“The iniquity of oblivion blindly scattereth her poppy, and deals with the memory of men without distinction to merit of perpetuity.”
——SIR THOMAS BROWNE
One day some of the VIP’s of the Long political hierarchy were gathered in the office of Governor Oscar Allen when a matter of legislative procedure was under discussion. It is worth noting for the record that the Governor’s chair was occupied by Senator Huey Long. Governor Allen sat at one side of his desk. The names of the others do not matter. Among them were highway commissioners, a state purchasing agent, floor leaders from House and Senate, the head of an upstate levee board, and the like.
Huey was issuing orders and lost his temper over the apparent inattention of some conferees, who were conducting a low-voiced conversation in a corner of the room.
“Shut up, damn it!” he shouted suddenly. “Shut up and listen to me. This is the Kingfish of the Lodge talking!”
From that day on he was “Kingfish.” Even Franklin Roosevelt, telephoning him from New York during the hectic maneuvering which preceded that summer’s Democratic national convention, greeted him with the words: “Hello, Kingfish!”
The self-proclaimed Kingfish was named Huey Pierce Long at his birth on August 30, 1893, the third of four sons born to Huey Pierce Long, Sr., and Caledonia Tyson Long. The family farm was near Winnfield, and by the standards of that place and time the Longs were well off; not wealthy, to be sure, but never in want. Winnfield, seat of Winn parish, is a small wholly rural community not far from the center of the state.
“Just near the center of the state?” Westbrook Pegler once asked Senator Long incredulously after watching him put his legislative trained seals through their paces. “Just near the center of the state? I’m surprised you haven’t had the legislature declare it to be the center of the state.”
Scholastically, Huey did not distinguish himself, and he took no part in athletics, lacking the physical pugnacity that is the heritage of most young males. His brother Earl, two years younger than Huey, frequently asserted that “I had to do all Huey’s fighting for him.” But as long as he remained in high school (he left after a disagreement with the principal and before graduation) he was the best debater that institution ever numbered among its pupils.
His first essay into the realm of self-support came at age fourteen, when he loaded a rented buggy with books and drove about the countryside selling these at public auction. In doing so he laid the foundation for what became the largest personal acquaintance any one individual ever had among the farm folk of Louisiana.