January 2011

Leaving for Korea Leaving for Korea Dinner at Anoine’ Dinner at Antoine’

Can there be any truism that commands less actual belief than the one about history repeating itself? It certainly happens; but the absolute tyranny of the present makes the concept just slightly more credible than that of one’s own mortality. All throughout the 1970’s, I’d receive mailings from an organization with a name like the Distilled Spirits Research Foundation for the Humanities heralding the return of the martini. “It’s Back!” each brochure began, followed by lots of utterly unpersuasive photographs of people manipulating shakers and lifting pretty, archaic glasses.

How pathetic, I thought, and I’d pass the leaflets around the office and everyone would be mildly amused by a declaration that might as well have announced the return of spermaceti oil.

“A Drink With Something in It”

—Ogden Nash (1935)

My True Friend

In November 1943, as Allied leaders met in Teheran to plan the defeat of Nazism, Franklin Roosevelt asked Joseph Stalin to join in a toast. Inevitably, at that moment in history, the drink the American President offered was a dry martini.

Stalin was grudging. “Well, all right,” he is reported to have said, “but it is cold on the stomach.” Anyway, it worked. An administration official characterized U.S.-Soviet relations under DR as the “four martinis and let’s have an agreement” era. The President liked his with a teaspoon of olive brine.

October 19, 1944. Evening. On U.S. destroyer with invasion fleet en route to Leyte Gulf, Philippines. Destroyer taking fuel along starboard side of USS Nashville. This puts port bridge wing of destroyer even with 02 deck of Nashville and maybe 25 feet away.

Older man (through 19-year-old enlisted eyes) in khaki steps out on Nashville 02 deck and lights his pipe. I almost jump out of my socks. Did this old geezer realize that, if someone caught him smoking topside, he could end up in a Marine brig for life?

As I sucked in air to shout a warning, someone behind me said, “Goddamn! That’s General MacArthur! Lookouts! Clear the port wing of the bridge!!” Navy talk for "Get your keister out of here!"

Guess nobody caught him. Next day, he walked ashore at Leyte.

I was a young reporter in Chicago on the day in 1956 that Harry Truman turned the tables on me. He gave me the most memorable interview of my reporting career, but I was too embarrassed to turn it in to my editor.

I was working for the Chicago American, covering police headquarters from midnight to 8:00 A.M. At about 6:00 in the morning, I got a call from my editor, directing me to go to the Sheraton-Blackstone Hotel and interview Truman before he checked out at 8:00. Truman, who had been out of office for about four years, was in the Chicago area making a halfhearted campaign speech for the Democratic presidential candidate, Adlai Stevenson.

I rushed to the hotel and bluffed my way past the front desk by showing my press credentials. (Security was looser in those pre-Kennedy-assassination days.) I went to the fourth floor and rang the bell of the hotel’s Presidential Suite.

From 1957 to 1980, I taught German at the Foreign Service Institute School of Language Studies, which was run by the Department of State in Washington, D.C. Classes were small, seldom more than four students, and I spent six hours every day with them, five days a week for five months. Following the school’s unconventional method, I started by giving my students a short sentence, which they had to repeat again and again until their pronunciation was correct. Longer sentences followed, and, as their speaking ability progressed, I gave them dialogues to memorize to help promote conversation within the group. Mark Twain once said that it takes 30 years for intelligent people to master the German language. It’s too bad the Foreign Service Institute’s method hadn’t yet been tried; he would have admired its success.

The Mount Washington Cog Railway, which you reach from Route 302 west of the mountain, operates from early May through October. The trains usually run hourly, and the roundtrip, which costs $39, takes three hours, including a twenty-minute stop at the summit (you may stay longer if you like). For information call 1-800-922-8825. The auto road, on Route 16 on the east side of the mountain, is open from mid-May to late October. The toll is $15 per vehicle and driver plus $6 for each adult passenger and $4 per child. A guided tour by van is $20 for adults, $10 for children. For information, call 603-466-3988. If you’d like to hike, get a copy of the AMC White Mountain Guide , with complete trail information and maps, available in bookstores or from the Appalachian Mountain Club. (617-523-0636).

I boarded the cog railway for the trip up New Hampshire’s 6288-foot Mount Washington on a sunny, warm morning in September. An hour and a quarter later, I stepped out onto the roof of New England, a desolate landscape of rock,precipice, and cloud stung by lashing sleet, brisk wind, and air chilled to thirty-nine degrees. In so doing, I was enjoying what could be called the original American tourist attraction. The cog railway opened in 1869, and already by then the mountain had half-century-old hiking trails, a carriage road to the top, and even a squat stone hotel at the summit. People loved the trip up for the adventure of traveling to a truly alien, even dangerous world.