Apple-Picking Politicos

The words Harry Byrd or the Byrd Machine don't mean much anymore in Virginia politics, or any politics. The only times he gets mentioned these days are when history books discuss the notion of "massive resistance" against school desegregation in 1950 and early 60s.

Harry Flood Byrd Sr. served Virginia in the U.S. Senate from the New Deal to the civil rights movement. According the legend, from his family's apple orchards in the Shenandoah Valley he ruled state politics, schooling up-and-coming Democratic lawmakers and shaping them in his image. He embodied the old guard, the segregationist fellow travelers who went along with the New Deal's economic equalization so long as race relations kept cool.

Virginia's Democratic Party has resurged of late. There were always Democrats in the state legislature and governor's mansion, even after the 1994 Republican Revolution, but now the Dems are excited. They feel like they've got the Big Mo'--Governor Warner, Governor Kaine, and now Senator Webb.

But gone are the days when Shenandoah apples shaped Virginia politics. More and more, the northern Virginia (NOVA) business roundtable sets the tone for the state. It's amazing how power bases can shift so quickly.

It reminds me quite a bit of the vanished Pork Chop Era in Florida politics, when the kings of tobacco and cotton ruled the legislature, and south Florida waited its turn.

Virginia Gobbler

When Lawton Chiles served Florida in the U.S. Senate, he would whisk away to the woods early in the morning, often leaving from Washington for his favorite turkey roosts in Virginia about 3:00AM and arriving on site to watch the world awaken by around 4:30AM. From interviews, I understand that it was the mystery of the turkey's entrance that entranced him--that moment when they suddenly appeared in the clearing. The kill was just the cap on the full experience.

I found a website describing turkey sign.

I'm not sure where Chiles and the rest of the Senate gobbler caucus hunted in the Old Dominion. The above picture is from the Shenandoah Mountains. As polluted as the mountain skies are nowadays, I'm sure the turkeys are still scratching up the grounds.

Operation Overkill

In October 1970, the Nixon White House targeted Florida for a Republican renaissance. Ed Gurney's victory over Democratic lion LeRoy Collins in 1968 gave 'em a taste of power, a seat in the U.S. Senate. Pinellas County, Orange County, and Sarasota County--the geography of a new Republican loyal opposition party in Florida. If both Florida's Senate seats turned GOP, the party could claim a firm foothold in the Democratic South. The papers would eat it up. The national party would perk up.

So, Nixon spent two days in Florida stumping for Chiles' opponent, Congressman Bill Cramer of St. Petersburg. He spoke to thousands in Cramer's back yard. Heck, he even rallied in Tallahassee--the first time in decades since a U.S. president had been to Florida's capital.

Attorney General John Mitchell came to Florida, Vice President Spiro T. Agnew. The Secretary of Transportation John Volpe flew in, too.

A Florida newspaper ran a great cartoon depicting an Army tank filled with Nixon and his emissaries, its long droopy barrel trained on Chiles' lone walking figure.

President Nixon later acknowledged to Senator Chiles that he knew Walkin' Lawton would prevail when he beat Farris Bryant in the primary runoff 2-to-1.

Writing Cinema

In film, we talk a lot about being heavy-handed versus being subtle...using a feather versus a frying pan to get a point across.

Seems that good writing and good film is also about where you make that distinction--oftentimes where you finish. In The West Wing, for example, Aaron Sorkin played around a lot with the set to suggest things. He used the set a lot.

I remember a scene, I think when President Bartlet contemplated war in the Middle East. For a somewhat subtle effect, the camera put Bartlet's profile shot beside George Washington's portrait. Or, at the end of season two and beginning of season one, when President Bartlet wracks his brain over whether to run for re-election, a tropical storm blows the Oval Office doors open and shut. At the big press conference, the storm has soaked Bartlett's coat. He's almost dripping when he addresses the reporters finally. It's like Shakespeare's King Lear; the outside mimicking the inside.

Other times, when Sorkin wants the viewer to remember the awesome scope of the presidency--or its limitations--he focuses in on a portrait of the White House hanging on the wall before moving to another scene.

In the William Golding's Lord of the Flies, the concluding scene rests your eyes on the trim cruiser in the distance, connecting you from the war on the island to the war on the seas. Makes you wonder if "civilization" beyond the boys' savagery is really that civilized.

The above picture of Steinhatchee Harbor, if you were filming it, could be sliced several ways for different meaning. You could keep the camera a couple hundred feet away, giving the audience a perspective shot of the harbor's size and the size of the fleet coming back to port after a long fishing day. Or you could focus in on one boat and look at each member of the crew. Or, you could focus on the boats quickly one by one.

Or, for the most intimate shot, you could set the camera right beside the skipper of one of the vessels, like a parrot on a pirate's shoulder, and see the world through his eyes. I wonder if that isn't the best way to tell a political story. One episode of The West Wing is called "In the Room." I think that says it all.

Coontie Cookout

As I've been exploring Florida's cracker lore, I pulled Dana Ste. Claire's book, Cracker: The Cracker Culture in Florida History, off the shelf again and scanned it.

I found more of a profile on the native Florida Coontie plant.

The evergreen plant is deadly to eat unless prepared special. It's also called the Florida Arrowroot, and was used by early settlers as a substitute for wheat flour for those who missed their wheat bread from home and didn't feel like cornbread.

To eat the plant's starchy tap roots without dying, you must crush the roots into a pulp, ferment the pulp in a treated solution for days, then dry the flour in the sun. If the starch doesn't the ferment long enough, its hydrocyanic acid will kill you.

Crackers did the same thing with cattail roots--and flowers. If I were in the wilderness, I'd go with the cattails.

That sounds like a folk song, "Coonties and Cattails."


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Ste. Claire, Dana. Cracker: The Cracker Culture in Florida History. Gainesville: University

Press of Florida, 2006.

Imperial Polk Revisited

I need more material on Spessard Holland. As important a role model was he was to young Lawton Chiles, he needs more profiling. There is not book available on him. Not even an essay as far as I know, even though he did push through the amendment to the U.S. Constitution banning the poll tax, after abolishing the practice in Florida in his state legislature career.

The whole notion of "Imperial Polk County" though is ripe for discussion and colorful writing. Not many counties get a moniker.

It's such a strong lesson I think in the link between geography and politics. The fact that Polk County is at Florida's center is poetic yes, but in a state as large and diverse as Florida, neutral ground is also hard to come by.

Whiskey George Creek

I was listening to some interviews from my trip to Lakeland and rediscovered a clip of someone telling how Chiles claimed he had seen a turkey spin its head around, 360 degrees.

It reminded me of Whiskey George Creek in Tate's Hell State Forest. What a great landscape. I visited around Halloween and the bony underbrush made me think of skeletons.

To me, more fun than hunting a turkey is just giving it a bit of a scare. They're lazy creatures and you've really gotta run them down with a bicycle or car to induce them to flight.

Chiles was buried with a couple hand-crafted wooden turkey calls.