Hello, Everybody!

It was like a week plucked from the 1952 campaign. By train, plane, automobile, horse & buggy and afoot. Dwight Eisenhower went out among the people last week. Nearly a million Americans cheered him on his way. Scores of high-school bands tinkled and tootled and ruffled and flourished for him. In a frosty Pennsylvania stadium, he ate an alfresco box supper with 9,000 (see below). South of the border for one day, he offered a champagne toast to the President of Mexico. In New Orleans he took on a flaming sunburn, in Kansas City a stockman's Homburg. In Abilene he picked cornflowers from his mother's garden and gave an old girl friend a resounding and public kiss. Through it all. Ike seemed to be having the time of his life, and the cheering crowds seemed to say to opposition politicos of both parties that Ike's personal popularity is greater than ever.

Banquet of Flowers. After a mammoth birthday party at Hershey, Pa.* -Ike returned briefly to Washington, but the next day he was off again--this time aboard the presidential train, leaving Mamie at the White House. At his first full stop, in Defiance. Ohio, he laid the cornerstone of the Anthony Wayne Library (see EDUCATION), then switched to his plane, the Columbine, for the flight to Kansas City. There, in the Muehlebach Hotel penthouse that was built especially for Harry Truman, Ike welcomed the visiting governors at a private dinner party. Afterward, he addressed a meeting of the Future Farmers of America in the Municipal Auditorium. His speech, billed as a major enunciation of farm policy, was vague and disappointing, but the Future Farmers were obviously delighted with Ike and gave him a boisterous ovation.

Early the next morning the President and the governors got down to the serious business of the drought at a breakfast-table conference (see below). There was no letup in the breakneck schedule. After the conference, Ike flew to Salina, Kans. and a triumphant homecoming to Abilene. For 40 miles around, the schools had been let out for the occasion, and cheering kids and high-school bands lined the streets as the presidential motorcade flashed by. At his old home, Ike spotted some pink and purple cornflowers in the garden. They reminded him of his mother, so he picked a bunch and presented them to a well-scrubbed group of his great-nephews and cousins. Then he browsed awhile among the memorabilia in the Eisenhower Museum.

On the way back through Abilene, in front of St. Andrew's Church, Ike suddenly ordered his chauffeur to stop the car when a woman broke through the crowd and dashed into the street. The President greeted her with a warm kiss on the cheek and announced that she was Mrs. Gladys Brooks, his high-school sweetheart. On the way back to Salina, Ike halted the motorcade once more at a drive-in melon market. He enthusiastically accepted a dripping slice of cantaloupe from the flabbergasted proprietors, bought two watermelons to take along with him.

What about the Galloway? Back in Kansas City, Ike addressed the Hereford Association in a folksy chat that wowed the cattlemen and revealed the President as something of an authority on cows. "You know." he told his audience, "the old scrub cattle on the prairie began to disappear when I was a very young boy. There were all sorts of new breeds appearing--short horns. Angus, the white face and the Galloway. Whatever happened to the Galloway? He was a big black cow, you know, bigger than the Angus, and sort of woolly-haired . . .*

"One of the puzzling things about this white face when it appeared--none of us knew exactly how to pronounce the name. But just before I came up here. I got a very cultivated 'gentleman and I said, 'How do you pronounce this name correctly?' And he said to say Hairaford . . . But I have learned from your president that it's Herferd, and now I feel natural ..."

Eyes to Texas. At 5:45 a.m. the next morning, the President was airborne, on his way to New Orleans and the Louisiana Purchase sesquicentennial ceremonies. The city was in a Mardi gras mood, and more than 150,000 Louisianians turned out to give Ike a roaring welcome. In his brief speech in front of the historic Cabildo, the President hinted that he might seek lower tariffs. The whole American economy, he said, is dependent on foreign trade, and "this dependence is sure to increase as the tempo of our industry increases. It highlights the most compelling practical reason why we must have friends in the world."

Four hours after landing in New Orleans, President Eisenhower turned his eyes to Texas and a quiet weekend at the 15,000-acre ranch of Democratic Governor Allan Shivers. This week he continued his southward journey into Mexico. Crossing the Rio Grande at Laredo, he met Mexico's President Adolfo Ruiz Cortines, and with him dedicated the $50 million international Falcon Dam, a five-mile-long earth and rock-fill barrier, that will bring irrigation and flood control to both sides of the Rio Grande and electricity to light up the border towns. Before the dedication, both Presidents watched a fiesta in the dam-born village of Nuevo Guerrero, and toasted their good-neighboring countries at the Municipal Palace.

When the last ceremonies were over and the last toast drunk, the President and el Presidente bade each other a cordial goodbye and adios, and Ike motored 72 miles back to Texas. Laredo's mayor, who is named Hugh Cluck, greeted the weary but still beaming President, and saw him off on the Columbine for the trip back to Washington.

-The President's birthday present: the Eisenhower Exchange Fellowships, a privately endowed trust that will eventually offer 100 outstanding young Americans and foreigners the opportunity to travel here and abroad for a year's work and study. The fellowships will be supported by nonpartisan international contributions which, when the project gets into full operation, will' amount to $770,000 a year. - The Galloway, a black, polled (hornless) breed from southwest Scotland, was introduced to the Great Plains because its double thickness of hair made it able to. withstand the cold prairie winds. It reached the peak of its popularity some 50 years ago, about the time when Schoolboy Ike Eisenhower worked in an Abilene creamery. Stockmen attribute its subsequent decline to the fact that Galloway breeders failed to introduce selective breeding for early maturity, and other beef cattle that were bred for that purpose proved more profitable. Galloways art still bred in the U.S., but classes were discontinued at the International Livestock Show in 1930.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.