Fannie Flagg - Standing in the Rainbow

Somehow, having people read what he said in black and white was not something Hamm had counted on. Hamm had assumed that no one was listening. The reporter with the love beads had assumed that printing the speech would damage Hamm even further. However, in Akron, Ohio, the reporter's father, a World War II vet like Hamm, picked up the paper his son had wrapped his dirty clothes in when sending them home for his mother to wash. After he read the speech, the man said to himself, "Yeah, buddy." And sent mimeographed copies to all his friends, who sent them to their friends. Instead of the article doing damage to Hamm Sparks, as the reporter had hoped, his father stopped paying his college tuition, making him suddenly eligible for the draft.

Love Beads had to hitchhike all the way to Canada.

Soon, copies of Hamm's speech were slowly but surely making the rounds of every VFW and American Legion hall. Police stations, firehouses, and union halls across the country stuck it up on their billboards and Hamm started to receive hundreds of letters of support and contributions from every state. A month later the headline in one major magazine read: HAMM vs. EGGHEADS: HAMM 10, EGGHEADS 0.

This set off a number of other articles. Soon, a spokesman from the NRA called and asked if they could name a gun after him, and when the sale of LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT bumper stickers almost doubled in a week, the printing company sent him a thank-you note with a nice donation.

People thought this sudden groundswell of support was what gave Hamm the misguided notion that he should run for president.

The day Hamm made his surprise announcement, Cecil Figgs was delighted, and went weak in the knees just thinking about all the wonderful parties and entertainments he could plan at the White House. Vita was more ambivalent. She would never stand in the way of anything he wanted, of course, but she was deeply uneasy about this decision.

Politics was no longer just a bunch of men in a back room making deals. It was lethal business. People were getting killed. And Hamm already had a lot of political enemies. But for Hamm not to run would almost be the same thing as killing him. Later that night she glanced down and beheld the sight of the de facto governor of the state and perhaps even the next president of the United States asleep at her breast and thought to herself, "God help us all."

Hamm's unexpected and rash decision to run for president had caught everyone off guard, but no one more so than Betty Raye. He had not discussed anything with her. As usual, she had no idea he was going to do it until he did it. And almost overnight, it seemed, Hamm was off and running, starting to campaign all over the country, and she was really left in the lurch. Her number one "assistant" was no longer there. Before he left he promised a panicked Betty Raye she had nothing to worry about, that nothing would really change, they could handle everything over the phone. This worked for a while but as the days went by Hamm was becoming less interested in the state and more interested in lining up his campaign; in fact, he was becoming harder and harder to get in touch with.

When Hamm was out of the state, Wendell helped her as much as possible but more and more Hamm was dragging Wendell and the rest of the staff off with him, leaving her alone for days at a time. Consequently, Betty Raye wound up trying to run the state by herself, a job she'd never wanted, did not know how to do, and had not been trained for. For the first time since she had been elected governor, Betty Raye was forced to start reading what she was to sign and even to make decisions by herself. Terrified that she would make a mistake, she stayed up until three and four o'clock in the morning, poring through books, trying desperately to learn as fast as possible how state government worked, while trying to deal with her two children as well. Hamm would call her from time to time and give her a pep talk, tell her he knew it was hard but that he had a duty and an obligation to the people of America to speak out on their behalf. This might be all well and good for America, she thought, but in the meantime she was left holding the bag, having to make decisions without any help. But she did the best she could. And a few people may have been surprised when their bond issue passed and was signed with the advice and recommendation she had received from Alberta Peets, who had been there and knew what she was talking about. She told Betty Raye she thought an appropriation of $15 million for the restoration of the Mabel Dodge Prison for Women was a fine idea.

Suddenly Betty Raye had to take a good hard look at what was really going on in the state. Paving roads and promoting business and building bridges was fine but she began to see a lot of little things that were wrong that Hamm had been too busy to be bothered with. She began to read all the letters addressed to the governor from women all across the state, letters that previously had always been answered by someone in Wendell's office. Betty Raye found herself being touched and deeply moved by the real problems she read about. Women whose husbands had either died or left them, with no way of making a living.

Some had even had to give up their children. Old women who had worked all their lives and had wound up penniless and without a place to go. Hundreds of letters came pouring in, their writers hoping that because she was a woman she would understand, letters they would never have written to another politician.

Betty Raye had always signed papers and done everything from upstairs. But now there were so many to sign it was getting harder to do. One morning she walked into the governor's office, and for the first time sat down behind Hamm's desk and pushed a button she hoped was the right one.

Someone she did not know answered and said loudly, "Yes?"

Betty Raye jumped back.

"Yes," he said again.

She then leaned forward and asked in a small, apologetic voice, "Could you please bring me a list of all the state trade schools, if it's not too much trouble? "

"Who is this?" the voice said.

"It's the governor," she said, surprised to hear it herself.

There was a long pause and then the sound of sudden realization. "Oh. Oh… yes, ma'am, right away."

Betty Raye looked around the big room and waited. After a moment she picked up the nameplate on the desk that read GOVERNOR HAMM SPARKS, looked at it, then quietly opened a drawer and put it in and closed it.

Hamm was proud of all the trade schools he had opened but Betty Raye, who had never bothered to ask, discovered to her dismay that trade schools tended to be for males only. She also found out that the majority of the state scholarships offered were for boys. There were boys' clubs, mentor programs, sports scholarships, all for boys, and nothing for the girls. Young boys who got into trouble were sent to boys' farms and received help. Girls had few places to go.

That's not fair, she thought. Betty Raye knew she had no real political power but the day she walked into a decaying and crumbling rat infested building that served as the state school for the deaf and blind was a turning point. These were the children of the poor whose parents had been unable to care for them at home. She saw for herself how badly those children needed a clean place to live and study and how terribly understaffed and underpaid the teachers were. The worst moment was when a blind girl came feeling her way through the crowd, thinking Betty Raye might be her mother, and, once beside her, kept pulling at her skirt, repeating, "Momma, Momma," over and over. Betty Raye was so shaken she could hardly make it to the car. She went home and sobbed. The little girl looked just like Beatrice Woods might have when she had been that age.

She did not know how she was going to do it but when Hamm came back for any length of time she was going to insist that if she was going to remain as the governor he was going to have to do something about these things.