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Tiger Research 65

Morris told me one time that politics needed more bighearted people—"more knights and princes"—and more laughter. He recalled a territorial board meeting in Prescott. There was great tension about whether to raise taxes. To relieve the strain, Morris said, "Gentlemen, I think this board has to be reorganized. We have three Jews and two Mormons on it. What do you say about letting a white man serve?" The laughter broke the tension. Politics wouldn't be politics without a fight. However, I've always said that to disagree, one doesn't have to be disagreeable. My mother taught me that, and so did Morris by the example of his relationship with his longtime political rival, W. O. "Buckey" O'Neill. Republican O'Neill and Morris clashed on just about every local issue. Buckey was a superstar of the time—a bare-knuckle brawler, frontier sheriff, judge, and commander of a company of Rough Riders in the Spanish-American war. Buckey was killed at San Juan Hill. Morris immediately led a fund-raising drive, and, when the body was brought home, a magnificent statue was commissioned in Buckey's name. It still stands in Prescott's town square.

I had an eighteen-inch copy made of Buckey's statue. It sits in my study today. The bronze work reminds me of Morris's princely character. I've tried to be more like Morris, magnanimous and more gracious in politics, as the years have passed. It has become easier with time and perspective. The story of Morris and Buckey is recalled not just as part of the history of our family but in recognition of the fact that battles end. We grow older and, with luck, wiser. The important thing is to learn, become more gracious, and die as a gentleman. On reflection, I'm now convinced that Morris was always edging me toward public service of some kind. His conversation was often about politics. He went out of his way to be straightforward and fair. Yet he was never cowed, for a vote or any other reason. He taught me something about personal and political integrity. The Thirteenth Arizona Legislature said of my uncle on his eighty-fifth birthday, "Probably no man living has played a more interesting part in the history and development of Arizona, or more highly exemplified the life of a true pioneer and builder, than has Morris Goldwater."

Morris died in 1939 in Prescott, where his wife, Sallie, had passed away seven years earlier. He was eighty-seven years old. No building in Prescott was large enough for the wake and funeral of the little fellow, who was only five feet four. A Masonic memorial service was finally held in a big local theater. Morris had left instructions for his funeral and maintained his sharp wit even from the grave: "When I am laid out, do not go pussyfooting around, as if you are afraid to wake me. If I wake or hear you, the chances are I will not talk back." Morris said he wanted to be buried as plainly as possible with no flowers, adding, "Do not spend much money on a tombstone. I may want to get up sometime and come back. A heavy stone might hinder me." Morris was very frank with me about politics and money. He said an honest politician would never make money. The way he put it was, "A man can't butter his bread on both sides. If he doesn't respect honesty, he shouldn't go into politics." I've never saved or paid much attention to money. My wife wrote all the checks and balanced the family books. Through the years, my family and friends have pushed me to invest in land and other projects, but I never did. There never seemed to be the time or personal inclination. Also, to be frank about it, I was always very sensitive about my position in the Senate and any conflict of interest.

I've never carried money in my life—literally. If anyone ever asked me to rub two nickels together, I couldn't do it. My daughters, Joanne and little Peggy, are always lecturing me. Peg claims I never had a checkbook in my life. That's not correct, although an accountant actually pays most of my bills. Little Peggy says my values are duty, honor, country—the motto of West Point—and I throw money away. My childhood friend, Harry Rosenzweig, is constantly raising hell with me about becoming more aware of my own finances. We go on trips, and he picks up the bills. Rosie says that Goldy—that's what he calls me when we're on speaking terms—never worries about the bill because he never carries cash, a checkbook, or a credit card. Peggy and I have met Rosie and his late wife, Sandy, in New York when I didn't have a dime in my pocket. I once asked a Manhattan cabbie, who recognized me, to send me the bill. Rosie was embarrassed and pulled out cash. The driver wouldn't let us out until I autographed the bill.

Dean Burch, once my legislative assistant in the Senate and later chairman of the Republican National Committee, claims Barry Goldwater is the worst money manager of any man he's ever known. He says I leave too many gifts along my tracks. Well, that may be, but what's the dough for anyway? As they say, you can't take it with you. Dean tells the story about a Saturday morning in my Washington office many years ago. I was leaving for New York and needed money, so I asked Dean to lend me fifty cents. Puzzled, Dean asked how far fifty cents was going to get me. I said as far as the Washington train station in a cab. Somebody was meeting me at the other end in New York. All my life I've given money away. The only time I got into hot water for it was when I borrowed $1,500 to buy land for a YMCA children's camp near Prescott. That was about forty years ago, when the money meant something. Maybe I shouldn't have done it, because we didn't have the funds. I sure heard about that from the family. All I said was that a helluva lot of people had helped me over the years.

My Dad—his nickname was Barry—was an outstanding businessman, but he spent no time on family investments, either. My parents did not own our home, and we rented the store. When Dad made money, he spent it. He was generous with charities, especially when St. Joseph's Catholic Hospital had financial problems near the turn of the century. My father was always fashionably dressed. Some people called him a dandy because he wore pince-nez glasses and was elegant even when playing poker and billiards at the Arizona Club. However, fashion and elegance were his business. Goldwaters had a reputation for quality—the latest and best fashion, especially for women. Dad was also a very private person. He confided in few people apart from our mother. However, he didn't always hide his feelings, especially about my comportment in high school. One evening at family dinner, he was looking down at me over his pince-nez like I was the two of spades. Dad may have liked cards, but not wild ones. He didn't care that I'd been elected president of the freshman class or that I was good enough for both the football and basketball teams. His voice lowered as his eyebrows raised. My father said sternly that I was going to Staunton Military Academy in Virginia, and there wasn't going to be any back talk. I felt as though I'd just been sentenced to the state pen. It seemed the whole family was ready to form a firing squad—except my mother. She was worried about my being so far from home. Dad appeared to say, the farther away the better—until I learned some discipline. Then I could come home and return to school in Arizona.

I packed my bags. I'd shaken a lot of dust on people, and there was no use denying it. It would be difficult without Bob, Carolyn, Rosie, and my other buddies. But this fellow wasn't going to leave with his tail between his legs. They would see—all of them, Dad included—that I'd come back with medals. And the girls would love my new Southern charm. Just wait. My father wasn't impressed. I knew he meant business—serious business—when he told me he was coming with me on the train to Virginia. He would continue to New York on a buying trip for the store. The train ride East was the longest trip of my young life. Dad never lectured me. He was very calm. I looked out the train window and saw the land turn from brown desert to the green of grass and crops. It all seemed so big, so endless. I kept getting smaller, weaker, and more frightened. My father went off to play cards with some of the men. I met Benjamin "Buckey" Harris. He was also a Staunton student. We began playing cards, too. People played a lot of cards, checkers, and chess in those days. The train ride across the country took a week. Unlike on today's jets, you got to know some of your fellow passengers. Once Buckey and I became friends, he shared a secret with me: "Do you see that man in the dark suit and derby hat? He's a card shark. I can tell all those fellows. Stay away from him."

I whispered back, "Buckey, that's my father." He turned red and ran to the toilet. I didn't see him for a few hours. He finally came back, and everything was all right. We've been friends ever since. Buckey now lives in Santa Clara, California. My father's words rang crisp and final when I got off the train in Virginia. "You're on your own now, son. It's up to you." The two-mile walk to the academy seemed endless. My bags were heavy, but my heart was heavier. I was about as alone as a scarecrow after crops are harvested—two thousand miles from home. I was about to meet the man who would straighten my direction, stiffen my purpose, strengthen my mind, and show me a discipline I had never known before—Sandy Patch. Major Alexander M. "Sandy" Patch was in charge of the Reserve Officers Training Corps and my military instruction at Staunton. He was Army from birth to death—and a native Arizonan. Patch had been born at Fort Huachuca in the southern part of the state and died of pneumonia at Fort Sam Houston in Texas. Like his father, who had lost a leg fighting Indians in the Southwest, he was career Army and eventually became a general. Both of them were West Point graduates.

Patch was about six feet tall, with blue eyes and reddish hair, weighing some 170 pounds, and light on his feet. The thing that marked him as a man and officer was his personal discipline. He wasn't tough or mean. He was calm. He never lost his temper, no matter what. Behind those steel blue eyes was a taskmaster. If he said to be some place at 10 A.M., you had better be there on the dot. If he asked you a question in class, you had better be prepared with an answer. If you broke the rules, you paid the price. Patch stressed basics. He was a painstakingly practical man. He always said we would use what we learned—in some way—for the rest of our lives. I remember one evening when the class was fighting a mock Battle of Gettysburg. We were using a large sand-table model of the terrain. Each cadet would start as a platoon leader. We'd work up to the problems facing captains and other officers. If anyone went off on the wrong track, the major would patiently allow him to go. He would let him dig his own trap. Then, he would stop and ask questions. He would slowly lead the cadet out of the trap but would make him find part of the way himself. The gentle but firm manner in which he did this was a work of art—like a master chess player. He was a gentle fox.

Sandy would always tell us to remember our basic orders, to keep in mind our original estimate of the situation. Not to just jump into a fight. Not to make big changes unless the battle shows the estimate was wrong. If you remember that, you may be able to avoid getting yourself and your men hurt. After completing an assignment, I once asked Patch, "Major, is there any other way we can know our orders are right or wrong?" He replied, "Son, you'll never know that until the enemy starts shooting at you." Patch saw plenty of shooting in World War II. He organized, trained, and later commanded the Americal Division on Guadalcanal. He served in Algiers, the planning headquarters for the invasion of Italy and southern France. He replaced Patton as commander of the Seventh Army. That was after the famous incident when Patton slapped a GI at a military hospital and was recalled to England by General Dwight D. Eisenhower. I've often thought of Sandy's teaching during visits to pilot training sites across the country. Pilots fly against "enemy" aircraft. When these men land and return to class, the dogfight is projected by film or tape on a four-column glass frame. You see American and "enemy" aircraft in action. The instructor can stop the projector at any time and either ask a pilot why he took an action—right or wrong—or explain what was good or poor in each performance.

You sure as hell have a much clearer picture of the situation, as Sandy said, when you're being shot at. The trick is to figure out how or why you got there and the best ways to escape and come back on the other guy's tail. At Staunton I was still a long way from being a deep thinker. Much of the time I was in trouble, walking beat. You put your rifle on your shoulder and march until you ache. The academy's rules were rigid. You couldn't run in certain areas, your bed had to be made a certain way, and everything about you and your room had to be clean. I could handle individual duties, but when the entire day's rules were added up, I was often on the short end. As a Rat, a first-year student, I had to clean the rifle, shine the shoes, and make the bed of an Old Boy. That was understandable, but there were times when I barely had time to shine my own shoes. Goldwater was late for formation. Goldwater's rifle was dirty. Goldwater ran out of toothpaste and tried to blow up an empty tube. Goldwater didn't brush his teeth. Goldwater was not present at bed check. Goldwater this, Goldwater that, Goldwater again.

I had only one fight. That was with my first roommate. I owed him money for something and paid him in silver dollars. He'd never seen a silver dollar and said it wasn't U.S. money. I'd never seen paper money, although we talked about it at home. So we put up our dukes and fought a financial war. One semester I had so many hours of beat to serve that Colonel Ted Russell, the academy superintendent, told the student body, "If Goldwater goes one week without beat, I'll cancel all beats." I finally did, to his astonishment and my own, and everybody got liberty. It wouldn't be possible to write about Staunton without mentioning Frank Summers. He was our football coach and another taskmaster. I played in the line. Like Patch, Frank believed in basics. He said that on the football field it meant executing simple plays well. On the field of life, basics are good habits. Frank proved to me that you don't have to be ugly to be tough. He had class. In my senior year at Staunton, I won the outstanding cadet award and was offered an appointment to West Point. However, my father was not well, and Mother thought it best that I return home.

