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Ike still had ahead of him his formal plunge into partisan arguments and specific debates, but the 5,000 Kansans who clustered in the open field by the clapboard house knew the level and temper of his character. In simple, unmistakable words, the man had described his philosophical foundations. Now the candidate could go ahead.
By the time the cornerstone speech was over, the skies were dark and threatening, and a few drops spattered down on the black sod. Ike perched on the top of the back seat of a green Cadillac convertible and was driven out through the crowds, smiling and waving. The car turned up toward Abilene's business district, past the "Welcome Home Ike" banners on every lamppost and in every store window. It stopped on Northwest Third Street at the Sunflower Hotel, a plain, eight-story square brick building which is Abilene's only skyline.
Ike and Mamie pressed through the sidewalk throng, through the crowded lobby, and into a waiting elevator. On the sixth floor they found comparative quiet; newly redecorated, this floor was reserved for the Eisenhower party and guarded by two burly cops from the Kansas Bureau of Investigation. For lunch, the Eisenhowers went down one floor to the apartment of Hotel Manager Mike Biggs and his wife Eulalia. They hurried through fruit salad, stewed chicken, peas, mashed potatoes and a dish of pineapple sherbert. Then Ike and Mamie climbed out on the top of the hotel marquee to join the political brass in a review of the Ike homecoming parade.
Pink Clouds. Ike took the salute like a candidate who was in love with his job. He nudged Mamie when the first float rolled by; it was a replica of the white frame house where he was born in Denison, Texas, and bore a sign which read: "Birth Date Oct. 14, 1890." He did a little caper on the marquee when the high-school band played Alexander's Ragtime Band. And he grabbed Mamie and hugged her when he saw the "marriage float," bearing two Abilene youngsters on pink clouds in front of a heart-shaped lattice. The last float—Ike at the White House —had just passed when the dark clouds opened up and the rains spilled.
It rained in torrents while every eye in town watched the clock hands turn toward 5 o'clock, the time for Ike's big, nationwide TV and radio speech from Eisenhower Park. Ike's old high-school friend, Howard Keel, ran down to his clothing store, snatched 26 raincoats off a rack and hustled them up to the sixth floor of the Sunflower for the official party. He knew Ike's size—42—without asking. And to keep the rain off Ike's glasses, Howard lent his own broad-brimmed hat to the candidate.
By the time Ike got to the park, the grandstand was half empty, and the high-school bands—drawn from all over Dickinson County—were huddling in cars and under eaves, sodden and miserable. The television men urged Ike to talk from a dry room under the stands, but when he heard that half of his audience had stuck through the rain, he turned on his heel and splashed through the thick, black mud to the outdoor platform. A solicitous aide tried to shield him with a big umbrella, but Ike brushed it aside. Then he tossed away his broad-brimmed hat, and, with rain splattering on his bald head, began his maiden political speech to the U.S.