Then, adding a bit of news they had heard a short time earlier over the radio, they told him Huey Long had been shot.
Christenberry did not pause to call Baton Rouge. Without leaving his car, he backed out of the driveway and headed for the capitol. He made but one stop en route. That was at Lousteau’s combination sandwich counter and automobile agency, where the Airline Highway cut across the government’s newly completed Bonnet Carre Spillway over a bridge a mile and an eighth long, spanning the dry channel through which the Mississippi River’s flood waters could be diverted into Lake Pontchartrain. Final inspection of the structure had not yet been made; hence it was not open to general traffic. Wooden highway barriers blocked entry to it.
However, Christenberry directed the highway patrolman on duty there to open the barriers for him, since this would save at least six miles on the road to Baton Rouge. After ascertaining that Mrs. Long and the three children had not yet passed this point, he instructed the motorcycle man to remain on watch for their car, and open the barrier to let it pass over the bridge too.
Approximately seventy minutes after leaving his home, he parked at Our Lady of the Lake Sanitarium.
Earlier that afternoon, in New Orleans, General Ray Fleming, Adjutant General of Louisiana, had taken part at Jackson Barracks in a polo game between teams representing the 108th Cavalry and the famed Washington Artillery. During one of the late chuckers a hard-hit ball had banged against the General’s left foot, inflicting an injury not in itself serious, but so painful that before retiring for the night he borrowed a pair of crutches from the post infirmary and secured a left shoe he could cut to accommodate the swelling which had followed the mishap.
“Hardly had I retired,” he relates, “than I received a phone call from Governor Allen, who in a very excited voice said to me: ‘Huey has been shot!’ Realizing that I must have certain information to deal with such a situation, I demanded that the Governor stay on the telephone at least long enough to answer one question before I took action.
“The question was: ‘Is this an action involving many persons or is it the act of just one individual?’ This I had to know in order to determine what troops, if any, were needed to handle the situation.