It was a big mistake. I should have gone to the Point. To this day, I believe I was better equipped, psychologically, to be a military officer than a politician. Politics is a life that is often out of focus, that rises and falls with the tide of events and everchanging public opinion. For the most part, the military has clear, singular goals. If I had my life to live over again, I'd go to West Point. The concepts of duty, honor, and country are genuine to me. Patriotism is real. There's no greater service to this country than the defense of its freedom. In these fading years of my life, the emblem and motto of West Point sum up what I've tried to achieve. In his address to the Point's cadets on May 12, 1962, General Douglas MacArthur also spoke for me: "Duty—honor—country. Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be. "The unbelievers will say they are but words, but a slogan, but a flamboyant phrase. "But they build your character; they mold you for your future roles as the custodians of the nation's defense; they make you strong enough to know when you are weak, and brave enough to face yourself when you are afraid.

"They teach you to be proud and unbending in honest failure, but humble and gentle in success; not to substitute words for actions, nor to seek the path of comfort, but to face the stress and spur of difficulty and challenge; to learn to stand up in the storm but to have compassion on those who fall; to master yourself before you seek to master others; to have a heart that is clean, a goal that is high; to learn to laugh yet never forget how to weep; to reach into the future, yet never neglect the past; to be serious, yet never take yourself too seriously; to be modest so that you will remember the simplicity of true greatness, the open mind of true wisdom, the meekness of true strength..." Duty, honor, country—these are old words but not entirely forgotten. 3 A Double Life This old-timer has led two lives all these years, from my early days in school to my last in the U.S. Senate. The straight life—son and student, husband and father, military officer, businessman, and politician. And the sweet life—athlete, ham radio operator, pilot, car buff, photographer, gadgeteer, and all-around tinkerer with the gamut of electrical contraptions, model airplanes and ships, guns, woodwork, metalwork, plumbing, and other handiwork.

Show me a gadget, and you've found a handyman who'll be late to dinner. Lead me to a car engine or television set on the fritz, and you're talking with an amateur mechanic who just decided not to go to a party. Taxi a new military fighter plane onto a runway, and you've got an old jet jock who has tossed his day's schedule—sometimes even in the Senate—into a wastebasket. Hobbies, from radio at the age of ten to satellite dishes today, have filled my years with just as much activity as my formal responsibilities. They often caused my public and private lives to crisscross, sometimes invading and other times complementing one another. There has been both a plus and minus to all this. On the plus side, my love of flying took me into the Army Air Corps. Photography helped launch me as a politician. Radio led me to propose regulatory and other changes in the U.S. communications industry. Hobbies have been an easy, natural way to get to know more people and make friends. These individuals have usually made me a better person. The places I visited have often given me a clearer perspective of myself.

My conscience has sometimes suffered because I took time and energy away from my family and professional life. Instead of flying or rapping in my radio shack, I might have been with the children or working behind my desk. Later, I'd try to make it up. We'd take photos on a camping trip or fly somewhere for a few days of vacation. A man with one or several hobbies often walks a fine line between family and job. Hobbies are good, but we pay a price for each of them. Hobbies have been like two more arms—curiosity and adventure. They have kept me young and busy when my step slowed. Most of us want to know what makes things tick, and what makes people tick. A person learns a lot about himself tinkering—in my case, my tendency to be impatient. My patience has improved by my using all my willpower not to cuss while tinkering. It has also gussied up my English. There's tremendous satisfaction in working with your hands. A fellow can gauge headway with his own eyes. During my years in the Senate, it was often difficult to measure progress. For that reason, the job became frustrating at times. To weather difficulties and disappointments, I built model planes and ships and monkeyed with various new gadgets.

No one can ever know this fellow without getting his hands dirty with him, or jumping into a plane and taking off somewhere. Flying is my first love. It has been a hobby and part-time career. I flew in the U.S. Army Air Corps for about four years in World War II. After the war, flying was so much in my blood that I formed Arizona's Air National Guard. The government even paid me for it. That was the only time I ever beat the feds. Over nearly sixty years, I've piloted about 15,000 hours and logged another 7 or 8 million miles in the air. It always seemed better than a lot of the hot air around Washington. Most small boys dream about flying. Our gang watched the crop dusters and barnstormers around Phoenix. All of us heard about an Arizona air ace, Frank Luke, Jr., who had been awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor after being killed in France during World War I. Luke Air Force Base is named after him. Luke's statue stands before the state capitol in Phoenix. I soloed in 1929. My father had died, and I was working at our Phoenix store. One of my first passengers was Joanne Strauss, a girl-friend of my pal Harry Rosenzweig. We were doing a tight 360 degrees at about two thousand feet over her house when, bingo, the plane snapped over and went into a spin.

Those early instructors rarely taught students how to get out of a spin. One of them once said jokingly to me, "If you ever get into one, let go of everything and start the Lord's Prayer." That sure as hell wasn't going to solve my problem, so I grabbed the damn stick with both hands and instead took a deep breath to ease the tension. The trainer finally leveled out, and we landed. I took Joanne home and downed two shots of straight bourbon to stop my hands from shaking. I was back flying the next day—solo. My four years at Staunton Military Academy were like a compass for me. In 1930 I was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Army Reserve and also received a commercial pilot's license. My hope was to parlay the two into military wings. For the next eleven years, I served part-time with the old 25th Infantry Division. Much of that was at Camp Little near the Arizona-Mexico border. In 1932 I began courting Margaret Johnson, of Muncie, Indiana, who later became my wife. She said if I'd quit flying and take up bridge, she'd marry me. I agreed. Those were the two biggest white lies of my life.

My proposals to Peggy would fill a good part of a long love story. She held out for a firm promise that I'd really ground myself. Her instincts were right. I never did. Peg finally accepted inside a Muncie phone booth. It was my twenty-fourth birthday—New Year's Eve, 1933. The booth was her idea—no trap. We were on our way to a dance, and Peggy called her parents to wish them a happy new year. When Peg finally said yes, I opened the door of the phone booth. We were married in 1934, and I never learned bridge or left the cockpit. My dream of becoming an Army Air Corps pilot lingered. The corps had rejected me as an aviation cadet before I was married for failing the vision test. But I never gave up the hope of wearing its wings. The store work meant only eating—flying with the corps would be living. When war broke out in Europe, I was over thirty and we had small children. To my poor eyesight was added knee problems from old basketball injuries. However, the need for pilots soared. It was time for a new try. I paid a courtesy call on Lieutenant Colonel Ennis Whitehead, commander of the Corps' Advanced Training School at Luke. Citizen Goldwater was acting in his official capacity as chairman of the Armed Services Committee of the Phoenix Chamber of Commerce. We discussed how the community in general and the Chamber in particular could assist Colonel Whitehead to carry out his many responsibilities. He would, of course, have our complete support. I let the word "complete" sink in because it seemed like very good protocol. People told me that protocol was the password to getting ahead in the military. Whitehead solemnly nodded. We got around to my reserve background, that I could fly, and that I liked the corps.

The colonel took the hint. He led me to a typewriter, where I filled out an application to join the corps for a one-year tour of active duty. Within a month I was in uniform at Luke. First Lieutenant Goldwater became a ground school gunnery instructor. Peggy understood. It was flying. When Congress declared war in 1941, I already had about two hundred hours of unofficial stick time in the dual-control AT-6 trainer. I parlayed my interest in photography into a seat in the cockpit. In exchange for photos taken of instructors and their planes, they allowed me to fly the AT-6. The pictures flew home to family and friends. Despite more than a decade of flying, including the unofficial time at Luke, I was still on the ground when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. The nearly-thirty-three-year-old hopeful spent the day mounting .30-caliber machine guns on planes at Luke. The young eagle inside me was screaming to fly. My friend Fred Boynton was officer of the day at Luke on December 7, 1941. Fred was a big, rawboned pilot instructor, not big on protocol or ordering people around. He saw his main job that morning as making sure all the prisoners in the stockade were accounted for.

When the firehouse relief showed up about seven o'clock, they told Fred about a news report on the radio. It said Pearl Harbor had been bombed. Fred thought they were pulling his leg and shouted back, "Oh, yeah, what and where's Pearl Harbor?" Despite his doubts, Fred decided to play it by the rule book. He phoned the commanding officer, related the incident, and was told it was probably only a rumor. The officer hung up. An hour later, the commander excitedly called back and ordered Boynton to round up every supply and ordnance officer and recall everyone on leave. That meant me, and I rushed to Luke to find out as much as possible about the Japanese raid. This was not my choice, but it offered me the opportunity to fly, because we sure as hell were going to war. A flying slot with the Air Transport Command eventually opened up. We were the Over-the-Hill Gang, which delivered aircraft and supplies to every American theater of the war. Later I became a command pilot. Before going overseas, I was assigned to Yuma for aerial gunnery. First Lieutenant Goldwater had become a captain, and some buddies decided to throw a party before he left base. We had quite a saloon piano player in my pal Boynton, but no piano.

Fred wanted a big, loud one. As he put it, "Barry, get me one of those whorehouse pianos." I called the madam at the biggest bordello in town. She obliged. "Anything for the boys." We rolled out to her house with a big truck, hoisted the piano aboard, and rumbled back to base. The party roared like a bear in a barrel. Fred never could read a note, but we hummed a few bars of almost any song and he hit that piano like a roll of thunder. Everybody had a great time. I was a hero—briefly—until somebody told Whitehead where we'd gotten the piano. He fired this order from his office like a load of buckshot: The piano must return to its point of origin immediately. The commander then declared the madam's place off limits. She was furious with me. But I was off to Yuma. It was great to soar again with the angels when somebody else was responsible for protocol. Eventually I became operations officer of the 27th Ferry Squadron of the Air Transport Command at New Castle Army Base, Delaware. I was assigned as chief pilot of two operations, Crescent, operating out of LaGuardia Field in New York, and Fireball, from Miami. Crescent flew from the East Coast to the Azores, across North Africa to Karachi, India—now the capital of Pakistan. Fireball went from Miami to Brazil, on to Lagos, Nigeria, and across central Africa to Karachi.

In a stroke of luck, I was one of nine pilots to ferry the first and last group of single-engine P-47 Thunderbolts from the United States across the North Atlantic to American units in Britain. We lost one plane at a refueling stop before landing in Scotland. The pilot survived. All single-engine aircraft were later sent by ship. These are a few words about my P-47, written in a brown spiral diary on July 16, 1943: "I am naming her _Peggy G_ after you know who. She [the real Peggy] has led me through the best part of my life, so I figured I may as well follow her namesake across the Atlantic.... She is the sweetest, smoothest-running airplane man ever made, and she and I will get along as famously as her namesake." While stationed at New Castle in Wilmington, Delaware, in 1942, some of us finally got leave. I phoned Dr. Henry Running, our family pediatrician, and asked him to bring our wives to Manhattan, where we'd have some fun. The girls and Hank soon arrived. I didn't know anyone in New York, and they sure didn't know me. We called one of the fanciest restaurants in town for dinner reservations. The receptionist, in a charming, deferential whisper, asked, "Are you _the_ Goldwater?"

"Honey," I replied, "the one and only." We were escorted by the headwaiter to a good table and shown impeccable service. Strangers bought us drinks and came by to say hello. The four Westerners agreed these Easterners weren't so bad after all. We later learned that a well-known New York philanthropist was named Goldwater. Several local institutions were named after him. I saw no reason to allow a detail like that to dampen our spirits. It might be a long time before we were together again. So, with the traditional stiff upper lip of a good soldier, I continued on my merry way about town as _the_ Goldwater. Several months later, I had leave again and phoned Hank for another Manhattan jaunt with the girls. We stayed at the plush St. Regis. The place seemed a bit dull, so I went out and bought a rubber duck, a fancy decoy. It quacked when a rubber hose attached to it was squeezed. I lay back in bed in our fancy room and began quacking the duck. It was loud enough to be heard above the traffic noise below.

