This is an opinion column.

I’m not certain how much of what I’m about to tell you is true, only that it happened.

Not long before Birmingham Mayor Larry Langford surrendered to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, a colleague at the newspaper where I worked came to show me a gift Langford had given him. He had been out to Langford’s home in suburban Fairfield for a unique sort of exit interview.

He held up a portrait. It was about the size of a tray you’d use for a Mother’s Day breakfast in bed and the frame didn’t look cheap. It was from Langford’s time in the Air Force, the sort of faintly colored photograph that looks touched up with watercolors, common among service members once, and the kind of thing you might leave your children as an heirloom. Langford’s face was smooth, his mustache thin, his narrow, bird-like face framed by his service-issued cap and the fleece lining of his bomber jacket. A life of politics and corruption was still ahead of him.

Also, prison.

As they finished the interview, Langford had fetched the portrait from another room in the house and given it to him as a goodbye gift.

“I want you to have this,” Langford had said, explaining he wouldn’t be needing things like this where he was going.

It was from Langford’s time in the Air Force, the sort of faintly colored photograph that looks touched up with watercolors, common among service members once, and the kind of thing you might leave your children as an heirloom.

Fast forward a few years.

Langford went to prison and I changed jobs, from the alt-weekly where I covered the mad mayor’s foibles to AL.com. About the time I started work here, we moved to our new offices on 1st Avenue North. Each of us was told to pack up our old desks or have our piles of junk thrown away. My new colleague, John Archibald, shoveled piles of papers and folders into bankers boxes when he unearthed a familiar looking portrait from under a pile of trash on his desk. Even the frame looked the same.

“Where did you get that?” I asked.

Langford had given it to him as a goodbye gift, not long before he left for prison, John said.

“I want you to have this,” Langford had told him, explaining he wouldn’t be needing things like this where he was going.

Larry Langford was someone you could never really know. He was funny, personable and the sort of politician that, if you let your guard down, would murder the truth right in front of you. I wrote about him for years, and I still wonder how much of what I reported was accurate.

Take this story, for instance, which Langford shared whenever the opportunity presented itself, frequently when speaking to school children.

Langford said he learned not to steal early in life while growing up in Birmingham’s Loveman Village housing project. After his mother caught him shoplifting a package of cookies, she tied him to a bedpost, cut a cord from her iron, and whipped him with it. Leaving him tied there, she made dinner for her other children, and when done with that, beat him some more until his stepfather had to take him to the hospital. On the way home, his stepfather drove him by the Birmingham jail to show him where thieves ended up.

Langford told this story lovingly.

I recounted that story in a column. A night or two after it was published a doorman at a bar I frequented stopped me. His older brother and Langford had been friends growing up, he said.

“Larry didn’t grow up in Loveman Village,” he said. “That man’s from Fountain Heights.”

I still don’t know who was right.

And if that sounds ridiculous, I’ll give you another.

Langford was born on March 17, Saint Patrick’s Day, but at some point, news reports got mixed up which year.

Some said 1948, others 1946.

No one who ran background research on him could find a definitive public record. When asked which was correct, Langford stubbornly refused to say.

His obituary today says he was 72. I’m still not so sure.

Birmingham Mayor Larry Langford hits the ball before the start of the Rickwood Classic at Rickwood Field in Birmingham, Ala., Wednesday May 28, 2008. (Birmingham News/ Mark Almond)

Media master

Langford became a celebrity in Birmingham as one of the city’s first black TV reporters, and throughout his career, he used what he learned then to bend the media to his purposes.

In 2007, when Langford was still a Jefferson County Commissioner but running for Birmingham mayor, I was leaving a commission meeting at the courthouse when I heard him screaming and cursing down the hall. I jumped backward out of the elevator I was getting into and walked toward the sound. One of his office staffers stood in front of him, tears running down her face as he cussed her some more.

