History may remember President Johnson for his Great Society programs and the Vietnam War, but it's LBJ's shower that stands out in Howard Arrington's memory.
From the time Johnson took office in 1963 until he left the White House five years later, the president's quest for a perfect shower -- and Mr. Arrington's heroic but frustrating efforts to provide him one -- united the two men in a Chaplinesque comedy.
The hot water wasn't hot enough. The cold wasn't cold enough. The pressure was too weak, the shower head wasn't right. No matter what he did, the chief White House plumber couldn't satisfy Johnson.
One day, the president's valet called with ominous news, recalls Mr. Arrington, who lives in Mayo near Annapolis and is a star of a humorous new documentary film, "Workers at the White House."
"When the president got out of his shower this morning, he had green pipe dope all over his back," the valet said. "I didn't say a word to him."
Fortunately for Mr. Arrington, Johnson never saw the colored putty that plumbers had applied to pipe threads during yet another attempt to improve the shower. The valet phoned Johnson's masseur at the White House, warning, "When the president comes in, don't ask him what's all this stuff on his back. Just take . . . alcohol or something and just kind of clean him up."
Mr. Arrington, who retired in 1979 after 34 years at the White House, is one of several former White House workers who reminisce in the 30-minute film produced by the Smithsonian Institution Center for Folklife Programs and Cultural Studies. Narrated by historian David McCullough and directed by Smithsonian folklorist Marjorie A. Hunt, the film is part of an exhibit on White House workers at the Charles Sumner School Museum and Archives in Washington.
The exhibit provides a revealing, sometimes funny glimpse of life behind the White House walls. But don't expect lurid stories about Marilyn Monroe visiting John F. Kennedy. In a city of leakers, the White House staff keeps secrets better than the Mafia.
The slightest violation of the first family's privacy can cost a worker a job. This year a White House usher, a Howard County man who tended to the personal needs of the Clinton family, was fired for making phone calls to Barbara Bush.
Even former staffers are careful to protect the privacy and reputations of the presidents they served. Asked about Monroe, Mr. Arrington will say only: "She may have been there, but I never saw it."
Though they skirt scandal, the former workers are a historian's best friend, brimming with anecdotes about the quirks and foibles of presidents, their families and visiting world leaders and celebrities.
Any biographer of Winston Churchill would want to hear Alonzo Fields, former chief butler and maitre d' at the White House, describe his encounter with the hard-drinking British leader, a frequent overnight guest.
Churchill started the day with sherry, switched to scotch at lunch, drank champagne at dinner, then went to his quarters to work, a bottle of French brandy at hand and Fields on call. At 1:30 a.m., the prime minister asked for another bottle, then said, "I'm not too sure about you. . . . I need somebody I can depend on."
When the puzzled Fields asked how he might serve, Churchill responded, "If ever I am accused of being a teetotaler, I want you to come to my defense."
"And I replied to the prime minister," Fields says in the film, a smile lighting his face, 'I will defend you to the last drop.' " Stories like these grow out of the daily contact that the first family and visitors have with the 90 people on the permanent household staff, including butlers, chefs, maids, ushers, doormen, florists, engineers, electricians, carpenters, calligraphers and plumbers.
The staff and first families often forge lasting bonds. Eugene Allen, who rose from pantryman to chief butler and maitre d', was invited back to the White House by the Reagans after he retired -- as a guest at a black-tie state dinner for German Chancellor Helmut Kohl.
Taking part in history
Many White House workers accumulate impressive collections of photographs of themselves with the first family and other mementos. Mr. Arrington treasures the invitation he received from the Kennedy family to attend services for the slain president at St. Matthew's Cathedral in Washington.
"All these heads of state" at the funeral, says Mr. Arrington, 67, in the accent of his native Roanoke, Va., and "here was a little old plumber from the White House."
He also has neckties given him by President Eisenhower. His wife, Margaret, has a small bottle of Le Galion perfume she received from Mamie Eisenhower. On their wall hangs a photo of a radiantly young Lynda Bird Johnson, daughter of LBJ, and Chuck Robb, now a Democratic senator from Virginia, before they were married. It's inscribed to Mr. Arrington, "Who stopped all the noises in the bathtub."