Young women were sewing dresses and other clothes in a Hattie Carnegie workshop on the same floor across the street. A few came to the windows when they heard the quacking. None could see the duck, so more came to find the quack—not me, the duck. Production finally came to a standstill. One of the girls eventually spotted the duck on the tiny balcony outside our room. Everywhere we went, from Central Park to Grand Central Station, where I caught a train to return to base, I carried the duck with its head sticking out of my flight bag. It would quack at the darndest times. People were splitting their sides laughing, but I kept a straight face. After returning to New Castle, this squadron commander used the duck to assemble his men. The commanding officer became angry and eventually furious at what he considered making light of serious discipline. He told some of my men, "If I hear Goldwater's duck one more time, I'm going to kill somebody." That did it, of course. I soon sounded the quack-quack of assembly over our loudspeaker. Needless to say, there was hell to pay.

I later flew in the China-Burma-India theater. We had shuttle runs over the Himalaya Mountains, known as the Hump, delivering arms, ammunition, and equipment to Chiang Kai-shek's forces. The Americans had a running skirmish with Lord Mountbatten, one of Britain's theater commanders over there. I flew into Karachi with orders to get one of our C-54s airborne. The big transport was the first four-engine muscle that we had. It was a wonderful workhorse, but this one sat in a hangar with an engine falling off. The Army flew over an engineer from McDonnell-Douglas. But he was a civilian and wasn't going to get his hands dirty. This fellow took one look at me and seemed to say, "You're the grease monkey." Looking at that giant loose engine, even this old gadgeteer was a bit shaken. But it was worth a try, so I started punching rivets. The rivets held, but an even bigger problem came loose. The British passed the word—it eventually got to me—that this was now Mountbatten's plane. Our guys told me: Nuts to that.

Word came that Mountbatten himself was arriving. This was big. A lot of strings were being pulled. I was not going to be the yo-yo. So I jumped in the C-54 and took off. That baby bounced around nearly every Allied base in India with Mountbatten's boys on its tail. I'll never forget the tail number—444. Our intelligence was pretty good, and we managed to keep one jump ahead of the British until they finally gave up. Hell, they could never have caught this old desert rat. Some of us wished Mountbatten would have faced Curtis LeMay under those circumstances. LeMay, later to become a general and Air Force chief of staff, was a colonel in those days. I first met him at Kharagpur, India, after landing in a C-54. There didn't seem to be any equipment to unload my cargo, two replacement engines for B-29s. So I began looking around for someone in charge. This short, stocky officer, chewing on a cigar, finally heard me out. He said not to worry, but to stay with my plane and the cargo. LeMay took off in a C-46, flew to Calcutta, and returned a few hours later with two forklifts. We've been friends ever since. He has always been a can-do officer.

If LeMay were in my boots, he never would have run from Mountbatten. The colonel would have greeted the British commander with a broad smile, his around-the-clock cigar in his mouth, and blown smoke rings in Mountbatten's face. I mean that. He wouldn't have said more than a pleasant howdy behind rings of zeros. LeMay was that kind of guy. He was tough and you knew it, but he was class. In Burma, I repeated one of my last assignments at Luke—helping train pilots—this time Chinese—to fly the P-40, our pursuit plane. We formed some fine friendships, which led me to support Formosa, later called Taiwan, after the Communists took power on the Chinese mainland. After my tour in Asia, I was reassigned to Southern California to train pilots for combat duty in P-38 and P-51 fighters. It was ironic. I had always wanted to fly fighters in combat, but never got the chance. Nor did I fulfill my other major goal, piloting B-29s against the Japanese. I served in California until the end of the war. The major political conviction I took from the conflict—one spends a lot of time thinking on long flying runs—was that it never would have erupted if the United States had remained militarily strong in the 1920s and 1930s. I'd never be an isolationist.

In November 1945 I was mustered out but soon formed the Arizona Air National Guard. I took a reduction in rank from colonel to captain to assume command of the guard's 197th Fighter Squadron. My first request was that the unit not be racially segregated. It was soon approved. After I came home from the war, Hank Running phoned about three one morning. He asked if I'd fly him down to Sonora Province in Mexico. Hank explained that our Maricopa County Medical Society was donating penicillin and other emergency medical supplies to the Mexicans because of disastrous floods there. He had to go as the society's president. The Yaqui River was still pouring across northern Mexico with loss of life, injuries, and many homeless. We took off from Phoenix in a single-engine Navion with a news photographer who hitched a ride to shoot photos of the scene, and ran into the angriest storm I'd ever seen over Mexico. The clouds were so thick I could barely make out my maps. We finally landed at Hermosillo to gas up. The flood area was farther south. We were told the medicine was most needed at the town of Navojoa, below Guaymas. We took off again, but the storm was even worse. The photographer was shaking and white-knuckled. Hank kept looking at me nervously. The clouds were thick, and we couldn't see anything outside the plane.

There were some hills in the area, but we had to get down to see how close we were to Navojoa and where we could land. Suddenly, as the clouds broke, we were on a collision course with a smoking locomotive several hundred feet below. I pulled the plane up in a helluva hurry. The ceiling was too low to find a landing strip, and there was no airport tower to help us. We decided to return to Hermosillo until the storm allowed more visibility. I landed and was pretty upset. I showed Hank a sandwich he'd bought earlier at a Hermosillo restaurant. He'd given it to me on the plane. Hank and the photographer had eaten theirs despite the turbulence. They were hungry since no one had breakfast that morning. I said, "Damn it, Hank, I open up this sandwich, and what do I find in it—lettuce. Hell, you know you can't trust the lettuce down here. I'm not about to eat this sandwich." I handed it to him and walked off. Hank hollered after me, "Here we are in a foreign country with fog, rain, and flood. We're wondering whether we're going to come out alive. You're inspecting a sandwich at the controls of a plane in a big storm. Now you're raising hell about a little piece of lettuce!"

We talked to the provincial governor about getting us more gas. He said okay and invited us to a local wedding to wait out the storm. Hank didn't want to go, saying we looked like bums. Nobody had shaved that morning, and we wore old clothes. The governor started walking, and that was good enough for me. I got into step, and the two others followed. A loud band played. The tequila had a terrific kick. I jolted one down and reeled back a couple of steps. The Mexicans were watching the _gringo._ I walked back to the bar, kicked it, and hollered, _"Bueno!"_ They cheered. I belted down another to more cheers. Here was Goldwater, playing to the crowd, and he hadn't even started in politics. After the sky cleared and we said _adiós,_ I took Hank aside and said, "Down here, worry about the food and water—not the booze." We delivered the medicine and other supplies and flew home. Hank never forgot that day. His tale of what happened has made Arizona air lore. Hank never charged us or his other friends for taking care of our kids. I was determined to pay him back in a way that both of us would appreciate.

One day we drove out to Sky Harbor International Airport. I pointed to a new Air Coupe—a single-engine, two-seater prop job and said, "Hank, that's your new buggy." His eyes bulged. Maybe he thought Peggy and I were planning to have seven or eight more kids. I told him not to worry about that. He said, "Hell, Barry, I'm not worried about you and Peg. I'm concerned about myself. I don't know how to fly!" Hank learned to fly and loved it. The only air mishap I ever had occurred in that Air Coupe. It was a fluke. My brother's wife, Mary, and I were taking off from Navajo Mountain, about thirty miles northeast of Page, Arizona, when the wind picked up the plane and flipped it over onto a sandbank. Mary was learning to fly, and I was checking her out. We were slightly shaken up. The propeller and windshield were broken. The Navajo medicine men nodded like sages. They told me the war gods who slept there had taught us a lesson for disturbing them. Some carried little pieces of that windshield around for a long time to prove it.

I bought Hank a new plane. In those days, I did a lot of flying up in Navajo country. The tribe had some wicked winters. I'd collect food and hay and drop them to Indian families and cattle cut off by snowdrifts. I've probably spent more time with Arizona's Indians than any other white man. It grew from an innocent boyhood interest in Indians when our family camped on their reservations. I had a trading post at the foot of Navajo Mountain with a partner, Bill Wilson, a great outdoorsman. This offered the chance to get to know many of the Navajo. All of us liked hiking and hunting. We were kindred spirits. Later, I collected the Kachina dolls of the Hopi tribe and other tribal artifacts. Finally, I crusaded for many Indian causes in the U.S. Senate. After years of developing friendships, I began to understand Indian ways, needs, and causes. We used a Navajo name for our Scottsdale home. It's "Be-nun-i-kin," meaning "house on top of the hill." We had various aircraft during the 1964 presidential campaign, and each was given a Navajo name. The tribe gave me a Navajo name, "Chischilly," or the "curly-haired one." A tattoo on my left hand identifies me with the Smoki dancers, a Prescott organization that performs its own version of sacred Indian dances. A Kachina carving hangs from the front door of our Washington apartment.

Some of this may seem superficial. It isn't. These are outward signs of how something that began as a simple interest and historical hobby became an inner conviction and commitment. From my first campout in Indian country, the red man always seemed as much—if not more—a part of Arizona and America as any white or black person. No member of the U.S. Congress has worked longer or harder on their problems than I. They'll always be my brothers and sisters. The Indians are the most significant example of how a private hobby—my interest in the history of the people and places of Arizona—completely invaded my public life. This became starkly clear in one of the saddest experiences of my life. In recent years, I had spent more time with the Hopi, a much smaller tribe than the neighboring Navajo. The Navajo number nearly 100,000 people on their reservation—another 72,000 live elsewhere—while the Hopi number only about 6,000. My interest in the Hopi began when I started collecting their unusual Kachina carvings while still in my teens. Those first dolls were purchased with nickels and dimes, as well as in trade for different objects. Kachinas are religious symbols that represent the earth, wind, and other spirits. The Hopi are pantheistic.

Eventually, I purchased most of my collection of some seven hundred dolls from a Phoenix architect, John Kibbey. So the public might share in the lore of these multicolored dolls, we donated hundreds of them to the famous Heard Museum of Native American Anthropology and Art in Phoenix. A few still stand like sentinels in my home and radio shack. Navajo leaders began an uproar in 1974, when Congress divided more than 1.8 million acres of disputed land between the two tribes. Their leaders and some tribesmen had argued over parts of the vast acreage for more than a century. Many of us in Congress had tried to settle the differences amicably, but every effort had failed. Old feuds had kept the area in turmoil. Tribal chairman Peter MacDonald and other Navajo officials blamed me and others in Congress for not swallowing all the claims coming out of their Window Rock, Arizona, home base. The truth is that both tribes had a case. Since they were unwilling to settle it, Congress finally stepped in and divided the territory. To avoid future problems, it ordered that thousands of Navajo be relocated from the land apportioned to the Hopi. The Hopi also were to be moved from Navajo land. They were fewer in number and on smaller acreage. This was heartrending in some cases because families had lived in certain areas for as long as they could trace their ancestors. Yet it had to be done since neither side would guarantee the peace of the other. Those relocated were given new houses and land by the federal government.

Relocation still continues. The bitterness between the two tribes remains. It's not a perfect solution—there can't be with the many complex aspects of the land exchange—but Indian leaders have long used the endless feud between their tribes as a political poisoned arrow. Anglo activists, most from outside Arizona, have adopted the Navajo as a social cause in recent years. These political and social engineers are still pouring kerosene on the old flames of tribal hatred and revenge. Most Indians and Arizonans have nothing but contempt for their invasion into what is totally an Indian issue. The Congress became involved because of its guardian or trust responsibilities. The dispute is a personal tragedy for me—not a public fight—because there's no reason why the Navajo and Hopi should not live in peace as brothers and sisters. The outside world is cruel enough without fighting among the tribes themselves. The Navajo-Hopi dispute became a public battle for me because it took national attention away from larger, more crucial issues facing the nation's 1.4 million Indians. I've long called for taking $1 billion a year away from foreign aid and using it to battle the dreadful educational, health, and economic problems among the 270 Indian tribes. This is not to suggest that continuing the federal dole to Indians is the answer. That long failure should be a further lesson to American society on the ills of the welfare state.

