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.