cigarettes

My first question to Long, naturally, was what had the Feds found in the New Orleans apartment Earl shared with stripper Blaze Starr. Long fielded the question serenely. “The Feds ain’t going to find nothing in that place,” Long answered me in his raspy voice, while he lit up the first of several Camel buy cheap cigarettes with kitchen matches. “Why not?” I asked. Long blew a cloud of cigarette smoke in my face. “Because I burned all the stuff they are looking for,” Long said, as if that settled the issue, which for me it did. If it was between Earl and the FBI, I was on Earl’s side. I was the 21-year-old “political reporter” for the Ruston Daily Leader in 1959, my hometown paper. Long had agreed to an interview at the Ruston North Vienna Street residence of his sister, Lucille Long Hunt. Long had announced he would run for a fourth term as governor, but later Earl had to abandon that idea. He could not overcome a constitutional provision against consecutive terms then in existence.