Bob Hamm

MEDICINE'S GREATEST MIRACLE

Ed Clinton was the only other reporter in the Capitol press room when I came down from the senate finance committee meeting. "I had any calls since you been here?" I asked.

"Governor called about ten minutes ago," he answered. "Very important message."

"Is he going to give me that interview on the tax bill?" "Nope. Said to tell you to be at the mansion at 4:30 Saturday morning."

"Did he say what for?"

"Said it's time you went to visit your grandma."

"Hokay," I said resignedly. I had planned to take an LSU co-ed I was dating to one of the clubs across the river, but if the Governor said it was time to visit Gramma...it was time to visit Gramma.

I don't like to remember the Governor the way he was in that terrible year of his 1956-60 term of office, when his wonderful mind slipped the track and he embarrassed us all with his bizarre shenanigans. But in 1948, his mind was razor sharp and his political genius was at its zenith. As a young reporter--a year and a half on the capitol beat--I broke the cardinal rule of objective political journalism. I came to genuinely like the man.

Early on, the Governor found out I was a native of his beloved home town of Winnfield and that Mrs. Belle Kelly was my grandmother.

"You go see Miz Belle regular?" he had demanded after a press conference one morning. I still don't know how he learned of my family connections--I never mentioned it--but by then I had already ceased to be astonished at the governor's massive store of information about people.

"I go as often as I can, Governor," I lied, "but I stay pretty busy covering state government and all."

"Horse manure," he proclaimed. "I know what you young bucks in the press corps do with your time. You drink and run with the women. I'm going to Winnfield Saturday. You go with me and visit Miz Belle." He stomped out. Case closed.

That Saturday morning I was at the mansion at 4:30 a.m. with a hell of a hangover. And thereafter, about every six weeks, the governor sent word it was time for me to visit my grandma.

So there I was again on a Saturday, in the inky blackness before dawn, helping State Police Lieutenant "Pinky" Breaux load farm implements and supplies into the big limousine with the "Louisiana One" license plate on it. After we got it loaded, the Governor climbed in front with Pinky and I squeezed in between two giant sacks of fertilizer and rested my feet on a stack of brand new rakes, hoes, shovels and other farm and garden implements.

The governor made his usual inquiries about my grandmother's health on the way out North Boulevard to Scenic Highway. "She getting her nourishment and all the doctoring she needs?" "Gramma's appetite is as good as its ever been, Governor. And I don't know that she's ever seen a doctor or taken any medicine other than a dose of Black Draught Tea once a year."

"The Jameses are blessed with good health," he said. "Your great-grandpa, Tom James, lived to be 96, and I drove him to the state fair the year he died. I had a devil of a time keeping up with him. Your whole family is like that. I calculate Miz Belle is close to ninety now."

"Yessir," I said, "folks in my family live a long time. And with the advances in medicine, I guess some of us will be around longer than my great grandfather was."

"Deed you might," he said.

We were at the Mississippi River bridge now, and the governor's eyes twinkled with what we in the media had come to recognize as zestful anticipation of an approaching battle. He grinned at the tall smoke stacks of the plants in the industrial complex along the Mississippi. Suddenly, he leaned across the car, almost in front of Pinky, who managed to twist around him so he could see the road.

The Governor cranked down the window on Pinky's side and began shaking his fist vigorously at the smokestacks. "Belch out that black smoke," he shouted. "Belch out them dollars for your Yankee masters. Do all you can, 'cause the legislative session is coming."

He rolled Pinkie's window up and settled back with a satisfied smile. "When we get into session," he said, turning to face me across the back of the seat, "I swear before God, them smoke- belching, money-making factories is gonna need ever dollar they can get, because they gonna have a bunch of doctorin' and schoolin' and road- buildin' to pay for. You mark my word, we gonna spread some of that profit out among the poor people of this state when I get my tax bill through the legislature."

He turned to Pinkie. "Go by way of Opelousas," he said. "I need to tell Margaret to have some of her best girls down there for the session."

"Governor," I asked, "why do you always bring in prostitutes when the legislature is in session?"

"Well, for one thing, that bunch of tom cats is gonna chase whatever is around, and if the only thing there is the little girls holding jobs at the state capitol, they'll go after them. Some of them children are just out of high school, and I have a responsibility to their mamas and daddies. If I can keep all them roosters in the legislature satisfied with professional ladies, maybe they'll leave the help alone.

"And besides that, I can handle 'em better when they've been ale to take care of their sinning. If they stay down there any period of time without bustin' five or six of the commandments, they get mean as snakes."

Pinkie spoke up for the first time. "You been in a feisty mood, Governor. You getting your sinning taken care of?" "Nope. You know I don't run with women, Pinkie. The only vices I subscribe to regular are politics and horse racing. But you're dead right. I'm feeling damn fine and good. Damn fine and good."

"What's the secret, Governor?" I asked.

"It's one of them advances in modern medicine you was talking about earlier." He turned to Pinkie again. "Lieutenant Pierre Alphonse Pinkie Breaux, do you know...do you know at all...what the greatest miracle of modern medicine is?"

"No, Governor, but if it makes you feel that feisty, I want some of it."

"Just wait," the governor said. "You'll need it soon enough."

He settled back in his seat and whistled happily for a few minutes while we waited for him to explain the miracle. Finally Pinkie could stand it no longer.

"What is it, Governor?" he asked.

"I'll tell you," the governor said confidentially. "It's the prostrate massage."