However, the Indians face immediate, overwhelming problems. Their dropout rate is greater than among any other sector of our educational system. Unemployment on reservations often runs 50 and sometimes 70 percent. Alcoholism is rampant. Most Indians do not trust the white man, and with reason. The present federal welfare system breeds self-contempt and worse social problems. The Indians do not want favors. They want to rise or fall by themselves, but they have neither the necessary tribal leadership, in many cases, nor the educational and economic resources to aim for reasonable, realistic goals that will retain their basic cultural identity. In many ways, the Indians are America's greatest tragedy. Many of us are still hopeful they'll play an important role in Arizona's—and the nation's—future. One reason is that the state's twenty reservations cover a sweeping 19 million acres, more than 26 percent of our land. The federal government controls 44 percent, or 32 million acres. The state owns 9 million acres. Only 17 percent, or 12.3 million acres, is in private hands.

The cause of all Indians is a personal dream and a public hope in the crisscrossed lives of Barry Goldwater. On entering politics, policy prohibited me from remaining in the guard. I continued flying in the Air Force Reserve and, when elected to the Senate, organized the 9999th Air Reserve Squadron, which was composed of congressmen and staff. Before retiring as a major general from the Air Force Reserve in 1967 after thirty-seven years of active duty, I was in Washington for a painful bone spur operation. Feeling none too good, I happened to run into an old friend, Lieutenant General William Pitts, now USAF Retired. He had been the commander of the Fifteenth Air Force, Strategic Air Command. Pitts was taking an Air Force T-39 out toward Phoenix. Since I was on flying status, he could drop me off in time for Christmas. It was great luck. However, it was difficult to know whether I'd hold up on the flight because the pain from the operation was killing me. A friend said not to worry. He had the answer.

Pitts didn't know my secret as I struggled to get aboard the aircraft. It was a tight fit. Using a cane, I had to climb several steps that folded down from the fuselage. A narrow passageway led to the cabin. Since I couldn't sit up, Bill removed the two seats on the right side of the aircraft. He put a mattress there. It was tough getting back to the cabin. I banged the heel that had been operated on and turned the air pretty blue. Sweat was pouring down my face by the time I made it to the mattress. Bill took my cane and began to stow it up front. I coaxed him into giving it back to me. He climbed into the pilot's seat, and we took off. Bill glanced back at the cane. He'd gotten the idea there was something special about it. There was. The length of the cane had been hollowed out and a flask fitted inside. Whenever I got the chance, I removed the top and took a swig of bourbon. Finally, about an hour into the flight, Bill caught me in the middle of a swig and asked, "What's that, Barry?"

"Bourbon!" I roared. That was my last word for the entire flight. No more pain. The tired and mellow passenger slept like a baby all the way to Phoenix. Arizona is a large state, covering more than 72 million acres. My friend Jerry Foster and I have flown over almost every square foot of it. In the past twenty years or so, I've probably flown more with Jerry than anyone. Jerry started out on fixed wing and eventually became a helicopter pilot. He now flies and broadcasts for a Phoenix television station. We don't use maps on these flights and don't talk much. Jerry toots a little about his knowledge of the terrain. One time we were headed to Black Canyon City, north of Phoenix. I pointed out an old Indian ruin on top of a mesa. Jerry said, "Hey, old-timer, I've flown over that area hundreds of times. There's no Indian ruin over there." Jerry flew over, and we looked. Sure enough, there were the ruins. I said, "Hey, youngster, get a road map!" We like to burn one another's butts on flying trips. About ten years ago, we rented two planes and took family and friends down to Mexico for Christmas. Jerry was loading up with maps. I said to forget it. This old pilot knew Mexico.

Three hours later, we were in a thunderstorm and running out of gas over Mexico. I mean, we were running right on empty. Jerry was bugging me on the radio: "Where are the maps, professor? How about a geography and geology lesson on good old Mexico?" He was creaming me. We spotted a little town and landed. "Hell, Jerry," I asked, "were you lost?" I told Jerry not to worry—that my Spanish was _bueno._ Only the fellow in charge didn't understand me, and this _hombre_ couldn't figure out a word he was saying. Jerry was laughing. Ollie Carey, a longtime family friend and wife of the late actor Harry Carey, stepped up. In rapid-fire Spanish, she asked this guy where the aviation gas was. He beamed and rolled out enough fifty-five-gallon drums of the stuff to fly a DC-10 from there to Tokyo. We took off and finally landed at a hideaway on Mexico's southern beaches. I walked over to Jerry and asked, "Were you lost?" He shot me down. "Next time, I'll bring the maps." That was his punch line to everything said for the rest of the vacation. However, I was to even the score.

When Senator Carl Hayden, an Arizona legend, died, President Johnson flew to Phoenix for the funeral. Hayden had served in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate for fifty-seven years. Johnson was flying by army helicopter from Sky Harbor International Airport to Gammage Auditorium at Arizona State University in Tempe. The memorial service was to be held there. Johnson was to land at the ASU football stadium a few miles away and proceed by motorcade to the auditorium. Jerry was flying me and my pal Harry Rosenzweig to Tempe. I asked Jerry where he was going to land. He said next to the President's chopper. I replied, "Oh, yeah?" and told him to land on the grass next to the auditorium. Jerry started arguing with me: "There's no space. Look at that mob down there. The lawn's filled with television cameras and photographers. See all those reporters and faculty? My God, there are the Tempe police and the state highway patrol. I'll bet the Secret Service are there, too. It's a zoo." "Land!"

He was still arguing. "Where?" "There!" I said, pointing to a patch of clear grass to the side of the auditorium. "Aw, shit!" Jerry hollered, and put the bird down. Jerry was right. The stuff hit the fan. It seemed every cop in town was bearing down on us—Tempe and university police, the highway patrol and Secret Service. President Johnson's motorcade turned off Mill Avenue toward the auditorium. I stepped out of the helicopter and walked to greet the President in front of the building. The police flew by me to grab Jerry. I greeted Johnson, laughing so hard I couldn't stand straight. The President felt I'd upstaged him. When we'd arrived by helicopter, the crowd had turned our way instead of toward his motorcade. I could hear Jerry shouting in the distance, "Go talk to Goldwater. He's the guy who did this. I'm only the pilot. See the senator, guys. Arrest him—not me!" Jerry finally managed to convince the police I was the instigator. He avoided a Federal Aviation Administration citation. I never heard any more about it—except from Jerry, who still taunts me from time to time: "So you finally beat Johnson! Yeah, you had to beat him!"

Jerry was another guy who was always on me for not carrying money on our trips. We flew to Los Angeles one time for a Johnny Carson roast. I was on the program. We were picked up at the airport by a limousine with a real good-looking gal behind the wheel. We went to the roast, had a bite to eat and a few laughs, and returned to the airport with the same classy chauffeur. I said to Jerry, "Give her fifty bucks." I could see the look on his face. He was dying. He elbowed me and whispered, "How about twenty?" I said, "No, fifty." He was stalling. "All I got is a ten." I repeated, "Fifty." He came up with his favorite phrase, "Aw, shit!" and handed her fifty. Jerry looked at me and finally said, "I'm not bringing any dough the next time." "Neither am I," I said. We flew home, and it was pretty quiet until we saw the lights of Phoenix. Jerry looked at me again and said, "Get a checkbook and a credit card, will ya?" When my wife died in December 1985, Jerry was one of the first people I called. He said, "Let's go flying when you're feeling all right."

A few weeks later, he flew me up to Lake Powell on the Arizona-Utah border. Powell is one of the most beautiful lakes in the world. A magnificent stretch of red rocks borders the water for many miles. We choppered from there to our old trading post. Then we flew to Rainbow Lodge, a hideaway my wife bought long ago. We walked around the place in silence. The only part left of the lodge was a section of cement foundation. Tears welled up in my eyes. I'll never forget Jerry for that act of kindness. The trip took me back to our honeymoon. For an instant, the face of my beautiful young bride appeared in the emptiness of the lodge and my heart. Then she was gone. We flew home. But Peg was there—in the face of the desert and brown hills. My tears clouded the clear blue sky. It has been fun flying with Jerry through the years. I've tried to combine the joy of flying with rediscovering my native state. This is an entry from my diary of April 17, 1981: "Jerry Foster and I lifted off in the helicopter at 8:30 this morning from my driveway. We headed north, flying across the eastern edge of Black Mesa over the Verde River and valley. We landed on a flat slab of red sandstone near the Cathedral of Rocks.

"Jerry and I talked about how the area got its name, the geology and geography, and more about the history of the place. "We flew to Flagstaff, where we refueled, and on to the lava beds east of the San Francisco Peaks, just south of Sunset Crater. I talked about the peaks, how they were named, and their elevation. "We took off again for the Grand Canyon, and entered the gorge at Granite Falls. We proceeded downstream from twenty to fifty feet above the water. Finally, we circled Deer Creek Falls and landed. The creek flows out of Deer Valley from the northern rim of the canyon. It's a beautiful stream of crystal-clear water. The creek has cut through a hundred feet or more of red sandstone to where it emerges and becomes a waterfall. The water falls more than a hundred feet down into a beautiful pool, and later flows into the Colorado River. "We spent considerable time there discussing the river, its history, and my first trip down the Colorado in the late 1930s. We enjoyed drinking the wonderful water and waded in the stream, which was extremely cold.

"We refueled at Grand Canyon Airport and flew back to Phoenix. It was simply a beautiful day." Flying is a great adventure because it actually takes you there. Some of my most enjoyable moments have been discovering America from the air—naming mountains and rivers, picking out a city or landmark in the distance, watching clouds churning across the landscape like ships on a voyage to another planet. It's fascinating flying at night, looking down at odd configurations of lights. Often I pick out a solitary light in the darkness and imagine it's a home with a family sitting down to dinner. One time it will be a farmer and his wife with a houseful of kids; on another occasion, a retired couple in the open countryside. I try to guess what they may be talking about, their cares and hopes. Finally, I close my eyes to better feel a kinship with these people. It's a search for the real America, far from the closed walls and some of the closed minds in Washington. Flying has always been a natural high for me. I've never been afraid of it, although there have been some suspenseful moments. There's also suspense in driving a car or walking across a crowded city street. Flying often encourages a feeling of closeness and communication with God. Heaven is a slow, endless climb into clear skies.

People have asked more questions about one of my engineering enterprises than any other gadget. It's the electric eye I installed to raise the American flag outside our home when the sun rises and lower it at sunset. This device wasn't generally known when I began fooling with it. Now, of course, they're all over the country. The experiment, it must be confessed, was ultimately a failure. Rain sometimes soaked the flag, making it too heavy to lift. Wind and other problems jammed the system. The headaches finally got the better of me, and the flag now rises and lowers with old-fashioned, dependable muscle power. Some experiments were successful, some even humorous. I rigged a device behind the toilet bowl in the guest bathroom of our home. When an unsuspecting newcomer sat on the seat, a metal device tripped off a recording of my voice. It climbed up from the bowl in a not-too-innocent voice: "Hi, honey. How ya doin'? Can I be of any help?" A few bashful gals have let out bloodcurdling screams. Others have dashed out dragging their britches. Some have done both.

Our mailboxes, especially in Washington, have always been full of gadgets to assemble. On many lonely evenings, without a wife and family there, I'd pull out a diagram to begin another project—from a musical doorbell for our apartment that played "Off We Go into the Wild Blue Yonder" to weathervanes and other gimmicks to spread a little more humor around. After my second term Peggy spent most of her time in Arizona. Her poor hearing, her wish to keep a closer watch on the children, and her dislike for the pervasive politics of the Washington scene were all part of her decision. We had a workroom off the kitchen of our five-room apartment. My handmade replicas of old black-powder pistols are still fixed to each cabinet door, a reminder of the Old West. Tools line the inside shelves. A worn sign hangs in the workroom: "Quit when you're tired!" We've been lifelong subscribers to _Popular Mechanics._ Old copies still sit around the two bedrooms, tiny kitchen, and elsewhere. I often pick one up when at the apartment, always on the lookout for some new project to try.

