TENNESSEE: Eggs, Any Style

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The South demonstrated last week that its hooligans were politically impartial. Three days after Henry Wallace had withdrawn northward in a shower of garbage, Republicans staged a rally in industrial Kingsport, a G.O.P. stronghold in mountainous eastern Tennessee. Fourteen thousand people crowded into a parking lot and overflowed into the street. They were there to hear ex-National Chairman Carroll Reece, candidate for U.S. Senator, and Fiddler Roy Acuff, nominee for governor.

The meeting was going along fine. Roy Acuff fiddled The Great Speckled Bird, with his Smoky Mountain Boys backing him up in good old stomping mountain style. Carroll Reece flapped out his long tongue, grabbed a fiddle, and got in the act. But when Reece grabbed the microphone and started to speak, a rotten egg sailed out of the night. It hit him in the back. Two tomatoes, another egg, and a lemon spattered down. Acuff was hit in the side with a grapefruit.

The Kingsport News blamed "a few hoodlums." In New York, Henry Wallace said he was "very unhappy" to hear of the incident.