Hence the question of paying for the publication of _My First Days in the White House_ presented no problem. For that matter, neither did the seeming permanence of a few scattered centers of anti-Long resistance in Louisiana. Since the dictatorship laws enacted during the previous twelvemonth made it virtually impossible to defeat Long proposals in the legislature, or Long candidates at the polls, the fixity of a few isolated opposition enclaves was desirable because, to quote Mr. Long, “it gives me somebody to cuss out, and I can’t make a speech that’s worth a damn unless I’m raising hell about what my enemies are doing.”
Only one stubborn stronghold of this sort really irked him by its refusal to capitulate. This was the parish of St. Landry, whose seat was Opelousas. Always independent of alien dictation, this fourth-largest county in Louisiana had remained uncompromisingly anti-Long under the leadership of a couple of patriarchal autocrats: Judge Benjamin Pavy, tall, heavy-set, and wide-shouldered, with a roundish countenance against whose rather sallow complexion a white mustache stood out in sharp contrast; and District Attorney Lee Garland, short and plump, his features pink beneath a flowing crest of white hair.
Garland, much the elder, had held office continuously for forty-four years, Judge Pavy for twenty-eight. The latter had been elected to the district bench in 1908, after an exceptionally bitter local contest in which the leader of the anti-Pavy forces, Sheriff Marion Swords, went so far as to charge that one of Ben Pavy’s distant relatives-in-law was an individual the purity of whose Caucasian ancestry was open to challenge. Since Judge Pavy was elected not only then, but continuously thereafter for the next twenty-eight years in election after election, it is obvious the report was given no credence at the time. With the passage of years, the incident was forgotten.
The situation in the parish of St. Landry would not have disturbed Huey Long too greatly, had there not been the possibility that in some future state Supreme Court election the heavy vote of that parish might upset the high tribunal’s political four-to-three Long-faction majority. On this ground alone it might be important for the Kingfish to alter the political climate of the St. Landry judicial district before the larger demands of an approaching presidential campaign monopolized his time and energy.