When I was a young boy in the late 1950's, my daddy got me a summer job with Johnny Brewster, Clerk of Court, at the courthouse in Covington, Louisiana. Covington was a sleepy summer village, thirty miles north of New Orleans, close to Lake Pontchartrain. The most exciting part of our day was going to lunch at Mrs. Browns.

But, suddenly, we were the main news spot of all America. Our Louisiana Governor, Earl K. Long, was committed to the state mental institution in Mandeville, ten miles outside of Covington, by his wife Blanche. Earl Long had run off with New Orleans stripper Blaze Starr, and now a "sanity" hearing was scheduled at the courthouse in Covington.

Look and Life magazines writers and photographers began to show up in our midst. There was a buzz, a swirl of activity and talk.

I remember going to Judge Jones, who was selected to sit as the head of the sanity hearing. "Judge Jones, what are you going to do?" I asked in my youthful concerned teenage tones.

Judge Jones looked up at me without any expression on his face. Judge Jones is a good friend on my daddy.

"Don't worry Pees a Wee," he politely answers. "I'll figure it out."

The sanity hearing on day of occasion is big - really big. There are hundreds and hundreds of Louisiana citizens stacked in the Covington High School gymnasium (the new courthouse is under construction).

I keep wondering "What will be the reaction of all these Louisianans when Earl K. Long walks in?" "Will they boo and curse the governor for running off crazy like with New Orleans Bourbon Street stripper Blaze Starr?"

I stand anxiously in the hush, sweltering Covington High School gym, awaiting the grand entrance of our illustrious governor. Finally, after the State Police sirens cease, and amidst a dead, curious silence, walks in Earl. K. Long, Governor of Louisiana, committed into a state mental institution by his outraged wife, Blanche.

Long is wearing a huge $100.00 Stetson cowboy hat. He takes it off, and slowly, majestically, swirls and waves its expensive curvature high in the air above his head.

Almost in a united, magical chorus, the crowd begins to chant: "Yea Uncle Earl, Yea Uncle Earl!" And I too, as a young Louisiana boy, caught in the grip of pure Louisiana raw history, with chills running up and down my spine, almost by some compulsion, join in the crowd's chorus-chant: "Yea Uncle Earl, Yea Uncle Earl!"

Earl K. Long, without hesitation, proceeds immediately to the rear of the gym, where Judge Jones sits high upon a somber pedestal judicial bench. Within moments, Judge Jones raps his gavel, and says: "Case dismissed!"

What happens at the moment, we don't know. Uncle Earl immediately turns around and walks out of the gym, State Police sirens whisking him away. We quickly discover that Uncle Earl fired the medical doctor of the Mandeville state mental institution, and appointed his own doctor, who says that Governor Long is sane, and therefore: "Case dismissed!"

Uncle Earl and stripper Blaze Starr shack up at Green Springs Motel outside of Covington for the night, and then journey on to New Orleans, Texas, and maybe Mexico. Earl Long eventually becomes Paul Newman starring in the movie "Blaze" a Hollywood version of the life of Louisiana's colorful governor, Earl K. Long.

I travel back to my mother's Choctaw-Houmas Indian tribe in the Tunica Hills outside of Angola and St. Francisville, LA. We are eventually forced out of the Tunica Hills, and move to Pointe aux Chene (Point of the Oaks), Southwest of New Orleans, adjacent to toxic oil company waste pits. Somewhere in my bayou journeys, I meet an Indian-Bougalee, who mysteriously gives me reel-to-reel audiotapes of Earl K. Long. He says one day I will know what to do with them.

And then comes the millennium. I listen to Earl K. Long, on the tapes, say: "Truth crushed to the Earth shall rise again."

The Longs, no matter what you think, represented taxing the rich for the poor, and battling the elitist corporate multi-nationals like Standard Oil. Bingo! John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and yes, Huey P. Long, brother of Earl K. Long, have all been assassinated by lone assassins while J. Edgar Hoover was director of the FBI.

At some point I realize that part of my destiny is to reawaken the voice of Earl K. Long shouting: "Truth crushed to the earth shall rise again."