"Game of Polio"

One morning last week a chilly dawn broke over a jerkwater Georgia town on the Southern Railroad. The main street, two ribbons of concrete with newly planted evergreens growing between them, led off at right angles from the track. Fronting on its brief course were the low brick facades of the drug store with its awning, the post office with its green shades, the bank with its blank windows, the general store with its metal canopy, the grocery stores, the filling stations. But in one respect this small town was different: the tourists asleep in the rooms over the drug store and post office, after getting up and waiting their turn at the bathroom-down-the-hall, would pay, not $1.50 or $2 for their beds, but $5 for the privilege of having slept in the Tuscawilla Hotel of Warm Springs.

In an hour or two the same tourists, having found their cars and driven half a mile up a spur of Pine Mountain, had the privilege of catching a glimpse through the trees of a little colonial house 100 yards down the slope. The fact that the little house is ordinarily the home of Chief Surgeon Michael ("Mike") Hoke of Warm Springs Foundation did not stir the tourists in the least. They were there because Dr. Hoke had moved out temporarily and turned his home over to its owner, Franklin Roosevelt, to use as the Little White House.

Half a mile farther down the mountain stood a small tent-city where a Marine detachment and Secret Service men shivered all the chill night through. Before the Little White House several members of the detachment stood guard. Presently up the wooded lane with a Secret Service man at the wheel drove a little touring car bearing a 1935 Georgia license plate whose sole symbol was "R." Behind it came more Secret Servants in a big Pierce-Arrow bearing a District of Columbia license and another plate, emblazoned "USSS." From the door of the Little White House, President Roosevelt emerged. His bodyguard helped tuck him into the driver's seat of the Plymouth and off he tootled with the big car following, down Oak Road to Georgia Hall, main building of the Foundation, to circle around it to Atlanta Highway and the patients' pool.

Ten minutes later the President of the U. S. in bathing suit entered the closed pool to "play polio" as Warm Springs poliomyelitis patients call their daily water exercises. In with him went his Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Morgenthau, who had spent the night at the main building of the Foundation. By turns they sat on the pool brink, discussing their previous day's budget talk, by turns played in the warm water, snorting and burbling like two walruses.

An hour and a half later the little Plymouth drew up before a five-room cottage opposite Georgia Hall. The dozen newshawks dwelling there, recovered at that hour from their previous night's poker game, scampered down the concrete steps and surrounded the President. What about the budget? He had decided to lop $400,000,000 off the requests of various departments. Had he written his speech to deliver at Atlanta? Ha, Ha! He had dictated two pages and, dissatisfied, had torn them up. The President waved to the newshawks and beckoned National Youth Administrator Aubrey Williams into the car. ''Look out! He wants $13,000,000," the newshawks warned Mr. Roosevelt. "Ha, Ha, Ha!" roared the President as the little car scooted off up Oak Road to the Little White House with a Pierce-Arrowful of Secret Service in its eternal pursuit. For luncheon, the President had Aubrey Williams and work. After luncheon came the business of drafting a speech. But the day was not to pass without more fun. After dark the President was driven down to the Foundation to see the Polio-Politan Opera Company, composed mostly of crippled patients. A duel between two barefooted youngsters in wheelchairs tickling each other with long feathers (Rule: all tickles above the knee are foul) put stitches of laughter in the Presidential side. A song by the Powder Puff Chorus roused him to applause:

We can't dance,

Don't ask us;

We can't dance,

It's sad but true.

Our legs won't let our feet

Do what they should do. . . .

When we sit

We're charming and we're gentle

But when we dance

The feeling's purely mental,

But there's no use

In feeling sentimental,

It's accidental

And not parental.

So that's why

We can't dance. . . .

Next morning, as on the morning before and the morning after, tourists stared down at the Little White House in the pines as Franklin Roosevelt in his little car with its big Secret Service chaser, scooted down for his "game of polio." His eldest son James flew in from Manhattan. He spent an afternoon with Georgia's State Forester Lufburrow and Henry Hooper, manager of the Foundation, inspecting plantings of young trees on its grounds. Later he scooted four miles down the Franklin D. Roosevelt Highway to his farm to inspect a new sawmill installed there.

Next day was Thanksgiving. After the usual morning's swim, Mr. & Mrs. Roosevelt & son had their family celebration in the Little White House. Afterward there was digestion and the Atlanta speech was polished off. At 7:30 in the evening the Roosevelts in evening dress appeared at Georgia Hall for the Foundation feast. Five newsreel cameras ground. Episcopal Bishop Mikell of Atlanta asked a blessing; a tableau of Warm Springs history was staged by the gay patients. When the turkey was brought in, Host Roosevelt, looking around at Russell Reynolds Jr., one of 13 small polio sufferers chosen by lot to sit at his table, solemnly announced: "It's a big bird but there won't be much left of it soon."

Next morning the President missed his swim. At 9 o'clock with wife & son in a big limousine, he set off on the 70-mile drive northward to Atlanta. At 11 o'clock he stopped at Fort McPherson on the city's outskirts to be greeted by the Commandant, by Georgia's Senators Russell and George. All that Atlanta saw of Governor Eugene Talmadge, archfoe of the New Deal, that day was a stuffed effigy, red suspenders and all, hanging in the Capitol grounds and bearing the legend "Coolidge did not choose to run. Gene needn't."

Up through the heart of Atlanta drove the Presidential party amid cheers, out Peachtree Street to Piedmont Park where white school children were gathered to see him. Then the President rolled on to Atlanta University for a Jim-Crow repetition of the same ceremony with Negro school children. Of the 85,000 seats in Georgia Tech's Grant Stadium only some 50,000 were filled but crowds were gathered outside at loudspeakers, the better to hear if not to see. There the President opened the campaign of 1936. After that one excursion the President returned to Warm Springs, the game of polio, his daily outings at the wheel of his car, the comings & goings of official visitors. There in his fine pine paneled living room he heard his radio tell the ghastly tale of how Army scored four touchdowns against Navy in 18 minutes. Thence he went forth to visit the Pine Valley Resettlement Project near his farm. There he began another speech, for delivery in Chicago to the Farmers' Federation next week, after his gay vacation in Warm Springs' pine-clad hills is over.

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