Tales from the attic: The Hill in the 1950s

 Sam Smith

Everything was simpler in the 1950s. Even the US Capitol which I wandered around with my mike and tape recorder like it was my apartment building. Even the US Capitol Police force was comprised mainly of young men benefiting from the patronage granted their fathers by various members of Congress. It was a fairly pleasant crowd and you knew you were not just dealing with a law enforcement officer but perhaps a grad student whose dad was a buddy of the majority leader.

My favorite Hill cop story from the period involves a friend who was a bagpipe -playing Lebanese Catholic from Boston who knew everyone in the Demcratic Party and worked for a number of them including Massachusetts governor Foster Furcolo and, later, Ted Kennedy. She was on her way to an LBJ State of the Union from Boston but was late and arrived from the plane still carrying her bagpipe case in which rested not only the instrument but some pita bread her sister had made.

In a hall crowded with some of America's most powerful, my friend was told by a Capitol police officer to open the bagpipe case. The officer was disturbed by what he found inside. "Don't worry," said my friend. "It's just a bagpipe and some pita bread. . . Call your chief and tell him Terri Haddad is here with her bagpipes. He knows me."

The officer did and at the other end the Capitol Hill police chief issued one blunt order: "Tell her to play 'Danny Boy."

And so for the chief and many of America's most powerful, she did and then was allowed to repack her instrument and go hear the speech.

If you were from Michigan or California and you went and worked up on the Hill, you had a southern accent within six months. It was very, very Southern; they were the people who controlled it. People like Sam Rayburn.

There was a Congressman from Ohio who had gotten on Speaker Rayburn's bad side, and he had lost his favorite committee assignment and been sort of sent to purgatory. After Sam Rayburn died and John McCormack was the new Speaker of the House, he goes in to see McCormack and he says, "I just want you know Mr. Speaker, that I've learned my lesson." He said, "I'll never do that again. You can always count on me to go along with whatever you want." John McCormack reached into the desk and pulled out a piece of paper and says, "I'm sorry, but Sam left me a list."