In my Senate days, I'd pull out the orange juice and fix myself a peanut-butter-and-bacon sandwich—a favorite—or put a frozen dinner in the microwave to eat while reading a project's instructions. Two old bullfight posters from Spain, hanging from the walls, told one and all about a renowned matador, Don Barry Goldwater. It seems every tourist has one with his name on it. This fellow goes to bed early, mostly by 9 P.M., and reads. A new Louis L'Amour Western is usually around. Two books from the Southwest are on the apartment nightstand now— _The Navajo Hunter Tradition_ and _Southwestern Vocabulary._ Many books on the military stand on the bookshelves. Two old ones still lie near my bed— _A Soldier Reports,_ by General William Westmoreland, our former commander in Vietnam, and _Trident,_ a study of the nuclear submarine. So does the book _Wall Street and FDR._ I never went to sleep in Washington without seeing Arizona. Two large photos that I took decades ago—the Grand Canyon and an Arizona desert scene—hang from the wall above my bed. Scores of such photos and scenes from bygone political campaigns in Arizona and the presidential race line the walls of the apartment.

On most mornings, I climbed out of the rack about five o'clock, often to check my handiwork of the evening before. I was usually at my Senate office by 7:30 A.M. after reading the Washington _Post_ 's latest liberal line. That rarely started my day well. There was some satisfaction in knowing the hours could only improve. It did since I then read _The Wall Street Journal,_ the Baltimore _Sun, The Christian Science Monitor,_ and the weekly news magazines when available. For about fifteen years, before my triple coronary bypass in 1982, Judy Eisenhower, my secretary and later administrative assistant, brought me a cheeseburger with everything on it every workday. We had a standing order at the Senate dining room, depending on my schedule. This continued on our plane throughout the 1964 presidential campaign. Some people found out about those cheeseburgers and began asking me about them. I merely replied, "I don't drink coffee and never have." I always felt the question deserved that kind of an answer—irrelevant.

I've never smoked, either. My mother told us kids that smoking and coffee would stunt our growth. The three of us have always said we were lucky she didn't say anything about booze. This fellow was sometimes not at his best in the morning, especially if he'd caught some red-eye plane ride to return to the Senate. When faced with the cheeseburger and similar questions by dawn's early light, I often answered by pointing to a pencil sketch of myself on the office wall which showed my hair leaping out in different directions and my glasses cockeyed. Underneath a long, sour puss were these words: "When I woke up this morning, I had one nerve left, and damned if you ain't got on it!" At the first opportunity many mornings, this old tinkerer would be off visiting one or more of the basement workshops in the Senate, usually to look for advice or help on some sideline project. The fellows in the paint, metal, carpentry, electrical, and even subway machine shop would see me coming and knew the fur was about to fly. We had some wild and woolly discussions. They were some of the happiest and most productive disagreements of my life.

I met Bill Davis, foreman of the Senate subway shop, for the first time in 1961. It was an informal and sometimes impossible partnership that lasted twenty-six years. Impossible because Bill's pal Barry was such a cantankerous old cuss who wanted to do things his way. Bill loaned me a lot of tools, especially to retrofit parts. At one time, my office wall was overloaded with model planes. Bill and the others helped me cut the models smaller and mount them on plaques instead of picture wire. They once helped me build an organ. I was a pain in the butt to Bill and his staff at times, but they always seemed genuinely interested in what trouble I'd gotten myself into lately. The senator from Arizona was sometimes seen on the Senate floor with grease on his hands or dirt on his pants or suit coat. Once in awhile, a fellow senator or page would give me a long, quizzical stare. I never gave a damn about it. My name kept cropping up on best-dressed lists. Senate workers and I often talked shop in the halls. If my colleagues or visitors ever listened to some of those earthy conversations, they must have wondered whether I was about to build a house or tear down the Capitol. The old tinkerer always remembered these craftsmen at Christmas because they had usually saved his neck on one project or another during the year.

It would get mushy if I said more about my long relationship with Davis and some of his staff. Bill had been around the Capitol most of his life—thirty years—starting with the ground crews at the age of twelve. It seems that I was the only senator who ever regularly came to the basement workshops. Bill remembers the day I came into the shop wearing a new navy blue, pinstripe suit. I was carrying a piece of brass that needed buffing. Davis took one look at that suit and said he'd buff it. I said no, walked over to the buffing wheel, and was soon covered with lint. I finished, walked out, and never said a word. Bill now says, "He could be a stubborn man and cuss, but he always met you halfway." In these last years, I've been on crutches and in a wheelchair a lot. It seemed almost as painful for them as it was for me. They'd watch me as I pushed along, but Goldwater was hard-nosed and never discussed his problems or pain. Neither did they. Davis says, "Now that he's gone from the Senate, I can mention the highest tribute we could give him. We called him 'Boss.' "

That was my underground life in the Senate. Above ground, I was a ham radio operator. Years ago, we organized amateur radio club station W3USS, the last three letters standing for the United States Senate. We had only a handful of members at the start, but today there are about twenty. I was the lone senator in the group. The others worked on various Hill staffs. I had my own rig in the office, but we managed to get a larger one for the club. It had an amplifier and other equipment. We met regularly to rap about our rigs and exchange other information. I talked a lot about radio with my friend Peter Huber assistant superintendent of the Senate office buildings. We even examined some parts for my rig on the floor of my office one evening during a reception. No one seemed to notice. They were too busy talking politics. My hobbies were often a relief from the daily pressures. Because of these different interests, our staff and the Capitol police used to say that I probably knew more people on the Hill than any of my colleagues.

Since coming home to Arizona, I've spent many hours in the ham shack beside the house. It's still a thrill to talk with people in different parts of the country and around the world. After being defeated in the presidential race, I returned to this same ham shack. It was a good place to think. One day a friend, Herman Middleton, suggested we might do some real good for American servicemen in Vietnam. We could use my K7UGA station to help provide radiotelephone communication between servicemen and women in the war zone and their families in the states. I agreed faster than a jackrabbit on the run. K7UGA—strengthened with surplus equipment on loan from the U.S. Air Force—joined Operation MARS to provide the free service. MARS stands for Military Affiliate Radio System. It's a network of ham radio stations around the world connected to similar facilities where our military are stationed. We called our operation the Bash Hal Ne Ae Club. That's Navajo for "metal that talks." We had thirty-five volunteers in the operation. They manned the circuits around the clock. In all, we patched more than 300,000 short-wave radio calls from Vietnam into the U.S. commercial telephone system. GI families paid for connections between Phoenix and each hometown. I paid for all calls within Arizona. The operation eventually closed down in 1983 after more connections to other worldwide bases.

The crew received many awards. Some, from small groups of GIs in Vietnam, were homemade. They still hang in the shack. Among the awards and some long-ago letters of thanks from GIs in Vietnam, the other day I found a note I wrote to myself. It was dated December 24–25, 1972, after an all-night Christmas vigil at the radio. The simple words were an attempt to explain why I and the others had volunteered: "Life flows on its journey, and then we are gone from the river." Some good remembrances from Operation Mars still return when I now begin rapping in the early morning: "The handle is Barry—Bravo, Alpha, Romeo, Romeo, Yankee." Vietnam was an important part of the four years I spent out of the Senate—1965 through 1968. This old soldier went to Vietnam and gave many speeches about the war at the time—that we should fight it to win or get out. GIs had told me that during some of our radio chats and on visits to the war zone. On returning to the Senate in 1969, one of my first official acts was to return to Vietnam to observe the latest developments in the field firsthand. Afterward, I was doubly convinced that President Johnson's guns-and-butter policies—each weakening the other—were wrong. Time has unfortunately proved that judgment correct.

Amateur broadcasting has been one of the great joys and adventures of my life because—as in Operation MARS—it brings people together. Radio can be a very positive force among men and women in every land. I believe our country should take a greater lead in developing more agreements on direct, live, international programming. Photography was one of my later hobbies. My wife gave me a little 2 ¼-inch reflex camera as a present. We had a small apartment then. It was necessary to use the kitchen as a darkroom. Peggy didn't like that because it smelled up the place. A chance conversation got me into photography in a big way. Since I'd collected many books and historical records on Arizona, the Southwest, and Mexico, students at Arizona State University would stop by the house and use them for reference. One day a young fellow asked me if I'd ever seen a photo of Pipe Springs, Arizona. I'd been there but didn't have a picture of it. The chat made a big impression on me. It showed a need for local photographs. Obviously, there had to be many other Pipe Springs.

From then on, I carried a camera on every trip to take photos for the historical record. Later I bought a movie camera and filmed a rafting trip down the Colorado River in the summer of 1940. The 700-mile journey combined three hobbies—photography, rafting, and hiking. I embarked on the six-week trip with five other men and three women in three boats. It was an exhausting forty-two days, filled with rapids, sharp winds, bug bites, and enough sand in different parts of my body to build a sizable kid's castle on any beach. Part of my diary on those days reads: "Sleeping in the open under God's own sky is one of the most overrated of all acts of man or woman. Forty-two nights of huffing and puffing my lungs into the deep recesses of a rubber void, known as an air mattress, have convinced me that an innerspring has 10,000 advantages. "Bugs of all sizes have promenaded over my body from top to bottom. Bugs with only a cursory interest have wandered over me and, with no more than a 'humph,' have let me be. Others, carrying knives, sabers, and broken bottles, have passed my way and left a diverse collection of tools of torture firmly implanted in my being. As a result of their nocturnal visits, I have as fine a collection of bumps and itches as any man ever supported. The lovely thing about these bites is they never itch until one is almost asleep."

I started showing film of that trip up and down the state, narrating it more than a hundred times. Those visits were a big help when I started out in politics. When Howard Pyle ran for governor in 1950, I knew people in almost every town we visited. I developed my own film. At one time, I had more than 15,000 negatives and some twenty-five miles of film. Much of that has already gone to Arizona State University. Some eight thousand negatives remain to be identified. Photography began paying off around the country, too. Various galleries offered photo exhibits of my Indian work as well as Grand Canyon and desert scenes. More than 250 showings, including a good number in Europe, took the state of Arizona far beyond its boundaries. I eventually became an associate member of the Royal Photographic Society of London and had several books of photographs published. My scrapbooks show shots from Phoenix to Paris to Pakistan. I spent a lot of time in Washington on my car, Spot. It's definitely unique. Some describe it less charitably. The 1969 Javelin AMX two-door sports car was called the "Slingshot" when it was introduced. The exterior is black with the inside black and red, my favorite car colors. Its Arizona license plate is K7UGA, my ham radio call letters.

For nineteen years I've been adding and removing different accessories at a cost of more than $110,000. The vehicle cost $5,000 new. It has so much wiring that an electronics engineer would have a tough time finding his way around it. Most of the car has been replaced except for the transmission and frame. I've added more than sixty features, many of them special equipment, including the altimeter and exhaust temperature gauge from a jet fighter; a musical horn that plays sixty-four preprogrammed songs, including the _U.S. Air Force Fight Song;_ a ham radio; an aircraft compass; a special stereo system developed by the Japanese; the first auto cellular phone in America and now the first voice-activated phone; custom-made Italian bucket seats; an ear-splitting alarm system; a beeper; an aircraft radio scanner; a special _Rebel Charge_ musical horn; a unique fire extinguisher; and other extras. I was driving home from the Senate on a summer evening a few years ago and stopped for a light. A well-dressed lady peered in at my dashboard. It looks like the cockpit of a jet passenger plane. She then glanced at the roof, a porcupine of antennas, and blurted, "An old man like you—you ought to be ashamed of yourself!"

