THE PRESIDENCY: Summer Sports

• Share

Royal coachman, black gnat, grizzly king, professor! If Calvin Coolidge never again has sport he will at least remember the summer of 1928 as the time when he learned his fly-book by heart, casting on the brown Brule stream. As July petered out and the level of the waters dropped a little in the dry weather, the Brule's inhabitants grew hungrier and hungrier. There came an evening when the President canoed home to Cedar Island Lodge with no less than 26 trout. This was one more than Wisconsin's legal limit but Wisconsin took no action. From trout-fishing, the President, one evening, turned to "plugging" for black bass. Guide John Laroque piloted him over the glassy sunset surface of Island Lake, 20 miles from the Lodge. Mrs. Coolidge and the secret-service men watched and applauded. The President caught ten. Another new sport was clay-pigeon shooting. The President was presented with some handsome shotguns and a set of traps for whirring out the dark four-inch discs with yellow circles on their backs. The secret-service men showed him how to stand at the butt, get set, cry "pull!" and blow the sailing "pigeons" to dusty smithereens. There was also baseball—the opening game of the annual tournament of the Head-of-the-Lakes semiprofessional baseball association. The field was beside the railroad yards in Superior. Long freight and ore trains trundled by constantly. President Coolidge threw in the first ball and the first battery knocked it out-of-the-lot.* Mrs. Coolidge munched chocolates and watched vivaciously. John Coolidge, though there were many hits, errors, wild throws, etc., looked badly bored. The President left after the third inning—his baseball custom.