CROCKETT ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL

Sometimes kissing somebody's baby is not a good thing.


From David Crockett: The Man and the Legend, by James Atkins Shackford

   Crockett and Huntsman were travelling about the country together, speaking from the same stumps. On one particular evening they were both billeted with a well-to-do and politically influential farmer who, though quite hospitable to both, was generally known to be partial to Huntsman's cause. The household eventually retired for the night, and the contenders for Congress were quartered in the same room. Huntsman went soon to sleep and David lay reflecting on how he might win both the farmer and the farmer's influence to his own cause.
   "It happened that this farmer had an attractive, young, and unmarried daughter. The arrangement of the house and sleeping quarters was such that at one end of the back porch was her room and at the other end was the room shared by Crockett and Huntsman. At length, arising, David quietly took a straight-backed chair across the wooden porch to the young lady's door, and proceeded to make a noise as of one attempting to force an entrance. Soon frightened screams issued from beyond the portal, and David, placing one foot upon the rungs of the chair, hobbled rapidly back across the dark porch, softly closed the door, and jumped into bed. Fully attired for sleep as when he had arisen, he feigned deep slumber. Soon the farmer burst into the room and rudely rousted out Adam Huntsman, who seeming sheepishly to affect sleep, pretended complete ignorance of what the farmer was talking about and complete innocence of anything but sleeping in the proffered bed. The irate farmer would not be pacified, for he had distinctly heard with his own ears Adam's wooden stump beating a tattoo back across the porch; and moreover he was perfectly well acquainted with Adam's reputation where women were concerned. David fortunately awakened just in time to prevent the idignant father from doing bodily injury to the man who had violated the hospitality of his home! As it was, David restored a semblance of order, and made himself security for Huntsman's better behavior for the remainder of the night--though the farmer roundly declared, in spite of Crockett's generous offers to appease him, that his voting intentions had now been completely changed, and he vowed that he would change as many of those of his friends as he could."

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Music: "Tennessee Babe," from "The Alamo" (1960) by Dimitri Tiomkin