In front of both of them were at least three TV photographers, all with their cameras pointed at the floor or ceiling, all ignoring what was happening right in front of them. I asked one photographer what was going on. He shushed me, shook his head side-to-side and under his breath murmured, “Don’t, don’t, don’t …”

“Commissioner, what was that all about?” I asked.

“Why is it any of your damn business?” he snapped.

“Well, when I hear a county commissioner screaming and cussing down the hall, it makes me curious,” I said.

“It’s none of your damn business,” he said.

I’d learn later that his staffer had interrupted him to get his signature on a document while he was preparing for an interview.

I tell this story when I speak to journalism students, who all are rightly confused by it. That’s when I have to pull my iPhone from my pocket and remind them those things didn’t exist then. Today an eruption like that would be live-streamed on Facebook, if not by the hapless TV photogs, then by some lucky bystander. The world is better now because of the iPhone’s unblinking eye.

But then? The TV folks asked about some issue related to the mayor’s race, and that’s what appeared on the evening news. All ignored the blow-up. Such was the spell Langford had cast, and also the blame the media must share for where it would lead.

And once his TV interview was done, Langford had his arm around my shoulder and tried to woo me back to his graces with gossip about a city councilman’s recent arrest. That was his way.

I wrote about the scene in the hall, anyway.

And it didn’t make a damn lick of difference.

Langford’s appeal to the media is something familiar to almost everyone today. He’d say anything, the more shocking the better. Oh, if he had had Twitter then.

And It worked on voters, too.

Like Bill Cosby bad-mouthing teens for wearing baggy pants around their knees or Morgan Freeman’s bat-wielding Joe Clark in “Lean on Me,” Langford appealed to white suburbanites and older African-Americans who were similarly terrified of young black men. During a spike in urban crime in the 1990s, he said in public speeches that what Alabama needed was a knee-high electric chair. He’d hold his hand above the ground and below his waist, so everybody got the joke.

And then there was the speech. It began this way.

“You know what’s wrong with (Insert: Birmingham, Alabama, America)? We just don’t beat the kids like we used to,” he’d say before slipping into the anecdote about his mother and the cord.

Forget poverty, education, job opportunities. The underlying cause of all social ills, Langford argued, was abandonment, in homes and in schools, of corporal punishment. I heard it many times. The first time I thought to myself, nobody’s falling for this right? But then I looked around. Heads nodded. An “uh-huh” here. A “you got that right” there.”

And of course, “Amen.”

Langford tugged two strings tied to Birmingham’s heart. One was insecurity. The other was pride.

Back then, the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce hosted a group of business executives, community leaders and elected officials on its annual “Big Trip” — a sightseeing tour of a more prosperous city that wasn't making the same mistakes as Birmingham. When they went to Nashville, I happened to be in town visiting my brother, so I slipped uninvited into their group.

The first event I attended was a panel discussion on diversity. About five Nashville African-American businessmen and women sat on a stage and mostly talked about bad experiences they’d had in Birmingham. One harped on a lunch he’d had at the Birmingham Country Club, where the only other African-Americans were the ones serving food. The Birmingham guests were clearly uncomfortable.

To myself, silently I questioned the diversity panel’s diversity. Where was the Asian panelist? The Latino? The LGBT?

But Langford said his quiet part out loud. He put one foot on the auditorium seat in front of him and stood above them all like Washington crossing the Delaware. Never in his life had he been treated in Birmingham the way they described, he said.

“And if I had $15,000 a year in disposable income, I damn sure wouldn’t spend it on no golf club,” he said.

The Birmingham visitors — black and white — burst into laughter and cheers. A relief spread over the crowd like the air conditioning flushing a hot room. I felt it, too.

Later, I crashed the Chamber’s after party at the top of one of Nashville’s taller office towers. Langford sat on a perpendicular couch with a cocktail and a plate full of petits fours on the glass coffee table in front of us. I don’t remember him touching the drink. The petits fours he devoured like a man just out of prison.

