On the Plantation

Probably the most unhappy man in the little (pop. 17,500) city of Thomasville, Ga. was Billy Joe Lewis, a contractor. On urgent orders Billy Joe had been hustled out to Milestone, the plantation off the Tallahassee Road owned by Treasury Secretary George Magoffin Humphrey, and asked to paint the living room of one of the Humphrey guest cottages. He found the room beautifully paneled in knotty pine, checked back to be sure there wasn't a mistake somewhere. There wasn't; the Humphreys were expecting the Dwight Eisenhowers for a visit, and during her 1956 visit to Thomasville, Mamie had remarked that the cottage's living room would be just perfect with white walls and pink curtains.

Last week Mamie was luxuriously installed amid the white walls and pink curtains and, no outdoor girl, kept herself thoroughly entertained during her husband's forays into the fields and greens. She arranged to have Kinescopes shown of a few TV shows (the Mayerling spectacular, What's My Line?) that she had missed in Washington, slept until 10:30 in the morning, devoted the rest of her time to a shopping tour in nearby Thomasville, auto rides into the blossoming countryside, sessions at a canasta-like card game called Bolivia with her mother, with Hostess Mrs. George Humphrey and the Eisenhowers' Gettysburg neighbor, Mrs. George Allen.

Flush in the Brush. Ike's routine was more rigorous. Breakfasting (on steak) in the main house at 8 a.m. with George Humphrey and such friends as Lawyer George Allen and White House Physician Howard Snyder, Ike wore the happy visage of a man on a holiday. Soon, with his lightweight under-over Belgian .410, he rode out with his cronies into the cool, piney woods aboard a mule-drawn hunting wagon. Plantation Owner Humphrey's prized pointers worked the fields, sniffing for quail. (Ike's own English setters, Art and George, were a bust in the South.) When a dog froze like a statue, the Milestone dog handler quietly called "Point." Ike climbed down from the wagon, got set to shoot; the handler began to rustle the brush with a leather thong, sent a covey skittering into the air. Ike, an expert shot, blasted away. Twice he knocked down three birds with only two shots.

Short on the Green. When he was not hunting, the President was tee-deep in golf. Dressed warmly in a grey zipper-front sweater, reddish slacks, a checked cap and brown golf shoes, Ike turned up at the nearby Glen Arven Country Club, took a few practice swings for photographers--becoming the first President of the U.S. to model a golf grip--surveyed the first green with a sigh: "One of the most discouraging things in the world is to walk up to the first tee, 440 yards and a par 4 hole, and let go." But let go he did, with a whacking 225-yard drive that sent the President gaily tracking down the course with Secret Service men chugging along behind in motorized carts.

His game, in all. ranged in the gos, but the shortcomings (his short game, mainly) were unimportant compared with the easy relaxation of his style, the exchange of chuckles with Jokester George Allen--much of it at the expense of Ambassador to London John Hay ("Jock") Whitney, who owns an estate next door to Humphrey's Milestone. Once, when Golfing Companion Whitney found himself in the woods, Ike and the others joshed him: "There's our representative at the Court of St. James's in the woods."

World affairs were not wholly abandoned. At least twice a day there were phone talks with Secretary Dulles on the Middle East impasse. Then Dulles and U.N. Ambassador Lodge flew down for their face-to-face conference. Ike also kept posted on the East Coast's longshoremen's strike and on the perilous passage of the Eisenhower Doctrine through the Senate. But behind the serious business there was always the comforting thought that the holiday would last one more week.

Last week the President also:

P: Snapped up the resignation of Assistant Secretary of Defense Robert Tripp Ross, whose wife was president of a clothing company that won an Army contract for 249,000 pairs of trousers while Ross was holding down his Pentagon job. Ross's resignation came right after he finished testifying before Arkansas Democrat John McClellan's Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. McClellan's cryptic verdict: there was no conflict "as far as criminality was concerned," but "as to whether there were improprieties, that is a matter of judgment and opinion."

P: Accepted the resignation of capable Civil Service Commission Chairman Philip Young, 46, who declined to tie himself to a new six-year term. Possible new assignment for Young, onetime head of Columbia University's Graduate School of Business, and an old friend of Ike's: U.S. Ambassador to The Netherlands.

P: Announced the resignation of former Philadelphia Evening Bulletin Correspondent Carl W. McCardle, who for four years served as Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs, and received one of Ike's warmest sorry-to-see-you-go letters.

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