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Thank You Mister Crump. There are other reasons for his popularity. Life under Crump is seldom dull. Many a Memphis citizen still sighs reminiscently at the memory of E. H. Crump Day at the fairgrounds in 1938. There were free rides, free lemonade, free cigars, free music, and free lapel streamers which bore the legend: "Thank You Mister Crump." Every year Crump hires the river steamboat Island Queen, loads it with cripples, shut-ins and orphans, leads a band aboard in person for a cruise on the Mississippi. The Crump charity football game at E. H. Crump Stadium is always an exciting autumn sport event.
Crump is now against gambling, for the masses. Once he grew so incensed at the fact that some Memphians were playing games of chance in Mississippi that he caused a signboard to be erected. It read: "Down the Road in Miss, are Gambling Dens & Dives. They Rob You. They Slug You. They Get Your Money." But Crump loves horse racing, seldom misses a Kentucky Derby or a meeting at Hot Springs' Oaklawn Park.
There are other conflicting aspects of the Crump character which fascinate his subjects. Despite his gift of vituperation he never swears. Neither does he smoke, chew, eat meat, or use coffee. His favorite tipple is Bulgarian buttermilk. He is widely traveled, can draw from his elephantine and well-compartmented memory odd information about any state in the union and almost any nation. He reads the New York Times daily.
He is often preoccupied with the mysteries of the solar system, trees, the habits of snakes and the villainy of Japanese beetles. His deep concern for birds (except pigeons, which have aroused his enmity by dirtying up Memphis) keeps the Organization in a recurring tizzy. Six years ago Crump announced with some nervousness that he had been looking around for bluebirds and had not seen any. Mayor Chandler and other prominent citizens promptly organized the E. H. Crump Audubon Society, took newspaper ads asking citizens to "protect our sadly diminishing birds." In 1943 Crump had another spell of worrying about birds; a little later County Commissioner Francis Andrews was discovered trapping tomcats in his backyard.
Mulling all this, many an anti-Crump man in middle and east Tennessee began to conclude that the Boss of Memphis was getting soft. In Nashville his enemies passed the word: "Old Man Crump is reading the Bible on street corners." A new hope began to take shape in the minds of those who dreamed of his downfall. Perhaps returning servicemen (who could vote without paying a poll tax) would like a dictatorship at home ass little as they liked it abroad.
But last week they knew they had just been dreaming. A poker-faced spokesman tor the Organization announced that five Shelby County officers had decided with amazing self-effacement not to seek reelection. Five new Organization men would run instead. The new men were all veterans of World War II.
* A deadly pocketknife which Beale Street cocks for instant opening by inserting a match beneath the blade.