I tried to get him to open up. I don’t remember whether it was the shoes, the watch, his tie or his suit I complimented. I do remember what he said next.

“Why does everyone ask me about my clothes?” he said. “What am I supposed to wear?”

And then he said, “I don’t wear no cheap shit from JCPenney.”

That’s the only time I’m confident Larry Langford ever told me the truth.

Birmingham City Councilor Larry Langford interviews candidates for council position during open interview session in a 1978 file photo.

Nuts and bolts

In the 1970s, Langford’s first elected office was on the Birmingham City Council. He wore stylish leisure suits then, when it was still possible for “stylish” and “leisure suit” to sit next to each other in the same sentence. His ties looked like lava lamps had erupted on them, and his hair was the sort of afro that could detect gravity waves across deep space.

After two years on the council, he announced he would run for mayor.

Two things worked against him.

The first was Richard Arrington, a city councilman and biology professor at Miles College. Arrington won the election, defeating incumbent mayor David Vann to become the city’s first black mayor.

The second was the thing with the nuts and bolts.

Langford had left his TV reporting job before joining the city council, but the council was only part-time. To make a living, he worked as a salesman for an industrial supply company, and he quickly landed a lucrative deal — a no-bid contract with the City of Birmingham Parks and Recreation Department.

“What really started happening, I’d order and get more than I would order,” park board supervisor Jim Rotenberry told the Birmingham Post-Herald. “When we’d give him a purchase order for a certain amount, he’d duplicate it.”

The story saddled Langford with a reputation as a crook.

But what might have worked against Langford worst of all were the suits, the ties, and especially the hair.

Years later, Langford moved to the adjacent industrial suburb of Fairfield, where he ran for mayor and won. When he did, the news stories noted his muted tone and more conservative haircut. Some even called him “less militant.”

But here’s the thing: Compare the things Langford said when he ran for Birmingham mayor in 1979 to the sorts of things he said when running for mayor in 2007. On the Audacity Meter, they hit the same level.

“If you want to stop crime in this city, parents have to teach children once again to start respecting other people’s property and parents have to start respecting other people’s property,” he said in 1979.

And he blasted an effort then underway to preserve the abandoned Sloss Furnace as an industrial museum, which he called a “rusted-out monstrosity” that he said should be blown up to make room for an industrial park. (Today Sloss is a cultural landmark and public events venue.)

“At the rate things are going, we are going to be the most culturally enlightened group of unemployed people you ever laid eyes on,” Langford said of the museum plans.

Compare any of that to “beat the kids” or his jokes about a knee-high electric chair. Despite what the press would say, his tone never changed. Only his haircut and the clothes.

Larry Langford poses on Main Street at Visionland. (Birmingham News/ Charles Nesbitt)

VisionLand

It’s not clear when Bill Blount began buying clothes for Langford, but by the late 1990s Langford, then mayor of Fairfield, was directing millions in bond deals to Blount, a former head of the Alabama Democratic Party and a Montgomery-based investment banker whose specialty was matchmaking large Wall Street banks with local officials.

One of those bond deals raised $60 million to build Langford’s signature achievement — an amusement park called VisionLand, backed by taxpayers in 11 adjacent cities, including Fairfield, Bessemer and Birmingham.

The project was supposed to be an exemplar of regional cooperation in the Balkanized Birmingham metro area, but in reality it became an autocracy ruled by Langford.

At one point in the park’s development, Langford decided he wanted a Jurassic Park-like attraction and had found a supplier of animatronic dinosaurs for the ride. The park’s general manager objected, telling Langford that the dinosaurs were designed for indoor exhibits and would break if used outside. Langford fired him and built the dinosaur attraction, which quickly malfunctioned after it rained.

In an early meeting with consultants from O2 Ideas at his Fairfield City Hall office, Langford insisted that all the park’s branding include his pious catchphrase: “To God be the glory!” Langford wanted it on everything from T-shirts to the entrance gate.

