Authors: Colin Powell
It Worked For Me (22 page)
I
spend a lot of time traveling, both here and overseas. On average, I am on the road two or three days a week, logging tens of thousands of miles a year. I usually travel alone; Alma seldom joins me. She has heard all my speeches and knows all too well the travel drill: arrive, sleep, give the speech or perform at the event, and leave. There will be no touring, shopping, or leisure. I try to minimize time away from home. For me, it is strictly work. Even so, I don’t mind traveling. It opens up experiences that I wouldn’t see and hear in Washington.
Of course, most of my time on the road is spent outside the event itself—in airports, planes, trains, limos, and hotels. I enjoy sitting in an airport gate area wearing a baseball cap, hiding behind wraparound sunglasses, and watching America go by. Yes, many of us need to go on a diet and get more exercise. And yes, a dress code would be a big plus. But people seem happy and busy. I love seeing young mothers wrestle with their little darlings and all the paraphernalia now required to sustain a kid. I love older folks increasingly able to manage smartphones and iPads. The growing number of wheelchairs waiting for planes shows how we are aging as a people, yet we’re not just sitting around. I frequently drop in on the USO lounges to thank volunteers and chat with GIs. And I always watch with appreciation and admiration the mostly immigrant cleaning people who empty the trash, mop the floors, clean the latrines, and go about their work with quiet efficiency. It reminds me of my long-ago days mopping floors at the Pepsi-Cola bottling plant in Long Island City.
Nobody likes going through security, but I really can’t complain about it. I was in the administration that set up the Transportation Security Administration. I stand in line and wait my turn like everyone else. Try to bump the line, and the Internet will make you an instant villain. I take what comes to me as gracefully as I can. But sometimes it’s hard. Once at Reagan National Airport some sensor detected an explosive element on my hands. Examinations by two Explosive Ordnance Detachment teams and three supervisors finally got me sprung. It took thirty minutes. Pointing out that I had been Chairman of the JCS and Secretary of State did not do the trick. Afterward, they speculated that the alarm was caused by my morning blood pressure pill.
Short-distance air travel usually means getting crammed into a small Brazilian or Canadian plane. It’s like flying in an MRI machine. The logo on the plane’s tail may suggest a major airline, but it’s always hard to tell who actually owns and flies it. Nevertheless, it gets you there, even if you need a chiropractor after you get pried out.
I have nothing but praise for crew members, flight attendants, gate agents, baggage handlers, porters, mechanics, and all the others who, under lots of pressure, keep us moving.
I go back and forth to New York regularly on the Acela, the closest train we have in this country to high speed. It is fast, comfortable, and dependable . . . and there’s no TSA. I travel business class, but Alma always goes first class because of the service and the sandwich. (Grrr.) Many of my friends still fly the shuttle. But heaven help your schedule if there’s bad weather somewhere over the East Coast, clotting up air travel from Maine to Key West.
On the ground, for the sake of efficiency and comfort, I always insist on a professional limo service and an ordinary sedan. I am too old to crawl into one of those stretch limos kids use for high school proms. I am not stuck up. I’ve just had too many experiences where a client, intent on chatting with me, will borrow a new car from a local dealer, and then, distracted and erratic, try to drive, talk, and figure out all the new knobs and switches.
I am not picky about hotels. Any will do, from a Days Inn to a Ritz-Carlton. But I avoid hotels where there’s too much service. I don’t need staff constantly bugging me to explain how to adjust the thermostat or turn down the bed. I don’t need to rattle around large suites. When I sign in, I use an assumed name. Until writing this book I used Edward Felson, from, of course, one of my favorite movies,
The Hustler
.
My desires are mostly simple: Please give me a cheap clock radio; not one that needs printed instructions and plays my iPod. I am old; please make the numbers red and no less than three inches high. Get the cheapest one you can find, and tell people they are free to take it.
Give me a closet big enough to hang something in and not already filled up with a safe, iron, ironing board, and that silly folding suitcase rack, left over from the days of ocean liner suites.
Please, oh please, don’t get fancy shower controls with handles that give you no clue how to turn it, push it, or pull it on and off. I only need one showerhead, not a decontamination sprinkler system. Put the Jacuzzi in the Honeymoon Suite.
I haven’t really found a pressing need to have a television set or phone in the bathroom. Nor do I need a scale. And I’m really frightened by those padded and heated Japanese toilet seats in upscale hotels. The complex control panel suggests other things the toilet will do, but I have been afraid to try them and doubt the need.
Here’s a biggie: please, please, put large print on the shampoo and conditioner tubes and bottles. Is it asking too much to let us know in a readable font that we’re putting shampoo and not hand cream on our heads?
