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McKay deals out homilies and wit like a prestidigitator dealing out cards, with such quick ease that the worn edges make no difference. Item: "We shouldn't run down the Democrats. I never made a nickel in my life running down the opposition. When I was selling Chevrolets. I never said a word about Fords. Heck. I didn't even know they made 'em." Item: "Anybody who quarrels with a newspaper, a traffic cop or his wife is just plain crazy." Item: "My folks were all Democrats. I come from a long line of Democrats, but I left home and learned to read."
A House & a Lot. In South Salem, McKay has a roomy, comfortable white shake house. One daughter lives there and another six blocks away. In the front hall is the familiar motto: "Home is where the heart is." Every room has some souvenir of McKay's life: a seal tusk, Eugene Peavine's trophies, family photos. Downstairs, in the basement playroom, hang Mabel McKay's blue ribbons (for cake), McKay's show ribbons (for Gene) and silly signs ("Danger—Hangover Under Construction").
In almost any nation except the U.S.A. a Cabinet minister like Doug McKay would be almost inconceivable; he is not an intellectual, an actor, a proved big-time administrator, or a leader with a large personal following. He dislikes arguing issues and he distrusts "New Deal longhairs." He knows how to do a job and how to get along with people and, in the U.S., that is sometimes better than theory.
On his first vacation as Secretary, after the hard-driving Alaskan swing, McKay went on a hard-riding packhorse trip in California's Yosemite National Park (part of Interior's domain). For five days McKay, wearing a comfortable cowboy outfit, roughed it frontier-style—riding the steep Sierra trail, cooking in the open, camping out at night. This week, at his summer house on the Oregon coast, he relaxed with his family (13 in all, with Mabel McKay cooking).
At month's end, McKay will return to his place in the Cabinet (which he admires), to the enormous Ickes office (which he dislikes) and to his problems: reclamation and recreation, field and stream, parks and power—above all, power. He has no ambition beyond making a success of the Eisenhower program and of his job. "I've got a house in Salem and a lot in the cemetery, so I'll be coming home some day," he assures his friends.
* The first homesteader: Union Soldier Daniel Freeman, on Jan. 1, 1863. A few minutes after the law came into effect at midnight, he dragged a protesting land registrar from a New Year's Eve dance to file his claim at Beatrice, Neb., later built a log cabin for his family and planted 400 peach trees on his 160-acre quarter section. Typically, Interior has since reclaimed the claim. Now it's Homestead National Monument.