But what Clinton Williams Murchison lacked in physical appeal he made up for with a mind that whirred like a Swiss timepiece. Headstrong and independent, disdainful of his father’s stuffy ways, young Clint was Tom Sawyer with an abacus, the kind of seven-year-old who skinned squirrels and sold the little pelts for nickels. He loved the outdoors, spending lazy afternoons fishing with a Negro man outside town, ignoring the disapproving clucks of his neighbors. While his brothers took jobs at the bank, teenaged Clint was drawn to the excitement of the Athens lifestock pens, where roving traders
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