Louisiana Lawmakers of the Past Tell Memories : Political lore: In a state tourism promotion, the Southern art of storytelling is being passed on.

On the steps of the Louisiana State Capitol, the monument to political excess built by Huey P. Long, a smaller, temporary monument was erected to forgotten people who made politics the most-watched spectator sport in the Bayou State.

Here under a white tent, political old-timers gathered to pass on the stories of their generation to a group of wide-eyed schoolchildren who sat rapt with attention as legends and lore were passed down.

As part of Louisiana Open House 1990, a tourism promotion put on by the state, tents are being erected across the state to pass on one of the South’s greatest art forms--that of storytelling.

Johnnie Jones, a grizzled and bent black man who served in the state House between 1972 and 1976, starts off telling stories of his childhood in West Feliciana Parish, north of Baton Rouge.

He remembers a time when racism was a fact of life and when a parish doctor vaccinated white children with a needle and black children with a piece of tin.

“So, Dr. Singletary, yeah, I’m going to call his name, he asked kids what they were going to be when they growed up,” Jones said. “Most of the kids say they going to be a dairy farmer, or they going to be raising cotton.”

He explains how the children--”chirren” as he puts it--were vaccinated.

“If you’d say to him you was going to be a farmer, he’d say, ‘God bless you, God bless you.’ When he got to me, he asked me what I was going to be when I growed up. I said I was going to be a lawyer. He said, ‘What else you going to be?’ I said a lawyer and a state representative. He pushed me on aside and didn’t even vaccinate me. That’s the true story.”

The story draws a chorus of “oooohs” from the middle-school children growing up in a time when color doesn’t seem so important.

For Lillian Walker, another former state representative, a barrier of a different kind was broken--the sex barrier. Walker served from 1964 to 1972, and was the first woman legislator in Louisiana since the late 1940s.

“When I was first elected, someone who wanted to address the House would start off, ‘Mr. Speaker, gentlemen of the House and Mrs. Walker.’ My name got well known all over East Baton Rouge Parish,” says the prim Walker.

“I’ll tell you something that was bad for a woman to serve in the House was that there were not enough restrooms. For instance, the women had no restrooms because I was the first woman who had served in a number of years. . . . I believe now that those facilities have changed. The facilities they have now are beautiful,” she says proudly.

“But Lillian, they still don’t have a speaker in the restroom,” interrupts Louise Johnson, another former House member from north Louisiana who was in the lower chamber from 1972 to 1976. “The men’s restroom has a speaker in it, so the men could run out and vote if there was something they wanted to vote on. But the women’s restroom didn’t have one.”

“Yeah, you missed some votes because of that,” said Walker, who like Johnson has retired.

A few nervous giggles are heard from the kids, who sit forward on the benches to catch the words.

The storytelling this spring day is moderated by Chris Faser, who was executive secretary to former Gov. Jimmie Davis, the man who made the song “You Are My Sunshine” a national treasure and once rode his horse up the very same steps of the State Capitol.

Davis recalled later in life the reason he rode Sunshine up the steps in 1963 was because “he hadn’t seen my office before. And he hadn’t met the press.”

Faser’s boss parlayed the song into a B-grade Western movie career and became one of the legends of gospel music for writing “You Are My Sunshine,” which has been translated into literally dozens of languages.

Of such stuff are political legends made in Louisiana.

It’s Faser’s turn to weave a story for the children.

“You remember that day somebody brought a snake into the Legislature,” Walker asks Faser. “There’s something I want to ask you. Was that snake real?”

“Yes, it was real, Lillian. This fellow was deathly afraid of snakes. Someone had put a toy rubber snake in his desk and he almost broke his leg trying to get out,” Faser said, chuckling at the memory.

“One of the young pages came up to me and said, ‘Mr. Faser,’ he said, ‘I got a live snake at home.’ I said, ‘Bring it up here.’ We set it up with one of the TV people to interview this representative. This young boy had it wrapped all around him, put a coat over him. Just as they started the interview, he took the coat off, and stuck this snake in (the lawmaker’s) face with its tongue moving all around.

“He took off running, went up to the governor’s office. He said, ‘Governor, you’re going to have to move me somewhere else. Those people are going to kill me!’ ”

After the laughter subsided, Walker told a legendary story about Rep. Risley (Pappy) Triche, a colorful lawmaker in a political body that was stuffed to the rafters with such characters.

“You remember the time Pappy Triche got up to the microphone to handle that bill and he had worked on that thing, all the debate he put on it, and had everybody in the House ready to vote on it?” Walker asked Faser.

“Yeah, somebody sent up a note that said they were agin’ the bill. He said, ‘Now that I’ve given y’all the good parts, I’m going to give you the bad parts’ and ended up killing the bill.”

An uneasy silence followed the giggles from the schoolchildren, and Faser implored the kids to ask some questions.

“Come on, girls and boys, don’t be timid this morning. Come on, ask us some questions.”

“Was there any racism among the legislators when you served?” a young black girl asked Jones.

“If there was, I tell you, it wasn’t among the legislators. I couldn’t find it,” replied Jones, who today still practices law.

Johnson said she didn’t see anyone treat her differently for being a woman.

“I became known as ‘that woman,’ not Louise Johnson. I miss it. I love the old pot suppers down in Union and Claiborne parishes. I enjoyed the political arena,” she said wistfully.

After 45 minutes, the storytelling was over and the children made their way back to their school buses, swapping and embellishing the stories they’d just been told.

Jones, Johnson, Walker and Faser made their way back to their cars, retreating again into the anonymity of being former Louisiana lawmakers.