When one of the consultants asked how non-religious park visitors might react to the message, Langford was, for the first time in the meeting, quiet. With one hand, he took a drag from his cigarette. The other held out toward the consultant before extending his middle finger.

“F--k ‘em,” he said.

When the park opened, “To God be the glory!” was on all the branding, but the statue at the front gate was of Langford.

But Langford’s power of personality couldn’t change the park’s financial realities, except to make them worse.

Of the $60 million raised in the first bond deal, only some of that money went for capital expenses. An internal investigation by Birmingham Finance Director Mac Underwood later revealed that much of that money was spent on operating costs instead of bricks and mortar, explicitly against the terms of the agreement.

When the park sputtered, Langford insisted it was successful and pushed another $90 million bond deal — mostly to refinance the existing debt before the park defaulted, with another $25 million to finance new construction at the park. Another investigation commissioned by Birmingham found that only $2.6 million of that $25 million actually went to new construction. The rest either went to to cover and conceal park losses or for extravagant fees to bond dealers, including Langford’s friend Blount.

When confronted with questions about the park’s financial health, Langford insisted all was well.

But by 2002, Langford resigned from the VisionLand board and the park declared Chapter 9 bankruptcy — a rare occurence of public debt gone bad. The park sold to a private company for $5.25 million.

During Langford’s tenure as chairman, the park also got snared in a public corruption scandal. To ease access from the interstate, VisionLand needed a new interchange built on I-20/59. Langford later testified that he agreed to have the park sponsor a race car for the son of the state highway director, Jimmy Butts.

Butts went to prison on federal charges, but Langford wasn’t touched. He was given immunity for his testimony. It was a deal federal prosecutors would later second-guess.

Before the reality of VisionLand’s failure caught up with him, Langford successfully leveraged the notoriety he’d gained to win a seat on the Jefferson County Commission, where he was elected president by the five-member body.

It was there, Langford opened the county’s coffers to Wall Street bankers and their bagman — Langford’s friend, Bill Blount.

Newly elected Jefferson County District 1 Commissioner Larry Langford chats with newly elected District 2 Commissioner Shelia Smoot's daughter Mecca Scarver after swearing-in ceremonies at the Jefferson County Courthouse Nov. 12, 2012. (Birmingham News/ Jerry Ayres)

Jefferson County

The corruption and near financial destruction of Jefferson County happened in three phases.

First was 100 years of neglect and mismanagement by county and municipal sewer systems, which allowed their pipes to deteriorate while dumping raw waste into area rivers and streams rather than treating it.

After environmentalists successfully sued, Jefferson County agreed to consolidate and replace those sewers — and the second phase of Jefferson County’s corruption began: Billions of dollars of repair work, much of which was wasted in mobius loop of graft and bribery between county officials and sewer contractors.

In the midst of this second wave of corruption, Langford won election on the promise that he would help clean up the corruption.

His campaign slogan he took from a gospel hymn: “May the work I’ve done speak for me.”

The third phase of Jefferson County’s financial collapse was a series of desperate gambits made by the county to refinance its sewer debt and speculate through sophisticated interest rate swaps that left Jefferson County with a debt structure not unlike a ballooning subprime mortgage. This was Langford’s contribution.

Langford explained the bond swaps to the public much the same way mortgage brokers explained subprimes to homeowners. The county would save millions on interest, he promised, and if things got tight, the county could easily refinance again.

Years later, at his corruption trial, it would be revealed that Langford knew next to nothing of what he was talking about.

Rather, he had accepted the word of investment bankers from Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan and Blount.

But more importantly, Langford accepted Blount’s bribes, too.

For making the connection between Jefferson County and Wall Street, Blount received more than $5 million, including $2.4 million for "special knowledge of the background and structure of the County's outstanding bond issues.”

Blount passed at least $235,000 of that to Langford, mostly in the form of paying off bad debts, or indulging Langford’s greatest weaknesses — clothes, jewelry, guns and watches.

