And a Pair of Brass Spurs

No other $100,000-a-year executive in the U.S. has to put up with the wearisome workaday details that a President does. There are also hundreds of U.S. citizens, great & small, constantly clamoring for his attention. "I wish someone would lock the gate," sighed Appointment Secretary Matt Connelly. "The pressure is terrific."

In between getting bills ready for Congress (see below) and holding a reception for 128 foreign diplomats and wives in Blair House, Harry Truman found time for a list of visitors ranging from ten Blue Star Mothers to Roman Catholic Archbishop Yu-pin of Nanking. A delegation from the American Radio Relay League dropped by, another from the National Association of Postmasters. The President gave a group of Colgate University students a brief lecture on honesty in politics, and then handed each of them a pen which said, "I swiped this from Harry S. Truman."

Cigars, Pecans. Some of his callers left gifts: a box of Philippine cigars (though Harry Truman does not smoke), a 10-lb. sack of pecans from a Louisiana Congressman (to remind him that there was an overproduction problem in pecans), a pair of engraved brass spurs (from the citizens of Monahans, Tex.). More were looking for presidential favors: Massachusetts' Republican Senator Leverett Saltonstall (a job for a friend), Philadelphia Realtor Albert Greenfield (a speech date), San Diego Journal Editor John Kennedy (a veterans' hospital).

Harry Truman, jaunty as ever, took it all in stride. He met with congressional leaders, held his regular weekly Cabinet meeting, by the end of each day had signed his initials or name up to 600 times--on everything from staff memos and postmasters' appointments to a proclamation announcing Freedom Day (Feb. 1).

Bathtubs, Beams. At week's end, the President had one request of his own to make of a caller. After a thorough inspection of the White House, Architect Lorenzo Winslow announced that the building was much worse off than anyone had suspected. It was a wonder that Harry Truman, sitting in his second-story bathtub, hadn't plunged down to the basement. A complete White House repair job would require ripping out all interior walls and beams, replacing everything up to the outer shell. The cost would be about $7,000,000 (just seven times the original estimate). Harry Truman wondered if Senator Dennis Chavez would do what he could about it in the Committee on Public Works. Said Harry Truman: "The White House is a mess."

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