Free The Cornbread Mafia: A Homegrown Syndicate's Code of Silence and the Biggest Marijuana Bust in American History by James Higdon

press pool in tow-with the intention of arresting Hyleme George, Marion County turned the tables on him. The county judge refused to issue warrants and denied Sturgill's claim that it was a state matter by claiming local jurisdiction. So, Sturgill stepped out of the courthouse empty-handed, facing a crowd of angry locals and the assembled media. Stunned, Sturgill faltered, and Hyleme George took to the courthouse steps for an impromptu press conference.

    "Thirty patrolmen sent down here to arrest one liquor dealer for lending whisky to another one," Hyleme began, waving his cigar around for emphasis. "That's no charge. The charge is that they're hard losers. They're mad," Hyleme said, putting his arm around the man beside him, "because this man's brother was elected county clerk."
    That man's brother, Paul Clark, had defeated a twenty-year incumbent and state party patronage dispenser with the help of Hyleme George's new loyal voting bloc, Lebanon's black folks, whom George treated just like anyone else.
    "I don't think this is coming from the governor's office," George continued in remarks recorded by George Trotter, editor of the Enterprise. "He wouldn't tolerate it if he knew what was going on."
    The Harvard grad expressed surprise at the sore-loser allegation.
    "I'd be glad to take a lie-detector test to show that no politics were involved in this investigation here," Sturgill insisted over the jeers of the angry crowd.
    The spontaneous assembly, partial to George's point of view, heckled Sturgill on those courthouse steps, reminding him of his charges of prostitution.
    "Where are those girls?" the crowd shouted repeatedly. "Where are those girls!"
    A reporter didn't understand the dynamics of the situation, so the editor of the Lebanon Enterprise explained.
    "Gambling and liquor violations are a sin against the state," Trotter, the local newsman, said. "But prostitution is a sin against God. That's a serious charge," thereby articulating this Marion County notion that Man's Law and God's Law were not exactly the same.
    "And if he's a crook," Trotter added, regarding Hyleme George, "he's the nicest crook you ever saw."
    "For that time back when he was getting going, he was pretty powerful," Johnny Boone later said of Hyleme George, adding that George "loved to take chances . . . to gamble with circumstance, but he needed enough money to live on, had a big family to raise, so he wanted to make sure some of those gambles were for sure, too."

    That nice crook who liked to bet on sure things went on to help fend off a wet/dry referendum placed on the 1958 ballot by out-of-town Protestant moralists. With the dry vote defeated and the ABC officer's housebuilding plans on hold, Lebanon's nightlife turned the dial from 9 to 10, on its way to 11, from "wide open" to wider open.
    In 1964, George decided to build the business that would become the centerpiece of his legacy, Club 68, while he also decided to enter politics, which would become the other half of his legacy. He successfully ran for mayor of Lebanon in 1964, in part by charming voters when he chained two black bear cubs to the front of Club 68 to attract customers and voters. In one year he brought black music to a white audience at his club and gave black voters a seat at the table by relying on their vote in his mayoral run.
    For the opening night of Club 68 in 1964, Hyleme George's club manager, Obie Slater, booked blues legend Lloyd Price to sing his hits, "(You've Got) Personality," "Stagger Lee" and "Gonna Get Married," a dialog song between Price and his backup singers:

    The narrator of these Price lyrics could have been any of the bright young men who met their future wives in Club 68, relationships that often turned out surprisingly stable, given their tumultuous startsbonds that began as teenagers, dancing and drinking in Club 68 to first-class live music for years before they were old enough to vote, to serve in the military or to realize how good they had