A simple coffeemaker, please. I don’t need to grind coffee beans. This doesn’t apply in Las Vegas, where they generally don’t give you a coffee machine in your room. They want you downstairs pulling the slots while you wait your turn in the coffee shop line.
Keep the TV simple. I don’t want to use it to go on the Internet or play games. Push a wrong button on the remote and you have to call room service to straighten it out.
Please cut the number of bolsters, cushions, and all the other stuff piled on beds that make it difficult to find pillows and have no functional purpose beyond encouraging female guests to do the same thing at home. Guys don’t get this.
Lamp switches should be at the base of the lamp. Don’t make me have to follow the wire down to a switch near the floor, or burn my hand feeling up toward the bulb.
Finally, we live in the information age. Please don’t make us crawl under desks looking for a wall outlet for our iPhones, laptops, iPads, and other electronic gizmos that need feeding.
Otherwise, I enjoy traveling. I am always happy to be out where I can observe all the myriad varieties of Americans. And I love being on the speaking circuit, or in schools, Boys and Girls Clubs, charity events, and all the other wonderful activities going on around our nation. They keep us rolling forward.
A
s you rise in rank in the Army, you pick up large numbers of plaques and certificates commemorating your various units and awards, and you accumulate large numbers of signed, framed photos from senior officers and other officials. These are displayed prominently on “me walls” in offices and home dens. After a few years, there’s no need for paint or wallpaper; you’ve got enough plaques and photos to do the job.
By the time I became a colonel, I had quite a collection, more than any wall could hold. A charming older brigadier general, about to retire, frequently dropped in to my office. Because he was always a source of wise advice, I asked him what he was going to do with all his plaques when he retired.
“Colin, my wife and I have designed a beautiful log cabin in the Shenandoah Mountains. We plan to live there most of the time, enjoying the beauty of the mountains. And on cold winter nights, we will huddle on the couch in front of the fireplace, drink hot toddies, and throw the plaques in, one by one. Our kids won’t want them.”
Well, I ended up saving most of mine, now mostly housed in my archive collection at the National Defense University in Washington. Also at the archive and here at home are large collections of glass, Lucite, stone, and brass objets d’art. The most memorable of these is a dark slab of granite with my image and a dedication lasered into it. So help me, the thing looks like a pet’s headstone. I am sure the folks who gave it to me had it made by a tombstone maker.
Military challenge coins are another popular gift, usually embossed with the crest and motto of the unit, and often with the name of the commander. Every 101st Airborne Division trooper was expected to carry a 101st Division challenge coin. Whenever or wherever in the world you met another trooper from the 101st, he would “challenge” you with his coin. If you didn’t have yours, you had to buy him a drink and suffer deep embarrassment. I carried my 101st coin in my wallet for decades, until a little round spot on my bottom started to become ulcerous.
In the old days, challenge coins were given out sparingly, but sometime in the 1980s the tradition went viral. Many Army guys have dozens of them. Every unit and every senior leader has challenge coins; they spread them around to everyone they meet at any opportunity. Over time they have become more elaborate and more expensive, and more and more junior leaders and offbeat units have been passing them out. I’ve gotten personalized coins from a commissary officer, and even from a young sergeant who was a sedan driver. The practice has even spread to the civilian world. Cabinet officers and other civilian appointees give them out.
I started to push back when my coin collection went into the hundreds. It seemed like too much of an ego trip for the givers and a questionable use of funds (most, but not all, are paid for by the government). On the other hand, the troops love them and are eager to receive them, so the tradition has grown. I gave out challenge coins when I was Chairman and Secretary of State. I still have a small stash that I give out sparingly to, say, recovering GIs at Walter Reed Hospital, who seem to deeply appreciate them.
As I moved into more senior positions in government and traveled the world more frequently, gifts from foreign leaders started to pour in. Naturally, they placed a demand on me to respond. Congress constrains us not to spend more than about three hundred dollars on the gifts we give and, darn it, not to keep gifts worth more than three hundred dollars, as determined by appraisers in the department and the General Services Administration. My protocol office was creative within this limit in finding Americana gifts for our foreign guests and other visitors.
On one of his visits, my dear friend Igor Ivanov, foreign minister of the Russian Federation, gave me a bottle of vodka in the shape of an AK-47 assault rifle. Since someone in some office somewhere decided it was worth more than three hundred dollars, I couldn’t keep it or drink it. Don’t ask me how they figured that out. Sad to say, it is probably now stashed away in some government warehouse.