Mayor Larry Langford enters a meeting with his ``top secret'' plan for city finances accompanied by two police officers carrying submachine guns Wednesday, July 23, 2008. Opponents criticize what they see as Langford's scatter-shot method of governing, but others credit him with trying to move the city forward. (Birmingham News/ Jerry Ayres)

Birmingham

A Birmingham city council assistant, Martha Espy, lent me the nickname I’d hang on Langford in my columns.

“Here comes Leapin’ Larry,” she said, as the new mayor strode into City Hall.

Langford had been leaping from one disaster to the next his whole life. With Jefferson County on the brink of financial collapse, he leapt again, beating a field of 10 candidates — without a runoff — to become mayor of Birmingham.

And this, despite the fact he never lived in the city.

Langford rented a loft apartment in the renovated Blach’s Department Store building on 20th Street N., there wasn’t an easy way to tell whether he was ever there. To reach the apartment you had to have a keycode, and none of its windows were visible from the streets or alleys.

But as it happened one morning, while walking back to my office from breakfast, a piece of paper on the Blach’s front door caught my eye. It was the color of chocolate and goldenrod — a note from UPS, the kind they leave when trying to deliver a package to somebody who isn’t home. And not just one note, but several. Nosy, I looked to see who it was for.

Somebody was trying to send Langford a package.

For almost two weeks I took a walk each morning to see if he’d found it. Every morning, the UPS sticky note was still there.

When I asked Langford when he’d last been to his apartment, he insisted that he lived there all along.

One of Langford’s election opponents challenged his residency, but the court ruled that Langford needed only to intend to move to Birmingham sometime in the near future to meet the legal requirement for office.

A year later, Langford was still living in Fairfield. A colleague, Madison Underwood, and I drove out to his house each day for a week. Every morning, his Cadillac Escalade was sitting right there in his Fairfield drive way.

Langford’s refusal to live in the city he governed was the least absurd thing about his tenure at Birmingham City Hall. Langford’s administration was a dress rehearsal for present-day Washington, with one scandal or public outburst stealing press from another. I’ll try to list the few I remember.

There was that time Langford promoted a city landscape worker he met while smoking in Kelly Ingram Park to serve as his head of the Public Works Department.

There was that time Langford said he’d bring the 2020 Olympics to Birmingham. When a colleague first told me of this, I didn’t believe him, and we joked Langford could put the torch on top of the Vulcan statue on Red Mountain. The next day, on Paul Finebaum’s show, Langford took his idea to a larger listening audience, where he said the torch would be in Vulcan’s hand. Never try to out-crazy crazy.

There was that time Langford used Americans with Disabilities Act funds to cut a hole in the exterior wall of his third-floor office and build a deck where he could smoke.

There was that time Langford spoke behind closed doors with city business leaders to share with them his “Top Secret” plans for the city. With martial pageantry, Langford rolled the plans into the meeting in a small locked crate. Police tactical officers wielding submachine guns flanking Langford on both sides. While Langford spoke, one of the officers locked his legs and he passed out. Thankfully, his machine gun wasn’t loaded.

There was that time Langford dispatched a police SWAT van to park in front of a notorious downtown porno theater until the clientele got shy and the theater closed. Not everything he did was bad.

There was that time Langford tried to rescind a permit for the Pride Parade because he hadn’t realized it was a parade for gay people. “I don’t think I’m intolerant, I just don’t condone the lifestyle,” Langford said.

There was that time Langford pitched — successfully — a one-cent sales tax increase to finance a long list of projects that never happened. “If a penny is going to break you, then you’re broke already,” he said in a public meeting.

There was that time Langford tried to have the city buy a Cadillac Escalade for his city vehicle because he couldn’t make the payments on the Cadillac Escalade he already owned.

