PRESIDENT NUMBER TWO

It's 5:17 a.m. dark out, 72 degrees and Patrick got up and crawled into bed with Junior.

The second President I saw, after Harry S Truman, was Ike in 1960 at the 50th Anniversary Boy Scout Jamboree in Colorado Springs, Colorado. He was the first sitting president I saw. He drove thru the encampment in a convertible. Our patrol was the Beachcombers, comprised mostly of scouts from my home troop, Troop 37, Clearwater, Florida, of which I was the Patrol Leader. The other patrol of Jamboree Troop 58 was the Trojans, a bunch of Greek Scouts from Tarpon Springs. (In those days, Tarpon Springs was a Greek Sponge fishing community on the Gulf. The colorful sponge boats were a favorite of artists, including my Dad. There was a market in the middle of town where the sponges were auctioned off. There was a Greek orthodox Church and much of the Greek heritage was preserved, including an Epiphany celebration where the young Greek boys would dive into the harbor to retrieve a silver cross thrown by a priest. The boy who got it was feted as a hero of the parade that followed. There was a fancy Greek Restaurant in town, with the best REAL Greek salads and those black olives that are so salty, feta cheese and potato salad on the bottom. There was a cafe that had a rotisserie in the window with lamb on it, where I ate, in the 60's, my first Gyros (pronounced YEAR-ose) and it was so good, I thought they should mass market them in a fast food chain and make a mint. Eventually somebody did -- So it goes. There is a movie starring a young Robert Wagner set in Tarpon. Wagner is cast as a deep sea diver in the bulky canvas suit and big metal helmit, attached to the boat by an umbilical air hose and tether, picking sponges off the sea bottom with a rake... ) Ike was a beloved old character, our Hero of WWII, a Strong Leader , who played Golf a lot during his relatively calm presidency of the 50's. That was then... -30-