Eastern Air Lines called her a "Ship of the Line." Sargent Shriver called her the "Lucky Seven." I'll always think of her as "Mother."

The 727 which carried Shriver through 130 landings and takeoffs during 50 days of the 1972 presidential campaign covered 57,181 miles. There was a press corps aboard; I was part of it for most of the trip and, as I say, the Lucky Seven became a mother to me. She was safe haven.

We stayed in the best hotels and ate in the finest restaurants, but coming back to the airplane was like returning to the womb. When you saw her tail rising over the terminal roof as your press bus rolled in, you knew you were safe; your job was done. Your bags were on board, you had your own seat, the stewardess (sorry, that's what they called them then) in your section knew what you liked to drink and, best of all, the candidate was locked up just like you. That meant that he could not sneak off and do something you wouldn't know about. (Editor: In those days, it wasn't unusual for that to happen. Shriver was particularly bad about it. In today's security environment, it just isn't done.)

So we all had genuine affection for the airplane--even those who didn't like to fly, although I can't imagine anybody in the news business who isn't used to flying. What the train was to Abraham Lincoln, the airplane is to the modern politician and, therefore, to the journalist. I suspect the crews that flew all that distance with us thought we were fighting it, though. I can't remember any time when a captain came to the rear of the airplane. I don't think they could bear to look at the inside of their shiny bird.

Of course, the wall decorations might have upset the captain a little, too. One lavatory in the tail was completely wallpapered with the Stars and Stripes. After all, this was a political campaign. There were Halloween decorations on the ceiling and the cabin walls were plated with campaign posters from different parts of the country. Some of them were pretty bizarre, some were just pungent. Eastern personnel tell me it took two days to get the airplane stripped and ready for routine duty at the end of the campaign.

A description of the typical campaign airplane's layout might help to give you a feeling for the social structure of this airborne community. Let me also say at this point that I traveled with all three of the major candidates who took part in the festivities (that year). President Nixon, you'll recall, did not make many appearances. This practice of mixing reporters around among the candidates is done by editors so that the reporters will get a feel for all the people in the race. It also keeps the reporters from going nuts. After you have heard the same speech 20 or 30 times, you begin to feel that you have said just about all there is to say about that particular person. That is why so much more is written about incidents on the campaign than about the speeches. But I digress.

Directly behind the cockpit, the candidate always has a private office and sitting room (in what is normally first class). This separates him or her from the common herd. But it is also one of the cute little tricks of campaign "stagery." It works like this: when the airplane landed, Secret Service agents lined up first at the rear door of the airplane (the 727 was ideal for this gimmick). After the SS came the press. As soon as the rear door was lowered this "Coach Class" herd roared down the stairway, around the landing gear to the front, stationing itself at the bottom of the first class stairs. This guaranteed the candidate a press reception whenever he or she chose to emerge from the front door. It made the candidate feel good and never failed to impress the local folks who lined up behind the airport fence with their Kodaks. To ensure that we played our part in this little charade, the candidate would occasionally say something worth reporting at the bottom of the stairs. So, you couldn't afford to do what you really wanted to do: climb on the bus and sit down. You went, instead, to the bottom of the stairs.

I always got a kick out of this because I made it a habit to watch the crews up in the cockpit or at the front door. There was at least one captain who never failed to produce his own camera for a shot out the front window. I never did learn if he was taking candid shots or if he was just keeping track of all the different airports he visited. At any rate, he seemed to enjoy it, so what the heck?

But back to the airplane. As you have discerned, Secret Service, reporters, photographers and some of the candidate's staff rode in coach. The only difference from the plane's normal layout was that the section was refurnished with all first class seating and the seating was assigned. In other words, I had the same seat at the end of the campaign that I had when the campaign began. That way, I could leave my personal property aboard when we got off for an intermediate stop. It also helped the stewardess remember who you were and what you liked to eat or drink. The food, too, was all first class, including a big platter of hors d'oeuvres waiting by the aisle when you came in through the rear. Are you beginning to see why I called her mother?