Having delivered himself of this jewel, he settled back with a satisfied grunt and resumed his whistling. Pinkie and I assumed further elaboration would be forthcoming, and after about ten miles, it was.

"Do you know what the prostrate is, Pinkie?"

"No, Governor."

"When you reach my age, you will." He whistled for the next mile or so.

"It has to do with a man's plumbing," he said finally. "With peeing, mainly."

"Yessir."

"Your prostrate sort of lays back in the gap during a man's youth, you see. Then at about my age, it begins to announce itself. What it does, according to Dr. Feinman, it tends to swell itself up." He looked back at me. "You understand?"

"Yessir."

"When it swells up, your water pressure drops. Sort of like somebody stepping on a garden hose. You most likely wouldn't know this, Pinkie, but I have stood on the back porch of the Governor's Mansion for upwards of thirty minutes at a time with my whickerbilly in my hand, and not peed more than a thimbleful."

"Damn," Pinkie said. I could think of nothing to add.

"And when it's swoll up like that, it affects a man's outlook on life. He gets low in spirit and feels mean and cantankerous. But the massage is a miracle of modern medicine. After Dr. Feinman got done, my pressure come back up. Right now, I believe I could put a head of foam on the Mississippi River.

"Stop at a gas station when we get to Krotz Springs."

Mr. Earl's performance in the men's room at the service station was obviously of a satisfying nature. He not only whistled cheerfully for several miles afterward, but even raised his voice in song.

Then he stopped suddenly in the middle of "In the Sweet Bye and Bye" and turned toward me in a confidential manner. "I have a theory about it," he said. "About what, Governor?" He ignored me. He was talking to Pinkie again.

"Most people, particularly up in the hard Baptist country in North Louisiana, don't realize that the Good Lord has a sense of humor. He lets us men grow up feeling pretty smug about escaping from the curse He put on the womenfolk when Eve got to messing around with the old snake in the Garden. You know the curse I'm talking about?"

Pinkie said he didn't think he did. I didn't volunteer a guess, because in those days, we didn't talk much about things like that.

The governor was exasperated by our apparent ignorance. "Well, hell's bells," he said. "You know. A woman was cursed with that monthly thing. That...you know."

"Her minstrel," Pinkie volunteered.

"Yeah, that. But what a man don't realize is that about the time that his woman is relieved of her curse--shut of it completely--the Lord is going to rare back and activate the curse in him that He levied on Old Adam back there in the Garden. You know what that is?"

"The prostrate?" Pinkie and I asked in unison.

"Absolutely," the governor said with immense satisfaction. "Now you know about the Lord's little joke ahead of time. It might not surprise you like it did me."

The road wound on toward Opelousas. The governor did not resume his singing. He sat in deep thought for several miles. His voice was no longer cheerful when he spoke.

"There's probably a jillion old men suffering from prostrate right now in Louisiana, and even if they knew what was making them feel so sorry, they wouldn't be able to do nothing about it. This state is full of folks that can't afford doctoring or medicine. Even if there was a hospital they could afford, most of them ain't got no way to get there. Even if they had the money and somebody to take 'em in a car or wagon, five or six months of the year, the country roads are too bad to be traveled. "It's got to change in Louisiana."

His voice was low and intense. It was not the voice the public knew...not The Old Master Stump Speaker howling on the hustings. It was the real voice...the voice of a basically shy, deeply caring man. It was a voice very few of us were ever privileged to hear.

"Poor folks got to have medical care same as rich people. And their children got to have schooling and school books, and carry something in their lunch sacks besides a cold sweet potato.

"Farmers got to have roads to get their crops to market. Little babies born into poor families got to have a chance same as rich people's children. And folks that work all their lives and never do nothing to hurt nobody got to have something to look forward to in their old age besides sitting and rocking and being cold and hungry.

"Them that's got more than they need are going to have to share a little of it with them that ain't never had nothing."

Pinkie and I did not speak. We knew the governor was thinking aloud and neither needed nor wanted a response.

"Big industry is going to try to crucify me when I give my tax package to the legislature," he said solemnly, "but by God and Moses, when I'm done, they're going to pay for some shoes and books for little kids, and some decent roads...and some old farmer is going to get himself a hernia operation or a pair or eyeglasses. Or a prostrate massage."

It took a long time for the force of the governor's intensity to wear off. We rode in silence. He had touched me, and I knew Pinkie was feeling it, too. But something else was bothering Pinkie, and about 20 miles further on, it came out.

"Governor."

"What?"

"That massage."

"What about it?"

"Where?"

"Where what?"

"Where did he do it?"

"In his office, or course."

"I mean, where on you? What did he massage?"

The governor snorted. "I don't care to discuss the intricacies of the medical procedure at this time," he said.

When we got to Winnfield, Gramma wanted to know every word uttered by the governor on the way up, because...well, suffice it to say that her shrine--the top of the old Motorola radio in the living room--was the sacred receptacle of three things: a well- used Bible, a framed copy of the newspaper article on the assassination of Huey Long, and a picture of the Governor.

We talked through lunch and far into the afternoon, and I told her the things she wanted to hear: the Governor's plans for better roads, free lunches and textbooks for the school children and decent health care for the elderly. And about the Governor's concern for her nourishment and medical needs and his recollections of her daddy at the state fair when he was 96.

She sat there at the kitchen table, blinking back tears occasionally, and I knew that in this tiny old lady was the political strength of that most unusual man who called whores to the legislature to keep faith with the mamas and daddies of the young girls working at the capitol.

I didn't feel called upon to tell Gramma about the greatest miracle of modern medicine.