Clocks, watches, cufflinks, and pen sets have always been the gifts I like best to receive. I now have lots of clocks, watches, and pens, and I enjoy them all.
But then there are the portraits. Over the years, I have received several dozen portraits of me from various countries. We have a display of the better ones in our exercise room at home. It has always fascinated me that the way artists paint my face is a near-sure giveaway of where they came from. An artist cannot avoid adding his culture to your image. Thus, in a very excellent portrait by a famous Japanese painter, I bear a striking resemblance to Admiral Yamamoto. The one on Egyptian papyrus looks strikingly like Hosni Mubarak. The one from Romania kind of makes me into Dracula. The artist from the Detroit NAACP didn’t think I looked black enough, so he broadened my nose and thickened my lips. The two paintings from Bermuda are both pastels, and oh so very mellow. Only thing missing is Jimmy Buffett playing “Margaritaville.” I don’t recall what we did with the one done in birdseed. Every time my staff moved it, they left behind a trail of birdseed.
Russian President Gorbachev once gave me a beautiful shotgun. Because I wanted to keep it, I paid my government $1,200 to buy it back from the American people.
After the breakup of the Soviet Union, I got lots of guns, bayonets, assault knives, and binoculars from leaders of the former Warsaw Pact countries. It was one way for them to unload their inventories and give gifts at no expense. Even my sharp-eyed appraisers couldn’t pretend these things were worth more than three hundred dollars.
My French colleague Dominique de Villepin used to give me bottles of French red wine. He insisted red wine was the elixir of health and urged me never to drink white. For some strange reason, those bottles all broke before I could turn them in for appraisal.
Prime Minister Berlusconi of Italy loved to give American men gorgeous ties made by his favorite tailor and tie-maker. Too bad so many of them were stained and didn’t make it to the appraiser. He once gave me a high-tech watch that doubled as an emergency homing device for pilots in the event of a crash. You pulled a wire antenna out of the side of the watch. I turned it in.
Aware of my service in Germany and my fondness for German beer in those old flip-top bottles with porcelain caps, Joschka Fischer, my German counterpart and the leader of the Green Party, brought me a case of fine German beer. On his next trip, I scratched my head to come up with a gift for him. Since he was the leader of the Green Party, I gave him a case of the empties to return for the deposit. But since he loved to cook out, I also gave him a set of barbecue tools.
President Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan, a very gracious host, gave a spectacular luncheon in his palace in the capital, Astana. Though the vodka toasts flowed freely, I managed to successfully defend our nation’s honor. Well beforehand I had been alerted to one of his habits: if he liked a guest, he would take off his watch and give it to him. The guest was then expected to give the president his own watch in return. After lunch, we stumbled into a small elevator to head downstairs. There he took off his watch and presented it to me. I then took off my watch and proudly, with a hug, gave it to him. He got a Timex, I didn’t.
Arab officials, especially from Gulf nations, are exceptionally generous. Their gifts are normally way, way over the three-hundred-dollar limit. They know we have to turn the gifts in, but they can do no less. It is a sign of their friendship and respect, and it’s deeply embedded in their culture. The gifts were accepted in that spirit. I ended up with quite a collection of Arab daggers. Some were quite simple, and I kept them. Others, which were encrusted with jewels, were turned in.
One night in 2004, a very close Arab friend overheard Alma remark that her favorite car had been a 1995 Jaguar that I had long since sold. Shortly after I retired in 2005, an identical, completely restored 1995 Jaguar showed up in front of the house. Since I was no longer a government employee, I was legally able to keep it, and I did for a while, but regifted it just before the
Washington Post
got wind of it and wrote a story.
After leaving State, I continued to receive gifts from foreign governments. One Arab nation came very close to presenting me with a beautiful rug the week before I stepped down. But our sharp-eyed ambassador suggested to them that perhaps they should have it cleaned one more time and send to me after I retired. That lad will go far.
Finally, during my time as Chairman about twenty years ago, I was seated next to Arnold Schwarzenegger at a benefit dinner. “How do you stay in shape?” he asked.
“I jog,” I told him, “but that’s getting harder as I get older.”
Several days later, a LifeCycle exercise bike showed up at the house. I used it for years, until more modern models came along. I still have Arnold’s original bike in my basement. Since it is not something you can regift or easily dispose of, I’ll let my kids figure out its destiny after I am gone.
Notwithstanding the fun I’ve had writing about exchanging them, we display in our home many wonderful gifts I’ve received over the years. Some are expensive, most not. They give us joy and fond memories of people and places all over the world we were privileged to visit and come to know well. And it gave us the opportunity to present to foreign friends gifts that convey our American spirit and tradition.