Ike

"My folks was living in Pike County, in Missouri, where I was born, and they all died off but me and pa and my brother Ike. Pa, he 'lowed he'd break up and go down and live with Uncle Ben, who's got a little one-horse place on the river, forty-four mile below Orleans.

"Munny, I tould 'ike to do into de barn to Tommy, to see de whittawd."

You go away for a bit and come back and try to find your old pals, and they're all gone: Ike's in Arizona, Mike's in a sanatorium, Spike's in jail, and nobody seems to know where the rest of them have got to.

Along Trunion Pike she went to Ned Winters' barn and turning east followed a street of low frame houses that led over Gospel Hill and into Sucker Road that ran down a shallow valley past Ike Smead's chicken farm to Waterworks Pond.

Its office helpers were all known to the "Army" by quaint titles--"Inky Ike," "the Bald-headed Man," "the Redheaded Girl," "the Bulldog," "the Office Goat," and "the One Hoss."

After a keenly contested game of chance with the other housemates, Ike and Mercy (known as the Icy couple) were the last housemates standing.

"Ike slipped out of the halter completely," Baty said, "because he's sneaky, and he knows he can."

Ike and Tina were obviously big Beatles fans as they also do their interpretations of Get Back and With A Little Help From My Friends.

For years she was horrified by the tyrannical grip Ike had over Tina, and Miss Robbie fought back tears as she recalled the vicious abuse.

The legendary singer, 78, married the late Ike - a notorious woman-beater, cocaine addict and serial adulterer - in 1962, aged 22, and endured years of emotional and physical abuse.

It misses the key role played by IBM CEO Thomas Watson Sr., the most influential member of Columbia University's Board of Trustees, in bringing Ike to Columbia as its president in 1947, and Watson's goal of using that appointment to get Eisenhower out of an army uniform and thus make him more acceptable as a candidate for the civilian office of the American presidency.