THE CAPITAL: Love Feast

When a whim gets into big (250 pounds), jolly Congressman Frank Boykin, it sits there gnawing like a boll weevil until he does something about it. Like when he was 16, a poof farm boy, and got the urge to make money. Frank went out, became one of Alabama’s biggest lumber and turpentine tycoons, and made himself a few million. Or like the other day, when he got the idea he should do something for his old pal, Speaker Sam Rayburn.

“By God,” says Frank, “everything’s made for love.” So why not toss a testimonial dinner for Sam, just to show how everybody loves him? Frank hired the main barroom and big banquet hall of the capital’s Washington Hotel, sent out invitations to every big shot in town and a slew of industrialists, statesmen, bankers and railroad executives. (Winston Churchill cabled his regrets.) Once before, when Sam Rayburn lost the speakership to Republican Joe Martin, Boykin had wanted to do something for him, and he raised money to buy as handsome a Cadillac as the official car he had to give up.

Okefenokee Bear. Among the 900 guests that showed up one night last week were all the members of the Cabinet except Secretary of State Dean Acheson, a large segment of the Congress, almost all of the foreign ambassadors and three or four generals and admirals. Frank was at the barroom door to greet them. “Hello, partner,” bellowed Boykin. “Everything’s made for love.” The guests dug in. First there was a little buffet Frank had scraped together from his 100,000-acre hunting preserve in Choctaw County, Ala. and Deep Freeze lockers down home in Mobile —salmon from Quebec, venison from Alabama, elk from Montana, bear meat from the Okefenokee Swamp, turkey from Georgia, antelope from Chugwater, Wyo. Also a big batch of coon, possum and .’taters from Alabama’s First Congressional District which, proclaimed the booming host, is God’s country. Then, after a few cases of Scotch and bourbon to wash down the appetizers, there was the dinner itself—fresh shrimp, green turtle soup, Steak Rayburn (a double-cut smothered in mushrooms), a few hookers of brandy and fragrant Coronas.

Just about everything was the way Frank Boykin wanted it—lovable and liquid. The Vice President of the U.S., his wit gracious and his stories mellow, was master of ceremonies. Republicans and Democrats got up to tell what a fine fellow easygoing Sam Rayburn is, which came easy, for most of them think he is. Sixty-four-year-old Frank Boykin, a steam-engine of a man with a 50-inch chest, was somewhat awed by what he had wrought. “Here we have the representatives of all the good people of the world,” said he. “I have counted up, and over a billion people, half the people of the earth are represented here tonight to pay honor to one of the greatest men we have ever produced . . .”

The Heart of Texas. The microphone suddenly was silent. “The damned thing’s dead,” shouted the host, but he went on anyway. “Sam Rayburn is a great man; he has a heart as big as the state of Texas.” Some big brass—Chief Justice Fred Vinson, Justice-to-be Tom Clark, Attorney General-to-be Howard McGrath —praised long and industriously the long and illustrious career of Texas’ Sam Rayburn. Sam himself stood up to speak modestly of his past and express hope that “our ancient institutions of freedom could meet their new challenge.”

By midnight Boykin’s guests had drunk, eaten and spoken their fill. Boykin happily picked up the tab—about $16,000 —and shook his big head in wonderment. “Think of it, by God,” he thundered. “Over a billion people represented right here in one hall. I doubt if there’s ever been anything like it.”