOrganized labor had a fairly strong presence in Fayetteville, Fort Smith, and Hot Springs, but not much elsewhereBecause of bad mountain roads and the predominance of old cars and pickups, the district had the highest gasoline usage per registered vehicle of any in fake d
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