There was that time Langford went to Milton McGregor’s Victoryland casino and won thousands and thousands of dollars at a very lucky slot machine. The next customer who stepped up to try her luck hit a jackpot, too, but casino staff told her that the machine was malfunctioning and she wouldn’t be getting any money. This happened more than once.

There was that time Langford burst into a city council work session with plans to build Birmingham’s own Pentagon for city police, firefighters and public works. He brought with him an illustration of what he wanted it to look like. It was a picture — of the Pentagon.

There was that time that I’ve forgotten, but as soon as this is published, someone will remind me of all the things I missed.

And then there was the rally.

Before Langford took office, Birmingham had suffered a spike in violent crime. Langford quickly sacked his predecessor’s chief of police and hired A.C. Roper away from Hoover. It was the sort of move a prudent new mayor makes, and one that proved effective.

But Birmingham needed a greater sort of reckoning, Langford said, and so he hosted one at the Boutwell Auditorium.

Birmingham Mayor Larry Langford is seen with his wife Melva praying during a prayer rally where 2,000 burlap sacks were handed out and ashes administered to people attending in Birmingham, Ala., Friday, April 25, 2008. Struggling to confront a worsening homicide rate, the mayor asked pastors and citizens to don burlap sacks and ashes in an Old Testament-style sign of biblical repentance. (Birmingham News/ Bernard Troncale)

Sackcloth and Rolexes

The Boutwell, even with its lights on, still feels like a cold cavern in the deep earth, not a public auditorium sandwiched between the art museum and a City Hall parking deck.

But turn the lights down, play a recording of James Earl Jones reading Revelations, and invite a city to a grossly improvised, quasi-religious ceremony, and you’ll have something else — a breach in the Church/State divide that would make the Scopes Monkey Trial apologize for being too secular.

I shot video of this rally, which is the only reason I’m still sure it really happened.

Above the crowd in the dark hall, spotlights illuminated a banner. It read: “A world without Jesus is a mess waiting to happen — Larry Langford.” Below the banner, a couple dozen volunteers handed musty Monsanto sacks to everyone who came through the doors. By the time Langford stepped onto the stage, there were nearly a thousand people there.

Langford invited the public, elected officials and the city’s clergy to come to Boutwell, not just to pray, but to don sackcloths and ashes before begging God’s forgiveness for Birmingham. He warned the city’s ministers — most of whom had the good sense to stay away — not to come dressed in fancy clothes.

Langford wore a sackcloth, too, over bluejeans and a white polo shirt. On his wrist, he wore a rose gold Rolex worth $10,000 bought for him by Bill Blount.

Langford was wearing a bribe.

The ceremony didn’t follow the Lenten script. No one rubbed crosses of ash on anyone’s foreheads. Instead, the ash sat in clay flower pots on long folding tables in front of the stage. No one seemed to know what to do with it.

The preachers who answered Langford’s call took turns praising the mayor. None spoke about the violence in the city. It was quickly clear to everyone but the thousand people at the rally, this ceremony wasn’t about Birmingham's crime problem. It was about Langford’s crime problem.

Of the ministers who spoke, none did so as vociferously or as passionately as the Rev. Tommy Lewis, who asked the other ministers on stage to lay hands on Langford and Langford’s wife, Melva, as Lewis preached to the crowd.

Langford’s victory in the mayoral election was an act of God, Lewis said, and anyone working against Langford was working against God’s will.

“And it doesn’t matter what they write,” Lewis shouted. “We’re going to say something about that, because we are not going to be reduced to journalistic terrorism. We’re not going to buy tabloids.”

When Langford took his turn to speak, he returned to the gospel of self-loathing and political flagellation he’d relied on his whole career.

“The question has to be, ‘What in hell do you want?’” Langford said. “There’s got to be something in hell we want because we’re fighting so hard to get there.”

While Langford spoke, a man stood next to him with a ram’s horn. Langford beckoned the man over to blow the shofar and called the men and women in the front rows to the folding tables and the flower pots of ash. He told those below him to pour the ash on the floor, as a symbol of Birmingham dumping its sin.

