Another Christmas we spent together was that of 1950. To celebrate the end of the decade and the first half of the century, Françoise, Claire, and I took a short vacation with the von Neumanns at Guayamas, Mexico. They drove all the way from Princeton, and we arranged to meet in Las Cruces in the southern part of New Mexico to continue the trip together. Las Cruces had an old 1890 brothel which had been remodeled into a hotel after the war, and we all stayed there. The rooms were furnished in period style and on each door, instead of a room number, the name of a girl was inscribed: Juanita, Rosalia, Maria. In the middle of the lobby, a swing was suspended from the ceiling. The ladies apparently climbed on it from the interior balcony. To Johnny and me it looked like the well-known Foucault pendulum, and we indulged in a learned and improper bilingual joke which I will refrain from repeating.
On the drive to Guayamas we also amused ourselves with the developing of a language which we called "neo-castillian." In our ignorance of Spanish, it consisted of English words with Latin endings, for example el glaso, for glass. To our great surprise and fun we found out that it worked for some words. Terry's guide to Mexico, particularly its prose, provided us with many hours of fun too. There was an especially eloquent page about the enchanted "paradise bosque" of Sonora, which on driving across we found to be a miserable grove of trees on a dry sandy terrain, unoccupied by any ''numerous and diverse exotic tropical birds." This became a proverbial expression denoting disappointment. Whenever we heard something which did not quite measure up to expectations either in mathematics or physics, we exchanged knowingly the words "bosque encantado."
Long before Sputnik, around 1951 or 1952 I attended an early ICBM rocketry meeting in Washington. Altogether there must have been twenty or more people present. Gamow was one of the important participants. Johnny and Teller were there, too. It was a classified meeting in one of the rooms in the Pentagon. Johnny was sitting next to me at a long table. One problem under discussion was on how to guide rockets. Teller suggested a chemical path to a target. Gamow called it "smelling" the way. Other people suggested other schemes. I proposed "ballistic" projectiles, whose trajectory could be corrected if need be several times along the way. I remember Johnny asking me, "Why isn't it just as good or better to aim well from the starting point?" I reminded him of Gauss's famous work on planetary orbits calculated from several observations. He quickly thought about this for a few minutes and came to the conclusion that indeed this was a superior method.
I also noticed that at my mention of ballistic projectiles some people made embarrassed noises and I guessed that there was already some work going on on this. People would not disclose everything that was being worked on and clearances were not uniform among the participants. This brings me to a point about von Neumann that seems to have puzzled many people. It concerns his relations with the military. He seemed to admire generals and admirals and got along well with them. Even before he became an official himself, an AEC commissioner, he spent an increasing amount of time in consultation with the military establishment. Once I asked him: "How is it, Johnny, that you seem to be so impressed by even relatively minor officers who sometimes are not so very remarkable?" And I added, in order to say something a little derogatory about myself too, that what impressed me more were symbols of wealth and influence, like the sight of J. P. Morgan marching in an alumni procession at the Harvard Centennial Ceremonies in 1936. I had seen very many wonderful and eminent scientists and artists in my life before, but the sight of this man who was a billionaire and wielded enormous power really awed me. But to go back to Johnny's fascination with the military, I believe it was due more generally to his admiration for people who had power. This is not uncommon with those whose life is spent in contemplation. At any rate, it was clear that he admired people who could influence events. In addition, being softhearted, I think he had a hidden admiration for people or organizations that could be tough and ruthless. He appreciated or even envied those who at meetings could act or present their views in a way to influence not only others' thoughts, but concrete decision-making. He himself was not a very strong or active debater in committee meetings, yielding to those who insisted more forcefully. On the whole he preferred to avoid controversy.
These were the days of defense research contracts. Even mathematicians frequently were recipients. Johnny and I commented on how in some of their proposals scientists sometimes described how useful their intended research was for the national interest, whereas in reality they were motivated by bonafide scientific curiosity and an urge to write a few papers. Sometimes the utilitarian goal was mainly a pretext. This reminded us of the story of the Jew who wanted to enter a synagogue on Yom Kippur. In order to sit in a pew he had to pay for his seat, so he tried to sneak in by telling the guard he only wanted to tell Mr. Blum inside that his grandfather was very ill. But the guard refused, telling him: "Ganev, Sie wollen beten" ["You thief! You really want to pray"]. This, we liked to think, was a nice abstract illustration of the point.
Gamow, who lived in Washington, was a consultant at the Naval Research Laboratory. One of my early so-called business trips to Washington involved a consultation with him. He asked me to talk about Monte Carlo and we discussed modeling land-battle situations. He was interested in and did a lot of work on tank battles. He used Monte Carlo, for example, to simulate landscapes, which he dubbed Stanscapes.
He lived in the suburbs with his first wife Rho and would say, "Let us meet at Chebyshev Circle." Of course, he meant Chevy Chase. (Chebyshev was a Russian mathematician, and this is how he pronounced it.) Gradually he and Rho had increasing marital difficulties and finally separated and divorced. He moved to the spartan surroundings of the Cosmos Club, where the only good thing was the profusion of newspapers and magazines available to the members. One day I received a sad letter from him saying he was living alone and that on his house was a sign saying, "For Sell [sic]."
In 1954 the Fermis were spending the summer in Europe, partly at the French Physics Institute in Les Houches near Chamonix, partly at Varenna in Italy, where the Enrico Fermi Institute was founded after his death. It now holds conferences on current topics in high-energy physics and in particle physics, both fields just beginning towards the end of Fermi's life.
If I recall correctly Fermi had applied for a research grant that summer and had not obtained it, which irritated him somewhat. This seemed very strange to me. Just like the incredible affair of the government's niggardly compensation for the use of his patent on the manufacture of isotopes. He told me once that he believed he and his collaborators would receive perhaps some ten million dollars from the government. With this money they wanted to establish a fund for Italians to study in the United States. But at that time they still had not received "a red cent," as he said. Eventually a settlement was made but it was so small that it barely covered the lawyers' fees, if I remember correctly.
We arranged to meet the Fermis in Paris, where they were to stay a few days, and to drive together in two cars part of the way south. They planned to rent a small Fiat but the director of Fiat in Paris made a great point of giving them a very special eight-speed car. I remember Fermi inviting me to try the car with all its speed changes along the quais and the Rue de Rivoli.