It was the early 1960s when Big Jim Folsom came to my hometown. I was in junior high school but even I was aware that Big Jim’s reputation preceded him. To say that Big Jim, who stood six foot eight inches tall, was a colorful personality is to do the man an injustice.

Big Jim had served two terms as governor of the State of Alabama. During his second term he got into a lot of hot water for his heavy drinking, much of it in public. Now, as he was campaigning for a third term, he would appear on television and make headlines for allegedly being drunk on television.

Whether that incident occurred before Big Jim stumped in my hometown of after I can’t recall.

Fulton, Ala., was a town of about 500 back then. When the news got around that Big Jim was going to address voters from the steps of the drug store downtown, it appeared to me that every one of those 500 were on hand that day to hear Alabama’s most colorful politician.

When Big Jim arrived on the day in question in 1963, he shook a few hands and eventually went around behind the drug store. I had worked my way to the edge of the big crowd and could see Big Jim standing alone behind the drug store, right up next to it in the shadows. I saw him take out the bottle and take a swig. I may not have known a whole lot back then but I knew it wasn’t Listerine.

Eventually Big Jim appeared from behind the building and climbed the front steps to the drug store. There, towering above the populace of Fulton, he made a campaign speech none of which I recall today.

No doubt he told the voters how it would be an honor to serve the good people of Alabama again as their governor ... how he’d fight for better schools, better roads and better pensions. Stuff like that. As it turned out, Big Jim didn’t prevail in the election. He lost to a guy who was physically a pipsqueak next to Big Jim; a guy named Wallace.

Again, I was in junior high school. I still had years ahead of me in the classroom. I’d eventually have classes in civics, Alabama history, government and political science. Really, though, the best lesson I ever got in that regard was the one I took away from Big Jim’s visit to my hometown: It’s not what’s said from the front steps of the drug store that matters; it’s what’s going on behind the drug store that really counts.

Bob Morgan is a retired, award-winning journalist and an author.