A few winters ago, while home with a cold, I got to worrying about Spot. So, in a thin, old-fashioned nightshirt, this car buff went down to the basement of his Washington apartment building to check on her. Furious at my negligence, I read a long list of needed work and other oversights into my portable dictation machine. I felt much better and returned to work the next day. Some of the staff gave me hell. They claimed I cared more about Spot than my health. Ellen Thrasher said, "That old car gives you so much trouble. Why don't you sell it?" Ellen had just had a baby. I looked at her, shocked, and asked in a hushed tone, "Ellen, would you give up your baby?" Nobody in the office ever criticized Spot again. Such is the sanctity of a senator's pet and hobby. On another occasion, arriving at the office early, I forgot to leave my car keys with the staff. Spot was always parked outside the Russell Building, and one of them would normally drive it into the underground lot. That morning I was chairing a full Armed Services Committee on the 1985 Defense Authorization Bill. However, before the session began, the office and I finally straightened out the first crisis of the day—that I had the car keys. Someone would come and get them from me.

The hearing was crowded. Military brass, defense contractors, and reporters packed the place. Jim Ferguson, one of my staffers, entered through the back door of the hearing room. I spotted him and banged my gavel to interrupt the testimony. Jim was embarrassed when I motioned him to come forward. Everyone in the room was looking at him, wondering whether some emergency might halt the hearing. "The keys," he whispered. I handed them over and, as soon as he began to walk away, said, "Wait a minute, Jim. This is important." I began to draw a diagram. "What's that?" Jim asked. "It's a diagram of a special screw," I replied. "There's no name for it. This is an exact diagram of it. You gotta see it to know it. And remember, it has to be galvanized." "A what?" his voice seemed incredulous. " _This_ galvanized screw," I declared so emphatically that some in the audience heard me. I pointed to the drawing and demanded, "Buy one just like it. This one will secure Spot's dashboard." The look on Jim's face said everything. No one in the world could have any comprehension of how much I cared about that car. He rushed for the exit.

My affection for Spot saved my mental equilibrium in a serious personal crisis. I received a call from our housekeeper, Lillian. She had just taken my wife to a Phoenix hospital. Peggy seemed to be slipping into a coma. It was about 10 P.M. in early December 1985. The Senate was still in session. We were going through the annual ritual of late debate and roll calls to pass needed legislation. A military flight out of Andrews Air Force base was available. Jim Ferguson accompanied me. We jumped into Spot and rolled. I was driving and very upset. The doctors had warned me after an earlier operation that Peggy was not entirely out of the woods, but she had a chance of making it. My wife had emphysema and other problems. One of her legs had been amputated. My whole body began trembling. I had to get to her. Somehow I also had to calm myself. No husband could be good for his wife in such a condition. We sped down Suitland Parkway. I was trying to control myself and Spot. That was it—a flash. I said to Jim, "Got a pen and paper?"

"Yes," he said. "Okay, here's what you have to do with Spot when I'm gone. First, fix the heater..." Mentally, I took Spot apart from bumper to bumper—everything that needed fixing. That was how I finally got control of myself. Spot and I have become family over the years. Despite nearly two decades on the street, there are only 95,000 miles on the car. Some 35,000 are from the five-mile, twenty-minute drive between the Capitol and our apartment, in the Westchester Apartments at 4000 Cathedral Avenue, off Massachusetts Avenue. The rest were logged while motoring around the Washington metro area, and finally driving home to Arizona. It's now time for this sinner to make a public confession. During evening rush hour for three decades, I made an illegal left turn at Wisconsin and Cathedral avenues to get to our apartment. Not only did this U.S. senator break the law over these many years, he was lucky enough never to get a ticket. That should destroy the image of the straitlaced conservative. By the way, I got plenty of blame for things I never said or did, so I never felt too guilty about not getting a ticket. Washington and I are about even.

My staff discussed my driving behind my back for years. The consensus was that I was not a speeder—true—but an "artful dodger" who impatiently gunned past the gawkers from Peoria and other parts and cut off little old lady drivers—not true because I still remember them with fondness from the 1964 campaign. Staffers also claimed I was always trying to outwit the other guy—only sometimes. There's one more brief story about cars. It's worth telling because I love to burn Ben Bradlee, the executive editor of the Washington _Post._ I call it the _Post_ -mortem because, if you manage to survive everything else in Washington, Bradlee and the _Post_ will eventually get you. Ben and his wife, Sally, invited me to dinner one evening. Sally's parents, Lieutenant General Bill Quinn and his wife, Bette, were also there. We were sitting down to eat when Ben's son, Dino, showed up. He'd just turned sixteen and had bought a 1974 Jeep. The lights weren't working, and there were a few other problems. The young man couldn't drive that evening unless the lights were fixed.

Dino and I went down to take a quick look. It took about an hour and a half to straighten everything out. We didn't know it, but everyone waited dinner. I showed up, said nothing, washed my hands for several minutes, and sat down to eat. "Well?" Bradlee asked. "Mark one up for Goldwater," I said. It was the only time I ever got the upper hand on those guys. It has been a privilege leading two lives. Perhaps, when all is said and done about the sweet life of these hobbies, I'll leave three legacies: Ham radio operator—a lifelong friendship with many thousands of people whom Bravo, Alpha, Romeo, Romeo, Yankee has never met but spoken with around the globe. Some say those are the call letters of the world's best known ham. Let me say I'm not sure how to slice that. Photographer—my photo books on Arizona are my last will and testament to my love for my native state. So are miles of amateur film and thousands of negatives that are being left to history. Aviator—I leave the Barry M. Goldwater Visitor Center at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado, to welcome new generations of military pilots, their parents, and all Americans. Peggy will also be remembered in the Western art and literature section of the academy library.

Part of my heart will always beat at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum in Washington. Some of us spent years, after the museum was authorized by Congress in the late 1940s, trying to have the project funded and built. Finally, during the nation's bicentennial in 1976, that magnificent monument to America's pioneer aviators was opened to the American people. The Wright brothers' plane, Charles Lindbergh's _Spirit of St. Louis,_ and other historic aircraft and memorabilia are now seen by as many as 15 million people a year. The museum is the most popular in the United States and the world. Since we're still pioneering in the skies—with the space shuttle, the Boeing 707, the Concorde, and other leaps into aviation's future—let's hope the nation will open a second such museum. Now, as this old bird begins the descent for his final landing, it's an honor to salute the pilots I've known—fellows like General Jimmy Doolittle, Brigadier General Chuck Yaeger, General Jack Catton, General G. P. Disosway, and so many others whose wings touched mine in space and time.

My family will never forget Jimmy and Chuck saying that, for many years, every pilot in the military knew they had a copilot up there flying with them. His name was Barry Goldwater. He did his damnedest on the Senate floor to get them more flying time and better planes. A plaque hanging from my Senate office wall reminded me each day of my obligation to our younger generation of military pilots. It carried me through some heavy thunderstorms on Capitol Hill. The plaque was found by my friend Bill Quinn at a small shop in Seoul, South Korea. It reads: A Pilot's Prayer God grant me the eyes of an eagle, The radar of a bat, And the balls of an Army helicopter pilot. My life and career would have been better spent in the uniform of my country. There is no greater duty or honor than defending America's liberty. Freedom is what life and flying are all about—the will of men and women to climb above themselves, to soar with the angels, to find their own destiny. We fly higher and faster in search of greater freedom.

If, one day, someone walks into a room somewhere in these United States and finds my six-foot frame stretched out on a bed—no longer blessed with life—I want that individual to ask me if I have anything to say. I assure you that I will reply: "Air Force—all the way!" 4 The Politics of Plain Talk When World War II ended, I returned home more restless than ever. China, India, Burma, Britain, and other lands had opened up new horizons. The United States was a giant that had been awakened by the war. It was a wide world and a big America. Phoenix was booming. Thousands of GIs who had been trained in the state and liked the sunny climate returned. They introduced their young wives to the open spaces and small town atmosphere. It seemed everyone was starting a family or a new business. In the decade between 1940 and 1950, the town grew from a population of 65,000 to more than 107,000. Surrounding Maricopa County soared to 332,000 people. Our valley population had more than doubled. Yet Arizona's sweeping 114,000 square miles contained only 750,000 people.

We were small potatoes compared to other cities and states, but this was the big time for Phoenix. People had money and spent it. The good times rolled with weddings, baby christenings, new homes and furnishings, business openings, job promotions, and parties galore. Goldwaters celebrated with record sales. I was back at the store, greeting old friends and making new ones. On weekends, Peggy and I joined the fun. I played the trombone and washboard, sang "Peg o' My Heart," and counted my blessings. America was king of the hill. We were the guys who helped put her there. The Axis was on the ash heap of history. Freedom and democracy were safe. Jobs, kids, big hopes—we had it all. No wonder Peggy and I were so happy. And she was as gorgeous as ever. Hell, what more could anyone expect of life? Yet I was reaching out for more—a mark, an accomplishment, something worthwhile that I could share with people in my own hometown. Not something for China or Britain, but for Arizona and America. More and more, I was slipping away from the store to make that mark. First, it was to organize the Arizona Air National Guard. That in itself was almost a full-time job. Next, I was appointed a member of the Colorado River Commission. We in Arizona hoped the commission would help win congressional approval of the giant Central Arizona Project. The project would bring much-needed water from the Colorado River to the central part of the state. Also, I led a get-out-the-vote drive on a big local labor issue. Arizonans approved a right-to-work law. Union membership was no longer mandatory.

A half dozen projects were crowded into a day, but I stayed on at the store. The business experience was good training. I was proud of Goldwaters. It was a second home. I first went to work at the store in 1929, after my father died. Sam Wilson, the veteran manager, became chief executive. He told me I had to learn the business from the ground up. Sam started me at $15 a week as a clerk in piece goods. The Goldwaters stores in Phoenix and Prescott grossed about $400,000 a year in those days. We had fifty-five employees. Sam moved me from section to section. I once set a record with more than two hundred sales in a single day. Sam then moved me up to office work and finally to buying for the store. I became president in 1937, after Sam left us. We were a quality operation—"The Best Always." Goldwaters prided itself not only on the latest and finest merchandise but on constant business innovation. We had the city's first elevators and introduced a pneumatic tube system for cash transactions.

I put in the city's first electric-eye door at the store. Crowds would stand on the sidewalk gawking, waiting to see if the eye would fail. They expected some customer to hit the closed plate glass and land on his or her rear end. It never happened. The pneumatic tube was also a crowd-getter. Customers clogged the aisles as they watched it swoosh overhead. To loosen up the place one afternoon, I put a live mouse in one of the tubes. It shot up to our chief cashier, Clara Mains. When the tube hit the barrier at her station, the blow momentarily stunned the mouse. Clara lifted out the lifeless creature, thinking it was a toy. The mouse soon began to wriggle in her hand. Clara, a dignified, middle-aged lady, got her dander up, stood and started shouting, "I'm going to get you for this, Barry." She didn't hesitate. I was always the culprit. Clara spotted me in an aisle and began chasing me with the wriggling mouse in her hand. I dashed from ladies' apparel to the cosmetics section, from men's suits to shirts and ties. Clara raced in hot pursuit. Customers scrambled for cover, unclogging the aisles. Finally, in exasperation, Clara threw the mouse at me. She missed. It scampered off, apparently none the worse for the adventure.

We built our reputation on being exclusive, but the staff and management were a very informal group. We worked hard, but there was never a boss-worker relationship. My brother, the finance manager, and I, on the merchandising end, were always available to talk with anyone about anything. The place was run as a family business where everybody was a neighbor. We bought a twenty-acre farm where everyone could socialize. It had cattle, chickens, a swimming pool, and some lively parties where all of us became better acquainted. Some employees cultivated victory gardens there during the war to get fresh vegetables. I introduced a lot of sales promotions at the store—a new advertising symbol called Little Pedro, fashion shows, and even men's night on Fridays before Christmas. We stayed open late for husbands and boyfriends and served free drinks. Pretty girls modeled women's clothes and other presents. If Sam Goldwyn liked girls with good-looking legs in his Hollywood movies, why not the same for Goldwaters customers in Arizona?

