But on this particular Sunday they did not bring the gun. Carl and
Yvonne went swimming and had a gay time of it, while the elders, seated
on the warm sand of the high bank, dandled their wonderful
three-month-old grandson.
“While they were swimming,” Dr. Weiss, Sr., recalled later, “I remarked
to my wife: ‘That boy is just skin and bones,’ and she said: ‘Yes, we
have got to make him take a rest, he has been working too hard lately.’”
Seeing them there, that pleasant afternoon, any observer would have
concluded that this was a family group whose members gave no indication
of being troubled by forebodings of an impending disaster.
Obviously the wonderful baby must have had a feeding and an occasional
change sometime during the afternoon, and no doubt he slept in his
mother’s arms once the party tidied up the camp ground, got into the
car, and headed homeward a little after sundown.
* * * * *
In his high apartment Huey Long, who had not left the capitol since
Murphy Roden drove him to Baton Rouge from New Orleans on the previous
afternoon, gathered his top legislative and political leaders for a
consultation about the candidate his faction should endorse for
governor. His brother Earl was not among those present, nor was he under
consideration for any elective office. The breach between them stemmed
from the time Earl ran for lieutenant governor on an anti-Huey ticket
three years before.
Justice Fournet, who stood high in the Kingfish’s favor, was not present
at the conference either. He did not reach the capitol until well after
dark. Another absentee was Judge Richard W. Leche of the Circuit Court
of Appeal, but----
“Huey had telephoned me to come up for the session,” he said in
recalling what he could of the day’s events. “However, I had been thrown
from a horse just a fortnight or so before, while vacationing with Mrs.
Leche in Arizona. The fall fractured my left upper arm just below the
shoulder. Huey had joked with me about it, saying it was a pity I hadn’t
broken my neck instead, and I replied that this illustrated once more
his readiness to make any sacrifice for the good of the state.
“When he asked me if I would come to Baton Rouge for the session, I
assumed this was because I had been Governor Allen’s secretary and knew
all the legislators. But since it was hardly proper for a judge of the
appellate bench to be a lobbyist even on behalf of the administration to
which he owes his position, I told him that with my left arm in an
airplane splint it was almost impossible for me to get around, and that
I would have to stay in New Orleans right along to have dressings
changed, and the like. He didn’t seem pleased, but nothing more was said
about it at the time.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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