As the horn sounded, the auditorium filled with moaning, chanting and people speaking in tongues. Langford stretched both arms out toward the crowd, gently waving them up and down. The Rolex glinted in the light.

I wondered whether I had witnessed the birth of a new religion, or more likely, a cult.

When the federal authorities arrested Langford six months later, prosecutors asked for a change of venue.

Birmingham Mayor Larry Langford leaves the federal courthouse with his lawyer Tom Baddley, who briefly spoke to the press Dec. 1, 2008. A 101-count federal indictment unsealed today charges Birmingham Mayor Langford, Montgomery investment banker William Blount, Blount Parrish and Co. and longtime Langford friend Al LaPierre with a series of crimes in connection with Jefferson County bond transactions and swap agreements. (Birmingham News/ Linda Stelter)

The trial

The trial of Larry Langford, unlike everything else in his life, was straight forward.

Blount had pleaded guilty to bribery and testified against him. Another friend, lobbyist Al LaPierre, flipped, too.

Assistant U.S. Attorney George Martin — one of the most accomplished and effective public corruption prosecutors in Alabama — explained in plain language how Langford had accepted more than $235,000 in gifts from Blount, including shirts, suits, ties, shoes.

And that watch.

The second chair on the prosecution, Assistant U.S. Attorney Tamara Johnson was saltier than Martin. She asked the jury what they thought Langford was doing when he went shopping for jewelry with Blount.

“Were they on a date?” she asked.

In return for the gifts, Langford had given Blount and his Wall Street partners billions in bond business. Blount’s share of the fees was about $5 million.

In his closing argument, Langford’s defense attorney, Michael Rasmussen, stacked five bankers boxes on a table in front of the jury. Those boxes represented what Blount took from the deal. Then he held up a small box, about the size of a small sleeve of business cards. That was Langford’s supposed take, he said. If Langford was really a criminal, why didn’t he ask for more?

In his rebuttal, Martin picked up the small box and showed it to the jury again.

“If he’s honest, there isn’t supposed to be a box,” he said.

Jury deliberations lasted about 45 minutes — not even enough time to read the entire indictment — and that included the five or 10 minutes several jurors stepped outside to smoke.

Langford was guilty.

A gallery of what seems to be convicted former Jefferson County commissioners is actually part of a gallery of all former commissioners outside commission chambers in the Jefferson County Courthouse in Birmingham, Ala., Tue., March 09, 2010. L to R, convicted commissioners Mary Buckelew, Gary White and Larry Langford. (The Birmingham News/Bernard Troncale). bnbn

The bill we didn’t pay

As Jefferson County struggled with its bankruptcy — the largest Chapter 9 filing in US history until Detroit took the dishonor — a rumor spread that US Attorney Alice Martin had asked the Justice Department for permission to indict JPMorgan for crimes committed here. It was to be a bargaining tactic — or so the rumor went — to make JPMorgan forgive the county’s debts.

There was good evidence that what JPMorgan had done in Jefferson County was not merely the result of a few bad actors on their trading floor. Municipal governments around the world had been sold rotten interest rate swaps, too. The behavior appeared to be an institutional infection.

All the Justice Department had to do was climb the ladder from Langford.

I called the president of a local investment bank, a cut-and-dry old man who had walked me through the complexities of Wall Street before, to ask what that would mean for JPMorgan.

Their securities licenses would likely be suspended, just with an indictment, he said.

This was early 2009. Lehman Brothers had already collapsed. Every bank was listing. If they were indicted, JPMorgan would likely fail. Further, he explained, the outstanding notion of all JPMorgan’s derivatives was greater than the gross domestic product of the planet.

“So how do I explain that for readers in football fields and swimming pools?” I asked. “What would happen if they failed?”

There was a pause.

“It would be bad.”

What does “bad” mean? Like, it’s time to eat your pets bad?

