"Bye-bye, I'm free, free as a bird. I'm going to have a ball in New York," said Martha Mitchell to Washington Post Columnist Maxine Cheshire as she packed up to leave the capital for good. After several months of unaccustomed silence, the chatty wife of the former Attorney General wanted to clear up some unfinished business. For one thing, "I want to be sure my side is revealed in that people know I'm not sitting here a mental case or an alcoholic," she told another reporter. Martha also wanted to identify the brute who had ripped the phone from the wall of her California hotel room last June just as she started to answer a question about the Watergate bugging. He was Steve King, her bodyguard, she said. Since then King has been promoted to security director of the Committee for the Re-Election of the President. All this was so fascinating that Cheshire went back to the Mitchells' apartment for a second interview the next day. She found the apartment guarded by a burly man who told her, "You can't talk to anybody." Seeing Martha on the stairs, Maxine asked: "Why won't you talk to me?" Looking harassed, Martha replied, "I can't, honey. I just can't."

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"I always wanted a real training camp in the mountains," said Muhammad Ali. "Real logs, hard beds, coal stoves." Ali already has two log cabins and a gym at Deer Lake, Pa.; he plans enough additional cabins and mobile homes to sleep 20 people, including his wife, one son and three daughters. Ali figures such sylvan simplicity is worth the $150,000 it will eventually cost. So far, the 30-year-old ex-heavyweight champion can afford it--this week's Madison Square Garden bout with Floyd Patterson guarantees him $250,000--but after that, Ali plans to go easy on the spending. "I'm going to make my wife make her own clothes. Man, if I don't watch it, I'll be broke. I don't want my kids to end up being waitresses."

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There happens to be a pool table in the White House, but Julie Nixon Eisenhower has never used it. Still, Julie didn't hesitate when, visiting a home for senior citizens in a Cleveland suburb, she saw a pool table. She chalked up, promptly missed two shots in a row. Later, at a speech to a Kiwanis women's meeting in Columbus, Julie offered to put her life on the line for Dad and country. Asked if she would be "willing to die for the Thieu regime" in South Viet Nam, Julie answered, "Yes, I would," and went on to defend the President's policy of gradual withdrawal.

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In Concord, Mass., Jacqueline Onassis took daughter Caroline Kennedy, 14, to begin classes as a sophomore at co-educational Concord Academy (annual fee for boarders: $4,100). While photographers clicked away, Caroline and a friend strolled around the campus, sipping soft drinks. Back in Athens, meanwhile, her stepfather Aristotle Onassis played host at a roistering party for his son Alexander, 24, Actress Elsa Martinelli, Odile Rodin (widow of Porfirio Rubirosa) and four other intimate chums. The evening ended in a tumultuous traditional session of plate smashing on the dance floor of the Neraida nightclub. "I lost count of the plates," said a witness, "but it must have been an Olympic record." Theoretically, the shattered plates could get Onassis six months in jail: the Greek government outlawed the custom in 1969, and Attorney Nikolaos Galeadis promptly filed a complaint against Onassis. "The law is the law and is the same for everyone," snapped Galeadis.

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After 20 or so years abroad, Money Magnate J. Paul Getty wants to go home. "I plan to move back to the United States for good in about two or three years," says Getty, who now stays most of the year in Surrey, England, but also owns homes in Naples and Palo, Italy, and Malibu, Calif., where he will live when he returns. "I'll probably make a couple of visits before that," he says. While visiting, Getty plans to look over an art museum he is building on his property in Malibu, and check out a clutch of buildings in which he has financial interests but has never seen. "I admit it," said the 79-year-old Getty. "I'm getting homesick."

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Richard M. Nixon in the middle of a hair-pulling match? Well, almost. After paying a surprise visit to his Washington campaign headquarters, the President suddenly popped in on the Hearst Newspapers bureau on the same floor. Columnist Marianne Means took advantage of the moment to ask a blunt question: "Can you promise me personally that you will never propose any federal tax increases while you are in the White House?" Just as the President answered "Absolutely," Marianne felt "three good strong tugs" at her shoulder-length blonde hair. Press Secretary Ron Ziegler, who was standing behind her, had chosen a new way to cut off unwanted questions. Marianne decided not to fight back. "His own hair is too short to tug properly, and a kick in the shins would not have been ladylike," she said.

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