By the way, none of this was free to the press. We paid our own way--every single step. Without the press, the (then) unwealthy Democrats probably couldn't have afforded this kind of thing and the Republcans wouldn't have wanted to. The campaign organizations sent us the bills every week. It still works that way.

So the airplane was a good place to be. At least your boss couldn't reach you when you were flying off to the other side of the country somewhere (this was pre-cell phone). There were periods of weeks when nobody saw their home office for more than 48 hours at a time.

Naturally, we went to a lot of places that the airlines carrying the candidates were not franchised to fly. For instance, it's doubtful that very many people in Stockton, California had ever seen Eastern 727s. This led to some pretty interesting servicing problems. One dismal night, the (Eastern) service agent on Mother had to go down the road to a local beanery and buy out the place because there was no caterer available. I think the shop's manager closed for a week after that one night's business. It wasn't the airline agent's fault that no food was available at that stop. The Democrats were notorious for changing plans and destinations in mid-flight. There was never a guarantee that you would be exactly where the preprinted schedule indicated. The beanery incident was the result of one of those last-minute decisions. I don't know what the caterer at our planned destination did with his goodies.

There were other little problems, too. For instance, it was taboo to ever serve a Democrat a lettuce dish because the Democrats were all pledged to a lettuce boycott at that time and it just wouldn't do to have anybody get the chance to catch them like that. Also, Shriver has a penchant for cheese dishes. The airline representative had to know things like that and take care of it in advance. As far as I could tell, none of the several I flew with was ever caught short because of anything they did.

We saw the country from Portland to Portland, flew over the Golden Gate, walked the streets of Tallahassee, went to a small bar in Cleveland to mix with the folks, perused their shopping centers and went to farm towns. It was always the same speech, but it was flavored by the locality.

To save a lot of daily rewriting, Shriver had the various parts of his speech on index cards. Before an appearance, he would shuffle the cards to move the topics around, add something of a local nature and top it off with whatever the opposition had done or said in the last day or so, giving it at least the appearance of freshness. (Senator) McGovern and (Vice President) Agnew followed the same pattern. Nevertheless, the only time a reporter responded to the (standard) speech was when the candidate made a remark that was new. And that's where the duck came in.

Reporters and political candidates had a sort of friendly adversarial relationship. There is just no way you can spend weeks or months traveling cheek by jowel with a person and not get to know him. If he is a decent sort who can take a joke, you do a little of that, too. Let me say that all three men I traveled with that year--Shriver, Agnew and McGovern--were that sort. We joked a lot with the gregarious Shriver, kidded a bit with Vice President Agnew and bantered some with Senator McGovern. The Senator is a very nice man, but is more "reserved" and a little more shy than the other two, so that set the tone.

The Duck was a rubber bathtub toy with a squeaker in its tail. Each day, the Secret Service, reporters, photographers, camerman and broadcast technicians on board would name a new "Officer Of The Duck" whose job was to carry the rubber duck wherever Shriver went. The Duck, nicknamed "The Senator," would then be held close to the candidate's lectern, out of the audience's sight. Whenever campaign rhetoric became too outrageous, the Senator's squeaker would sound a loud Bronx Cheer, telling the candidate that, in the opinion of the committee, he had gone a little overboard. The beautiful part was that the audience never knew what was going on, so there was always some confusion when, in referring to President Nixon, Shriver might say something like, "he walks like a President, he looks like a President, he QUACKS like a President," and so on. Nor did they understand why he would sometimes "break up" in laughter for no apparent reason, having just drummed a political paradiddle at the opposition.

Believe it or not, duck squeakers wore out three times. Wishing to uphold tradition and not disappoint the candidate, one of us then stood in front of the lectern with a card on which QUACK was written. This was flashed at him when deemed necessary. The arrangement proved satisfactory until we came to that stop in Stockton.

