So here are some Warm Springs notes …

Five years after contracting polio and going to Warm Springs to convalesce, Roosevelt bought a property there as a community for people like him—

“a colony in which people with disabilities were not not identified as ‘medical patients’ to be ‘treated’ but as residents and leaders of a community,” as historian Daniel Holland writes https://doi.org/10.1080/09687590600785993

Roosevelt's house at Warm Springs was also the basis for his occasional claim of southernness, which was central to his run for the nomination in 1932

He had a devoted following there; on election night 1932 the inn had a radio on in the lobby and a scoreboard where they could record electoral votes—

as well as a special menu: “Soup, Roosevelt; broiled steak, democratic; potatoes, prosperity; turnip greens, a new deal; fried corn, forgotten man; salad, for the people; hot rolls, progressing; pudding, diplomat; pears, a la Garner.”

After the election, Roosevelt used Warm Springs as a conference site where he met with farm lobbyists and legislators to formulate an agricultural price support bill

and also to plan currency inflation

It served him also as a place to confer with DNC leader Jim Farley about probable cabinet appointments; Cordell Hull got the offer of State there.

Bob Jackson (not the judge, the fixer) visited there a little after the election to help with the strategy sessions.

Roosevelt phoned to called him down at short notice; Jackson tried to demur, saying he needed to pack; Roosevelt asked his shirt size and then told Jackson he could borrow the president elect’s own shirts.

The place was a bit too rustic for Jackson’s taste (he liked to eat at 21)—“The house is set in a scraggly grove of pines.… to call the straggling aggregate here a grove is to strain the meaning of the word.”

Not only was Jackson at Roosevelt’s mercy for shirts, he tore his trousers and had to borrow a pair from Ben Smith. They were too large. Roosevelt, in keeping with his sense of humor, thought Jackson looked hilarious.

Jackson described the house's interior: “marine” furnishings, despite the landlocked setting, featuring ship models and ship prints—those were Roosevelt’s favorite.

At one point Roosevelt asked how he had lost Jackson’s home state of New Hampshire (one of only six states he lost; it was a recreational inquiry)

Jackson replied by telling a story about William Randolph Hearst’s run for governor of New York. Hearst's headline editor said, well, we got one headline that says “Hearst Wins!”; what should the other say?

“Hearst pondered a moment, then said ‘FRAUD!’ After another moment or two, he added, ‘And make them six-inch type.’”

Jackson also recorded Huey Long’s visit. “In manufacturing nonsensical fantasy he rivals the late Lewis Carroll. Today, as the reporters scribbled notes as solemnly as if he were announcing an armistice, he recited how … FDR had saluted him as ‘Kingfish’ and a fellow sovereign."

“‘I told him’ [Huey] proclaimed ‘that our two nations, the great state of Louisiana and the United States of America, should exchange diplomatic representatives.’"