Peter Myers goes to Washington

Excerpt

The gray, wet Washington morning didn't bother Peter Myers. “It's a farmer's rain,” he said, “slow and gentle.”

Myers had just conferred with Secretary of Agriculture John Block on RCA. It was April 26, and the Soil Conservation Service recommendations had just been given to Block and Assistant Secretary John Crowell. Myers was between staff meetings that day, his last in the office before five straight weeks of travel around the country.

By his account, scrambled travel plans, “in that snow mess in St. Louis last January,” had thrown him together with John Block long enough for the secretary to make one last pitch. Several Washington jobs had been discussed the previous year, “but I just turned him down flat.” Block persisted. And now Peter C. Myers shows visitors into the spacious chief's office at SCS with a fine view of the Capitol.

“These chiefs took care of themselves,” he says, amused, but without a trace of guile. It is a common reaction to the manicured corridors of the city. Washington has taken care of itself, but you tend to forget that …