When Sam Wilson left us, Bob and I were faced with managing the operation during the Great Depression. No employee was ever let go, although everyone, including Bob and me, took pay cuts. We also reduced other expenses. Goldwaters managed to break even, although some of our friends were not so fortunate. It was a very rough time. Everyone was deeply concerned about the future. Our employees and customers were incredibly loyal. Goldwaters and Phoenix were lifetime neighbors. I drew a lesson from that experience—that loyalty is an endless circle of goodwill. That conviction dominated my personal life and was to have a major effect on my political career, especially during the 1964 presidential campaign. Bob ran Goldwaters after I went to war. He moved the downtown operation uptown. The store is now in the heart of the city's Central Avenue financial district. Bob continued to run the store after I came home, although he insists I was in charge. The place was that informal. We simply got together and made decisions in short order. Bob and I were always in tune. We've never gone through an entire day upset at each other. The same is true of our sister, Carolyn. To this day, we're extremely close. A few times, however, for ten or fifteen minutes, my house or theirs has sounded as though the Apaches were back on the warpath.

My interest in the store increasingly slackened. Putting on spectacular promotions and other sales stunts, like antsy-pants shorts for men, left me empty. My mind could no longer focus on merchandising. It turned to wider forums. I became a member of the U.S. Interior Department's Advisory Commission on Indian Affairs and the Arizona Interstate Stream Commission, whose decisions would affect our critical water supply. My sister, Carolyn, was already well known for her community service. She'd begun charitable and other works after graduating from the University of California at Los Angeles. I kept expanding my community activities—the Phoenix Chamber of Commerce, Thunderbirds (a Chamber adjunct involved in charitable causes), Boy Scouts, YMCA, Masons, and Community Chest campaigns. The impetus to take on even more public service came from two developments in 1949. The local advertising club named me Phoenix Man of the Year, and people began urging me to seek public office—perhaps a seat on the Phoenix City Council.

Phoenix was not rising from the ashes, as the Greek legend would have it, but burying itself in one political scandal after another. There were about twenty betting parlors downtown. It was as easy to place a bet on a horse as to buy a sandwich. Phoenix had always been a town of live and let live. A lot of people viewed gambling as a business, like selling shirts. So the bookies were riding a comfortable horse at a friendly track. Gambling was illegal. The bookies were openly—flagrantly—defying city and state law. They were obviously paying protection money to somebody. About forty different whorehouses were scattered throughout downtown. Women detested them. This hurt legitimate business because some refused to shop downtown. The police chief was telling the city manager that we had a clean town. The American Social Hygiene Association paid us a visit in 1949 and said, in effect, that we had a blind police chief. The police vice squad made one concession. They told the girls to turn off their lights at night. I guess the payoffs were easier that way, too.

Phoenix had other, even larger problems. The city changed its manager thirty-one times in the thirty-five years before 1950. Under our manager-commission form of government, the commission could fire the manager for almost any reason—and did. It played musical chairs, constantly shifting blame. The police chief was fired or quit eleven times from 1940 to 1950. Some may have pocketed enough to retire. At one point, gambling and prostitution were so uncontrolled that the military declared Phoenix off limits. The city was in hock. Funds were diverted to meet each crisis. It was a wheeler-dealer government of cronies and endless payoffs. We knew it had to be cleaned up. Phoenix was no longer a horse-and-buggy frontier town, but a city of 100,000 people. About a hundred of the city's most prominent people—old-timers who were independent of the politicians—got up a charter government committee. The idea was to elect a city council that would enforce a charter and to find and support a strong city manager.

My pal Harry Rosenzweig was one of the crusaders. He agreed to run for a council seat. A lot of people approached me to run, but I declined. The reason was that I still felt a commitment to my brother, Bob, and the store. It would be difficult to break away. Harry invited me over to his house for dinner one evening. He pulled out a bottle of bourbon and poured some stiff ones. It was old times, old jokes, and a bunch of old lies. My head began to reel, but Harry was as smooth as silk. He was serving and tossing back those bourbons like we were drinking lemonade at a Sunday picnic. And he was stroking me like I was a prize hunting dog. Dinner wasn't served until about nine o'clock, and the bottle looked like it had been passed around at a St. Patrick's Day parade. Harry began talking city politics at dinner, still soft and smooth, slowly laying down a velvet carpet toward City Hall. I was feeling mellow but began to smell a rat. I looked at my watch, and it was after ten. I rarely kept late hours, so I finally forced the issue: "All right, Harry, what the hell do you want?"

He said, "The boys want you to run for city council." I replied, "Is that all you want? What the hell, I'll do it." That was it—that quick. It wasn't the booze, nor because I could still be impulsive. Day by day, subconsciously, I'd been moving into politics. The question and answer just happened to coincide with the right time, the right place, and the right person asking me. The appearance of a fast draw was deceiving. Months before Harry asked me, I'd known I'd sooner or later crank up my political engines and fly. Harry got off easy. I had to write a letter to my brother and Bill Saufley, our store manager, who were away at the time. It's a letter some of my old pals call "classic Goldwater"—whatever that means. The contents have followed me all my political life—for better or worse: Dear Willie and Bob: You both will probably think me seven kinds of a dirty bastard when you hear that I have decided to run for councilman with Harry. I don't think a man can live with himself when he asks others to do his dirty work for him. I couldn't criticize the government of this city if I, myself, refused to help.

I don't know if we can win but, if we do, then I know Phoenix will have two years of damned good government that I hope will set a pattern for coming years and generations. There has always been one, and sometimes two, Goldwaters who are damned fools enough to get into politics. They always did it with service in their minds.... The city needs help more than any of our governments. Maybe we can give it to them. Maybe we will suffer in doing it but, in our minds, we will be doing what Americans should always be doing: helping each other. Don't cuss me too much. It ain't for life, and it may be fun. On November 8, 1949, out of a field of twenty-seven candidates, I was elected to my first political office—vice chairman of the new seven-member city council. I was forty years old. Our nonpartisan, broad-based cleanup crew—Christians, Jews, Mormons, and a woman—swept every precinct. More voters than ever had gone to the polls. I won a larger share of the 22,353 votes cast than any of the other candidates. The reason—straight talk.

I said that the bookies and other hustlers were cheating on taxes and robbing us blind. Some people in positions of public trust were taking payoffs. I didn't ask anybody to drive the bookies and whores out of town. My aim was to clean up city government itself. It was a question of fairness. James Deppe, the city manager who had been widely criticized, refused to resign. He claimed his resignation would only give more ammunition to those who accused his administration of graft and corruption. Deppe stood in the doorway and wouldn't budge during our first council meeting on January 3, 1950. Finally I'd had enough. I asked him if he'd read the newspapers in the last two months—if he had any idea what the election was all about, that he'd gotten a vote of no confidence. I gave him one of those my-dog-is-gonna-bite-you looks, which he deserved, and I said, "Now, Jim, don't gum up the works here anymore." He left, and the council appointed a new city manager. We drove crime underground and balanced the city budget. Indeed, we had a surplus of more than $275,000 after one year in office. Phoenix received an All-America City Award for 1950 from the National Municipal League.

I raised hell in those council meetings. It never occurred to me to do otherwise. People rarely said what they meant. They beat around the bush, and it took hours, days, and weeks to get to the bottom of a problem. I really disliked that, because it was such a waste of time. So, to get people to the point, I would say in exasperation, "You're a liar" to a businessman accused of overcharging the city for library furniture, or "You're using Gestapo tactics. Get the hell off this woman's property." I said that to city housing officials who were attempting to force a woman out of her home to clear the land for a subsidized housing project. One of my colleagues on the council bored us to sleep with his long-winded speeches. So I went to a store and bought a set of toy teeth. I put them in front of him as the next meeting was called to order. Those windup teeth started chomping just the way he always did. It brought down the house. But he never learned to shut up. Other council members knew we wasted a lot of time by not getting to the point. But the local folk were not in a rush in those days. Wasting time was my pet peeve, so, meeting after meeting, I demanded we get to the point, take action, and move on. Sometimes I should have shortened my own speeches, especially those on local history.

Westerners often admire a man more for standing tall than being right. That might not appear to be the most politic thing to say, but it's the truth. The real trick is to stand tall and also be right. I stood tall on city spending and the budget. I tried to cut so much out of it that some folks thought I wanted representation without taxation. We had many a Western showdown over contingency funds. I saw them as a shell game, a way to build in permanent spending without accountability. So I tried two techniques—playing dumb for a week or two, then on the attack for the next several weeks. You'd be surprised how much can be accomplished by playing dumb in politics. No speeches are needed. You just shut up and shake your head sadly. I did it in some of those council meetings and later in the U.S. Senate. It upsets opponents. They're wondering why you're so silent. Sometimes they feel a tightening noose around the neck. That's when you hit 'em. For the most part, I blasted the council spenders in off-the-cuff speeches. Harry would sometimes kick me under the table so I'd stop talking. I paid him no mind most of the time. Later, in the Senate, no one tried that. They knew I might kick them back.

I tried to put some of the sacred cows on the chopping block in those days. Once I told fellow merchants they should not ask the city to furnish them with free street parking outside their stores. Parking meters were needed in crowded districts and would provide income to the city. The nicest thing they said to me for weeks was that I was candid. During this time I fortified myself with a secret: "This is great fun, but I may walk away." However, I wouldn't—and perhaps couldn't—walk away. Few who have worked the political streets for a long time can ever call it quits. I still hop to my feet while watching a hot Senate debate on television. A few months before I retired from the Senate, our old gang from those early city charter days held a private dinner reunion in Phoenix. Some thirteen of us who had served a term or more during the 1950s met at the home of Newton Rosenzweig, Harry's brother. With spouses, we were about two dozen people. Now in our seventies and eighties, we savored the golden moments of victory over dragons like gambling, prostitution, and those big spenders before charter rule.

We were full of a fine meal and good wine when it came time for me to say a few informal words. An odd incident—one that I hadn't thought of in more than three decades—came to mind. I recalled that, after we had closed the brothels, a madam asked to see me. She and many of her girls shopped at our store. This particular belle had been running the largest place in town but was worried about hard times in the future. So she asked if I would intercede with my fellow council members and other city officials to get her a liquor license. This was a hot potato, so I proceeded prudently. I introduced the madam to the other members of the council so she could plead her own case. One member, Frank Murphy, asked the chief of police what kind of record the applicant had. The chief mentioned there had been a few "incidents." Murphy insisted on knowing how many and on what charges. The chief repeatedly maintained there had been "a few." Murphy finally demanded to know exactly how many. The chief blurted out, "Seventy-two arrests—for the usual."

I gulped. In fact, I almost fell out of my seat. The madam was quite upset when she didn't receive the license. She told me she'd never vote for reform again, adding, "We and the bookies got you elected, and you fellows put us out of business." It was the first time I'd heard that one. There was apparently some truth to what she said. Some of the higher-class operators had bet on us because they thought we would run the lower class out of town—not those with select clientele. The moral of the story is: Beware of political promises—even those you never made. I was about to undertake a big political promise. A fellow by the name of Howard Pyle and I teamed up in 1950. Howard was a veteran newsman who had covered World War II for a Phoenix radio station. He was a strong Republican. Both of us came home from the war curious about the future of Phoenix. We were soon captured by the town's new dynamism, new business, new people. Most of the newcomers were from the Midwest and upper-tier states—Republican territory. We thought it might be time to introduce the two-party system to Arizona. Registration was ten to one Democratic in some areas, six to one in others, and three to one Democratic in the most Republican districts.