But the shower was another matter. The problem started only a couple of days after Johnson moved into the White House. Putting aside worries about the Russians, the new president summoned Mr. Arrington to discuss a real crisis.
Johnson told him that his home in Georgetown had a fine shower, that the White House didn't and that Mr. Arrington had better do something about it.
So the plumber, known to everyone as "Reds" for his orange hair, was driven by the White House chauffeur to the Georgetown residence, where he measured the pressure and temperature of the water.
He adjusted the president's shower accordingly, but "That didn't please him," Mr. Arrington says, shaking his head.
He installed a separate water heater for the shower, four pumps to boost pressure and a device to chill water running to the cold tap. And, at Johnson's insistence, he added body sprays, high-pressure nozzles in the wall that would hose the president's legs and chest even as water gushed over his head.
Once, when the president wasn't around, the chief usher, who oversaw staff contacts with the first family, donned his bathing suit to try the shower -- dubbed by staff the "car wash" for its many features.
"It pinned him up against the shower wall," Mr. Arrington says. "He was as red as a lobster."
Though the shower obsession was extreme, each first family places demands on the staff. There is little time to adjust.
"When the old family goes out, you felt lost for just that flash," Fields told an interviewer. "And then at 12 o'clock, when the other family comes in, you took on a new perspective."
Change of command
There are only a few hours on Inauguration Day to freshen up the place: clean sheets for beds, new toilet seats installed by the plumbers. Then the staff awaits the new family's wishes.
Mrs. Kennedy asked for a kitchen and dining room next to the family quarters on the second floor, to save a trip downstairs. That was done. She also wanted the fountain on the South Lawn running all year long, but one winter day the water jets froze.
Mr. Arrington put two of his men in a rowboat to paddle around the fountain and chip off ice, a sight that surprised President Kennedy.
"I don't believe my eyes," Kennedy was reported to have said. "There's somebody fishing in the south fountain in a boat."
President Eisenhower found an other use for the fountain. An avid golfer, he'd drive balls on the South Lawn, many of which wound up in the water. With hip waders lent to him by Mr. Eisenhower, Mr. Arrington retrieved them.
With 32 bathrooms and three different heating systems in the 132-room mansion, Mr. Arrington and his crew stayed busy. When another department needed help, he pitched in, whether it was putting flowers in place for a dinner or helping run a film in the president's movie theater.
'Real big family'
They are a close-knit group, the White House workers, a "real big family" in the words of Lillian Rogers Parks, a former maid and seamstress who began working there in 1929 during the Hoover administration.
Some actually are family. Nine members of the family of Samuel Ficklin, a butler, worked at the White House. Mr. Arrington's uncle and brother had jobs. Mrs. Parks, who at 97 is the grande dame of ex-White House employees, is the daughter of a maid who served President Taft.
Some workers are hired at the recommendation of relatives on the staff. Mr. Arrington, fresh out of the Navy, was lured to the White House by his uncle. Although they serve at the pleasure of the president, household employees are permanent staff, not political appointees who change with each administration. The Howard County man who worked as an usher got his post by responding to an advertisement.
When new workers come on, they're taught the ropes by the senior ones. No matter their skills, beginners must learn the unique ways of the White House, at once home to the president and his family, a museum for the public and hotel and restaurant for guests. Pride and dignity rule.
"I always told the dining room help that worked for me, 'Remember that we are helping to make history,' " Fields told the Smithsonian before he died this year at age 94. "We have a small part, perhaps a menial part, but they can't do that much here without us."
The film and exhibit were produced in cooperation with the White House Historical Association and the National Archives. They're accompanied by a 23-page booklet that includes many photos of former workers by Roland Freeman, known for his pictures of Baltimore's a-rabs, the vendors who use horse-drawn carts.
There wasn't time or space for the Smithsonian to tell all of the former workers' stories. But if you're wondering what happened to the Johnson "car wash," Mr. Arrington says Richard M. Nixon would have nothing to do with it. "All I want is hot and cold, on and off," the new president announced.
"So we had to dismantle everything," Mr. Arrington says, "and put it all back the way it was originally."
The film and exhibit can be seen at the Charles Sumner School Museum and Archives, 1201 17th St., N.W., in Washington, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily. For details, call (202) 727-3419.