Shriver had just finished a speech and was returning to the airplane when a big box was discovered sitting at the foot of the airplane's front stairs. The area was cleared and the box was carried a safe distance by the Secret Service. After carefully studying the box, agents pried open the lid and jumped back. There was The Senator--at least, the living embodiment of The Senator--sticking a long, downy neck over the edge of the box and telling the world loudly that he didn't think he was going to like politics. However, after a few shaky minutes on the airplane, he took to it like he and his friends are supposed to take to water. It was funny to see a stewardess leading the duck down the aisle on a string so he could look for crumbs. But the best was seeing him standing on Shriver's desk while the candidate sat in his executive chair. The picture that Assocated Press carried had a caption that explained that Shriver and the duck were discussing farm policy. That ended the career of "Senator Duck."

A footnote to that story is that while we were in Stockton, it was an off-duty Secret Service agent who went to a nearby farm to get the duck. None of us ever believed he had been looking for fresh vegetables. The duck, by the way, became a permanent resident of a farm near Washington.

I've mentioned the Secret Service several times and feel that a couple more words are necessary. All the agents I traveled with were nice guys who have a very difficult, worrisome job. They had a lot of fun and took part in the foolishness on the airplane, but down on the ground they were just what you picture them to be, all business. All of us who traveled with them made a point of getting to know them so that, in a crowd, everybody would know everybody else. It saved a lot of embarrassment when things begun to move fast. We also tried to help by staying out of their way.

Back on the airplane, with their guns in a box and their ties unstrung, the agents were as relaxed as the rest of us. I'll never forget flying over San Clemente, California and hearing the "Secret Service Band" join the rest of us in playing "Hail to the Chief" on kazoos. Let me add that most of these agents were field agents..not assigned to Washington duty.

But the Shriver plane was not the only nutty place on the campaign. There are other tales to tell and this is the place to tell them. Shriver's was the only one of the three campaign groups that had just one airplane. Vice President Agnew and Senator McGovern each had two. One airplane was the Executive Ship, outfitted as I have described..all the "regulars" rode on that. The other was an extra section that carried the overlow of reporters, technicians, Secret Service agents and campaign aides. For some reason, the second ship was always described as the "Zoo Plane," but I'd rather not go into that.

Since the Vice President's airplane was an American Airlines charter, we kidded him a lot about the way he'd make his appearance at the top of the steps. Remember what I said about all of us dismounting at the rear and rushing around to the front of the plane. After we were all in place and the local folks were alerted to watch the front door, the Vice President would appear on the top step, pausing there to have his picture taken as he waved and smiled at the crowd. In any picture taken, Mr. Agnew would stand there with that red, white and blue American logo stretching away from his left shoulder down the side of the plane. Nobody on his staff would ever admit it was intentional, but they would never say that it wasn't.

In some ways, though, the Vice President was a joy to travel with after you had been with a Democrat for awhile.

The Democrats (the challengers) simply tried to cover more ground than was ever possible. We averaged eight or nine stops a day with McGovern and Shriver. The average with Vice President Agnew was usually two and never more than three. Quite frankly, the vice president didn't have to run as hard to make himself known..he was a houshold name, so it was easier. For instance, one of the trips left Washington at 7:30AM, landed in Kansas City for an airport speech, went on to Twin Falls, Idaho for a speech and settled for the night in Provo, Utah. The next day, there was a mid-morning speech at Brigham Young University, a visit to the Mormon leaders in Salt Lake City and then back to the east for a speech in Syracuse, NY. After that, we went home to Washington. Because of his official duties and because he was a family man, the Vice President never liked to stay out more than two days at a time on a campaign, and that was just dandy with us.

It was the trip I've just outlined that had some of the most intriguing moments. When we landed in Twin Falls, we were taken straight to a Holiday Inn to wait until speech time. We had about six hours to kill with hardly anything to do, so we started talking shop with the local reporters who were spending the day covering the Twin Falls side of Mr. Agnew's trip. It turned out that there was division among them. Half the Twin Falls press corps was scouting the local golf courses because the local editors couldn't believe Agnew would allow himself to be idle that long. Actually, he wasn't. Everywhere the Vice President went, the Secret Service arranged for telephone trunk line so he could attend to business from his hotel room.

