Word: herman
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Rawhide Justice. Herman was 13 when his father first began to feel his way around in politics. The family lived in little (pop. 1,904) McCrae, 168 miles southeast of Atlanta, where Mattie Talmadge operated a 1,000-acre farm while her husband practiced law and became gradually disgruntled at the rarity with which McCrae needed lawyers. As a country boy, Herman fished and swam in nearby Sugar Creek, hunted, drove the family's 15 cows to milking, cleaned the dirty kerosene-lamp chimneys ("I don't know anything more disgusting...
Three times on Sunday Herman and his sisters attended service at the Baptist Church in McCrae. At home he listened while Gene Talmadge read the Bible or talked politics. When he forgot his chores, Herman felt his father's swift justice: a whipping administered with the stinging end of a plowline. On the farm, too, he gradually learned a special discipline: that he and the small sons of the Negro field hands with whom he played must eventually go their separate, segregated ways...
...triumphs. The Georgia farmers of the 1920s were being battered by the boll weevil, would soon be battered harder by the Depression. Gene established himself as their champion. He filed for state commissioner of agriculture in the 1926 election, swept out a corrupt incumbent. When he could spare time, Herman helped by tacking up posters and distributing handbills. But the boy was busy with his own politicking for vice president of his ninth-grade class. He also won, likes to brag: "I've never lost an election since then...
...addition to classroom politics, Herman was fond of history, biography and a study of the U.S. Constitution. Other pleasures: Greek and Roman classics, Gibbon's Decline and Fall. He stayed late only if the class was debating. Other days he went home to his chores. One afternoon in 1930, while Herman was picking turnips, the house caught fire and burned to the ground (with one casualty, a German shepherd dog named Al Smith). Gene, who was spending weekdays in Atlanta as agriculture commissioner and only weekends at home as a father, took advantage of the fire to move...
...BMOC. Graduating as salutatorian of his class, he argued against Gene's suggestion that he work his way through Georgia Tech. Herman got his own way: studying law at the University of Georgia as his father had done. With a car and more spending money than the average student, Herman became a big man on campus. He got Bs with little book-cracking, loafed, played poker, dated coeds. Remembers one: "He was pretty forward, but he was good company." Pledged to Sigma Nu, his father's fraternity, Herman helped guide a revolt by smaller fraternities against...