“Something like that.”

I’m not a paranoid person. I have distant family who grow their own food and keep gold hidden in the house, but not me. That afternoon, though, I took a walk and made a plan. I’d go home to my parents place outside Thomasville. They had land where we could grow things. There were deer foolish enough to walk right up to their house.

Shelter? Check!

Food? Check!

For as traumatic as the Great Recession was, most people don’t know how close we came to something much worse.

And there was a moment when, if you played everything out to its just conclusion, if you enforced the law, if you pulled that string attached to Langford’s shenanigans, it could have ended the global financial system we had left, leaving the developed world to live in a dystopian hell where dollar bills and such no longer had value.

Of course, it was never going to come to that. JPMorgan eventually walked away from much of what the county owed, and the county restructured its debt into something that still looks like a disastrous ballooning mortgage. We’ll find out in a few years.

JPMorgan was too big to jail.

Langford wasn’t.

After he went to prison, I asked one of his defense lawyers, Glennon Threatt, why Langford didn’t roll up on someone above him. Langford was a lot of things, but he wasn’t a snitch.

“He’s serving somebody else’s time,” Threatt said.

Langford was Trump before Trump. Heck, if it weren’t for the parasites trying to get rich off his insatiable cupidity, I’m not sure Langford wouldn’t be where Trump is today. And probably in just as much trouble.

Trump before Trump

A couple of years ago, an assisted living center asked me to come speak to their residents. It was 2016, so a woman there asked me what I thought of the GOP nominee, Donald Trump.

“He’s Larry Langford for white people,” I cracked.

Most of them laughed or gasped. A few on the red side of politics grunted and furrowed their faces.

The gist of the joke is true, but I have misgivings about it.

First, despite everything else about him, bone spurs didn’t keep Langford out of the military and he deserves respect for serving his country.

But more importantly, it wrongly casts blame on African-Americans when Langford ascended to power in Birmingham with the blessing of the white establishment. And everyone needs to remember that.

At Langford’s inauguration, the CEOs of Birmingham’s three biggest corporations — Alabama Power, Regions Bank and Protective Life — stood with him on stage and praised his leadership. Every one of them had reason to know Langford was a crook.

But those misgivings aside, the parallel is strong.

Langford was Trump before Trump. Heck, if it weren’t for the parasites trying to get rich off his insatiable cupidity, I’m not sure Langford wouldn’t be where Trump is today. And probably in just as much trouble.

Instead, he was made a patsy for even greedier men. Langford didn’t live to repeat his mistakes. We’re doing that part for him.

The thing that still leaves me unsettled about Langford’s time in office is how many people there were who were fine with it. Civic leaders, business titans, city vendors just going along to make a buck. And yes, voters.

But there were those, too, who pushed back, including merit system employees who went to work every day at the city and county, diligent in their thankless jobs as the walls threatened to fall down around them. A few risked their jobs to let me know what was really going on. God bless ‘em.

As it happened, over the holidays my wife and I were clearing old junk out of our house to make room for a new baby. I opened a box I hadn’t touched in years. There was my sackcloth from the rally. There was the Langford’s campaign sign with his ridiculous slogan: “Let’s do something!”

“You sure you want to get rid of that?” my wife asked.

I threw it out. Now I kind of wish I hadn’t.

Langford’s gone now. I’m sure some folks will say I’m wrong to speak ill of the dead, that it’s tacky to drag his misdeeds back up before his body’s in the ground. But I think the truth is important to hold on to — especially considering what’s happening on the national stage.

In the end, the truth has to win.

I’ll leave the platitudes to others, and once they’re done burying him, some day soon I’ll pay a visit to his grave.

Not to dance on it, but to see what year he was really born.

Kyle Whitmire is the state political columnist for the Alabama Media Group.

Want access to the best analysis and in-depth reporting about Alabama each week? Sign up for the weekly Reckon Report newsletter and follow Reckon on Facebook and Twitter.