January 3, 1952
Margie came in this morning on the B & O from St. Louis. She had ridden the Missouri Pacific from Independence to St. Louis. I met her at Silver Spring. She was surprised to see me at the Station.
While I was waiting for the Diplomat to come in I looked around. The B & O station was new, on a double track. Great business houses were on both sides of the track, thick as they could be.
When I came to Washington on December 27, 1934, Silver Spring Station was in the midst of a beautiful park, with big trees all around it. It hadn't changed a great deal since Francis Preston Blair owned a farm there in Andrew Jackson's time. Blair also owned the house in which we live while White House repairs are made.
He bought the half block where the Blair House is for $6500.00 in the 1830's. He built the adjoining house on the west for his daughter, who married Adm. Lee. It is now the Blair-Lee House.
The corner lot east of the Blair House which now belongs to the General Services Administration sold for $700,000.00!
Margie looked very well except she's too thin. These damned diets the women go for are all wrong. More people die of dieting these days than of eating too much.
My good doctor is all the time trying to cut my weight down. Of course he's right and I should weigh 170 pounds. Now I weigh 175. What's five pounds between my doctor and me?
When I went into World War I, I weighed 145 pounds. After two years service I weighed 155. While I was in the Senate I was ten pounds heavier-165.
When I moved into the White House I went up to 185. I've now hit an average of 175. I walk two miles most every morning at a hundred and twenty eight steps a minute. I eat no bread but one piece of toast at breakfast, no butter, no sugar, no sweets. Usually have fruit, one egg, a strip of bacon and a half a glass of skimmed milk for breakfast; liver & bacon or sweet breads or ham or fish and spinach and another nonfattening vegetable for lunch with fruit for dessert. For dinner I have a fruit cup, steak, a couple of nonfattening vegetables and an ice, orange, pineapple or raspberry for dinner. So-I maintain my waist line and can wear suits bought in 1935!
There has been a lot written about my clothes. Since I was twenty, I have worn suits made for me by my tailor! When I was in the Senate I was picked as one of the ten best dressed Senators. That was so after I became President. But-the dirty press, represented by Luce, Knight, Hearst and Roy Howard, decided that they couldn't hurt the President by dressing him as should be, so this character assassination gang started to undress me! They went to the opposite extreme and said I was the worst dressed man in the United States! They lied one time or the other. (They lied both times-I'm neither the best nor the worst dressed man.)