The next day, we saw another of those contrasts that make you realize that, in our great diversity, nothing or no one can be labeled "typically American."

At Twin Falls, Agnew had been heckled by a McGovernite to the point that it became necessary for him to employ
his famous barbed wit and a police whistle to put the man out of commission. (The whistle had been given Mr. Agnew by one of the TV crews as a sort of joke.) In the middle of the heckler's act, the Vice President whipped out the whistle, blew it like a cop and said "Wrong!!" He proceeded to tell the man where he thought he was off base and then went on with his speech with no further interruption.

At Brigham Young, there were McGovernites, too. Some 24,000 students, townspeople and faculty were on hand to hear the Vice President. But things are different at the Mormon university. The opposition held up their McGovern signs, waved them to their heart's content without interfering and then politely applauded the Vice President along with everyone else when he concluded the speech. (Editor: This is another example of our changing times; today, the White House bans the opposition from the President's speeches altogether.)

The night before, when we were flying between Twin Falls and Provo, Agnew's airplane was struck by lightning. He later indicated that he couldn't decide if somebody was trying to tell him something or if political lightning had struck. Regardless of the intent, nobody cared for the experience.

Once, when we arrived in Philadelphia we encountered one of those moments that no amount of good planning will avoid. The Vice President's airplane swung around on the ramp and stopped directly facing the nose of Senator McGovern's United charter. it was funny to watch the elaborate show of indifference as the candidate left to make his speech. McGovern's appearance was only five blocks away from Agnew's. But the biggest difference was in official recognition. As you may recall, Philadelphia's then-Mayor Frank Rizzo allied himself with President Nixon early in the game. Every time we went into Philadelphia with Vice President Agnew, there was an official reception and lots of police escort. An arrival by McGovern or by Shriver was received perfunctorialy and was never ushered very elaborately. But that's politics.

I can recall one incident that pretty much typifies Senator McGovern's uphill battle.

We beat a thunderstom into Albany, NY so the Senator could give a speech on Republican Governor Nelson Rockefeller's front doorstep at the state capital. As usual, we were late because there was too much jammed into the previous stops. The crowd had been stuffed, 12,000 strong, into the capital square for almost an hour by the time we arrived. The storm gathered as the Senator began his speech. Half-way through, he suddenly skipped to the end, saying: "So let's all get out there and get this campaign really moving..before we all drown." With that, the rain poured. It was the biggest gully-washer Albany had seen that year. Soaked to the skin, we ran to the busses, got back to the airplane smelling like yesterday's laundry, and headed for New York City.

Nobody had time to change clothes. As we were entering the Americana Hotel, I was just behind the Senator. On the edge of the crowd, there were two fashionably dressed ladies who'd interrupted an elaborate shopping tour to get a glimpse of the candidate. Unaware of what had happened to the man in Albany, and probably not caring very much, one of them whispered to the other: "He certainly doesn't wear wrinkle-proof suits, does he?" That's when the enormity of Senator McGovern's problem came home.

Those were interesting, if exhausting, times. Many nights, I awoke in hotel rooms, staring into the darkness, wondering where the hell I was. Most hotel rooms looked like all the other hotel rooms and for a few minutes it was always hard to remember which one you were in at that time. I started leaving the bathroom light on just so I would know where it was in that night's scheme of things. Campaigns today are pretty much the same. They go on far too long and, pretty soon, it is very hard to see anything new in the candidate's speeches so you start looking for the mistakes. It's human, and it's awful. But then you always had "Mother," where the food was good and nobody could reach you for a little while. Now, you have cell phones and .. there's nowhere to hide at all. And they don't let ducks on the plane anymore, either.

Oh, well..

I did my share.

Been there, done with that.

Amen.

Travels With A Duck, by Jim Slade, first appeared in the November, 1973 issue of Airline Pilot Magazine. The artwork is by the author..too.