Up to that point, in the thirty-eight years since Arizona statehood in 1912, only two Republicans had been elected governor and only one had managed to win a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. (That dominance has now been reversed. Only one of Arizona's five-member delegation in the U.S. House is a Democrat, the veteran Morris Udall, and our two Senate seats are split between Dennis DeConcini, a Democrat, and John McCain, a Republican, who succeeded me. The state had a Republican governor, Evan Mecham, before he was removed.) But in 1950, even some Democrats didn't like the odds—strictly one-party power. They were willing to vote Republican if we came up with some good candidates and programs. One spring morning in 1950, the state's young Republicans were holding their annual convention in downtown Phoenix. Pyle had addressed them with an old-fashioned fire-and-brimstone speech characteristic of early Western politics. Though not then a candidate, he lit a political bonfire and eventually won the nomination for governor.

I was aching to take on the Democrats in a good fight. So the next morning, I went over to the radio station where Pyle worked and offered him my congratulations. The news had come over my car radio the previous night. On hearing it, I'd driven straight back from the desert, where I'd been shooting photos. I was so excited that I hadn't gone home to shave or change clothes. Neither of us was convinced the GOP could beat the Democrats for the governorship. They were very strong and had nominated Anna Frohmiller, who for years had been unbeatable as state auditor. Yet there was some chance we could win. Pyle was well known throughout the state from his many years in broadcasting. He was a good, intelligent man. We'd work our butts off, and maybe the Democrats would get cocky. Pyle said he needed $50,000 to run. I told him that if it would help, I'd serve as his campaign manager and fly him around the state. We shook hands and took off. Two of my hobbies, flying and photography, began to pay off. I knew folks in just about every town, since I'd flown into most and had shown films and photos in the others.

We invoked the names of every good public figure in Arizona history, from Governor George W. P. Hunt to U.S. Senators Henry Fountain Ashurst and Carl Hayden—all Democrats. Pyle and I said we were fair-minded citizens and would ally ourselves with any good Arizonan. I was to invoke all their names many times in the future, particularly Hayden's, because we were good friends. His bust now sits on a pedestal in the Russell Senate Office Building, where I had my last office. Hayden was a representative in Congress from 1912 to 1927 and a U.S. senator from 1927 through 1969. He spent fifty-seven years in Congress, longer than any other individual. Pyle and I would go into a bar and shake a few hands. I'd say, "Just put the governor's drinks up here on the bar." I called Pyle "governor" to get a little respect and let folks know we meant business. Then I'd say, "If the governor doesn't get to the drinks, I'll personally look after 'em. No waste in this administration!" That always got a good laugh and loosened folks up. The word would get out, and we'd start walking around town. Sometimes a kindly local would drive us. We'd finally get a crowd at city hall, in some park, or at a baseball field. That was Arizona politics thirty-five years ago. I loved it because I liked to shake a man's hand and look him in the eye.

My confidence in winning grew as Pyle and I traveled around the state. We flew down to Bisbee for an evening rally. That was the home of the Lavender Pit, a copper mine named after Harry Lavender, who ran the Phelps-Dodge Copper Company. The rally was in a park across from Lavender's house. Of course, he heard Pyle's speech over the public address system. After the talk, I said we should pay a courtesy call on Lavender. What the hell, he might as well meet the new governor. Well, Lavender and I didn't see eye to eye. He said we didn't have a Chinaman's chance of winning. I told him to put his money where his mouth was. Of course, Lavender did. At that moment, I knew we would win. I really had to be confident to make that bet. This fellow is not a gambler. To me, it was always crucial to show confidence. Never let the other guy see you look down or hesitate. Let 'em know you're in there to win. But make sure you back that up with twenty hours of campaigning every day. I introduced Pyle to the twenty-hour day. He was glad when the campaign was over, but I was just getting my engine warm.

Pyle won in an upset by fewer than three thousand votes. I was jubilant. The Republican Party was coming of age in Arizona. Maybe we were finally on our way to becoming a two-party state. None of the Democrats was too big. I was ready to challenge their giant—Senator Ernest W. McFarland, the Democratic majority leader of the U.S. Senate. At the close of 1952, McFarland was completing his second term. He was very popular throughout the state. My friends said if I ever opposed him, he'd saw me in half. Senator Everett Dirksen, the Illinois Republican, came to Phoenix in 1951 to address state Republicans. Peggy and I attended a cocktail party for him on the terrace of the old Adams Hotel in downtown Phoenix. The state legislature had met for years at the Adams, the scene of more deals than any pawnshop in town. Midway through the reception, Dirksen called us off to a corner and quietly urged me to run against McFarland. The Wizard of Ooze, as the senator came to be known for his flowing orations, was a man of considerable charm and persuasion. I felt overwhelmed. Here was a veteran national politician coming into my home town, and he not only knew my name but suggested I run to help him in the Senate.

Who had told Dirksen that this political newcomer might defeat the veteran McFarland, the Senate majority leader? If a single person besides Dirksen ever believed that possible, I never heard from him. I would be at least a fifteen-to-one shot, and that's a lot in a two-horse race. Yet I wasn't scared. I wanted to challenge McFarland. I was fed up with President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, especially the ballooning federal government and its increasing invasion of our lives, and President Harry Truman's no-win policy in Korea. There was one big hurdle to leap before running—Peggy's O.K. My wife was a private person who preferred life with her husband and four children—not out in public. We had a long talk. Peggy expressed reservations. She said the Democrats were strong in the state. They also controlled Washington and had a strong grip on the entire country. Any Republican would have a long and difficult battle, not only in Arizona but after he got to Washington. For a nonpolitician, she was very perceptive.

On the personal side, Peg said I was too direct and candid to be successful in politics. She said I'd get hurt and disillusioned with the endless promises and compromises needed to survive. She didn't want to see me harmed. Peggy expressed doubts about picking up the entire family and moving us into the twenty-four-hour whirlwind of Washington politics. Also, she explained, I could not myself be certain that I would like such a life, more than two thousand miles from longtime friends and the quieter, more informal outdoor life of sunny Arizona. State and national politics would invade our family privacy, she insisted, and I was so happy at home among old friends. Peggy had clearly seen our conversation coming. She had prepared all her ammunition. She was emotional, yet quietly logical. Finally she asked, "Are you really sure you want to do it?" "Yes," I responded. Peg replied with the calm graciousness that always characterized her, "All right, Barry, if that's what you want." Peggy often sacrificed—for me, the children, friends. She was the most charitable, compassionate, loyal human being I've ever known.

One of my first decisions in the race was to support Dwight D. Eisenhower over Senator Robert Taft for the GOP presidential nomination. That upset some old-time Republicans, to put it mildly. About half the regulars protested. Some indicated they might not support me. I felt that Ike was a fresh political personality, he could win, and the party needed a new beginning. McFarland apparently thought I was a loser. The summer polls showed he had such a large lead that it would take a miracle for me to win. So McFarland remained in Washington, and Frank Beer, one of his aides, campaigned for him. Beer had one speech—that I was a country club Republican who knew more about being a playboy than I did about politics. I went on the attack around the state in the summer and fall of 1952. At every stop, I said I was not a "Me Too" Republican who rubber-stamped the latest whims of the country's Democratic majority—especially Harry Truman. I used a lot of one-liners about McFarland because that seemed to get us more publicity— "the darling of the Truman Gang" and "the junior senator from Arizona." Although he'd been in the Senate for a dozen years, McFarland was still a pup compared to Senator Hayden. Truman had many political liabilities, including corruption charges surrounding some appointees. So we put up signs along the state's highways with a ditty like those of Burma Shave:

Mac is for Harry; Harry's all through. You be for Barry 'Cause Barry's for you. I fired away at America's new super state—burgeoning federal spending and a bloated bureaucracy. The next speech assailed our weak conduct of the war in Korea. McFarland tried to defend the conflict as a "cheap" war. That was a big mistake. It wasn't "cheap" with American boys dying. The State Department was another target—an outfit that had more wishbone than backbone in facing the menace of international communism. I called for a balanced national budget, greater self-reliance across the spectrum of American life, more power to local government, a mightier military, and stronger, better-directed opposition to communism. These issues may seem like clichés today, but I was talking a new politics. It offered new national and international policies and direction—a clear-cut alternative to the New Deal. For sentimental reasons, I opened the campaign on the Yavapai County courthouse steps in Prescott. I knew Big Mike and Morris would be there watching from the shadows. Nonetheless, Buckey O'Neill, the longtime political opponent of Morris, must have been around, too. The podium lights suddenly disappeared in the middle of my speech, and I had to finish by flashlight.

I read the speech because Steve Shadegg, my campaign manager, didn't want me to talk from notes any more. He was worried about some of my spontaneous one-liners. Shadegg cautioned that an unfriendly reporter might try to play up a phrase or two out of context. I was to learn that bitter lesson later. The campaign went well, with long hours making up for a lack of funds. McFarland rushed home for the last three weeks of the campaign when it appeared that a political miracle might be in the making. The AFL-CIO tried to save him. That was because I'd helped pass the state's right-to-work law. A few days before the election, flyers were distributed showing a caricature of Josef Stalin winking and asking: "Why Not Vote for Goldwater?" I immediately went on television, to explain that we hadn't done it. Someone connected with labor hoped to show that we had put out the flyers to win sympathy for ourselves. We finally learned that labor activists had printed and distributed the flyers. I rode to victory on Ike's coattails and McFarland's overconfidence. The win spelled trouble with big labor. Most of the Republicans who had fought it hard around the country were defeated. I won against a Senate leader after directly challenging the union bosses. They never forgave me.

Harry and I went over to the Rosetree Bar in downtown Phoenix after the vote was counted and collected on a few bets. I never looked on it as a gamble. It was a way of showing confidence against the political odds. They had a blackboard showing the odds in front of the bar, and at one time the odds had been higher than fifteen to one against me. We placed our bets then. In the final days of the campaign, the contest was about even money. It was a close race—a seven-thousand-vote victory—but still miraculous by Republican standards in Arizona. Pyle was reelected governor, and John J. Rhodes, who was to serve with distinction for the next three decades in the U.S. House of Representatives, eventually rising to minority leader, also won in a three-way GOP triumph. Arizona had indeed become a two-party state. I arrived in Washington on New Year's Eve of 1953 to begin work in the Eighty-third Congress. It was my forty-forth birthday. Peggy and my mother were with me. It was a historic occasion for Mun. She wanted to see the swearing-in ceremony with her own eyes.

On January 3, my friend Carl Hayden accompanied me to the well of the Senate chamber for the swearing-in ceremony. Standing there amid the shadows of past senatorial giants, I felt overwhelmed by my own inadequacies. I was not a scholar or even an experienced legislator. Not an urbane sophisticate, wise in the ways of power and political manipulation, or even one of those slow-talking but shrewd country judges from the South. I took comfort in the oath to support and defend the Constitution of these United States. I was at home with the Constitution. I told myself that enterprising America, in the surge of new nations around the globe, was a good representative of rising expectations. Our Declaration of Independence and Constitution were reshaping the notion of government in the emerging countries. Political institutions would be responsive to popular opinion and not encroach on the personal liberties of their citizens. We were the world's real revolutionaries. Our principles were lighting political fires never dreamed of by Lenin or world communism.

Watching my colleagues take their oaths of office, I thought about my own goals in the Senate. They centered on my campaign theme and were to dominate my entire political career. I had little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I meant to reduce its size. I did not undertake to promote welfare, for I proposed to extend freedom. My aim was not to pass laws but to repeal them. It was not to inaugurate new programs but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution, or that have failed in their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden. I would not attempt to discover whether legislation is needed before I determined whether it was constitutionally permissible. And if I were later to be attacked for neglecting any constituent's interests, I would reply that I had been informed that their main interest was liberty and in that cause I was doing the very best I could. The moral framework of the Constitution was my conscience. These thoughts, old and new, were my intellectual and spiritual roots. They were the basis of my political vision. The future would depend primarily on proven principles.