THE PRESIDENCY: Interlude

It was raw and rainy in the Washington-Gettysburg area, and the President of the U.S., his week's work done, decided that a weekend around there would be no weekend at all. Dwight Eisenhower therefore got on the telephone, called several old friends, arranged for a get-together down South. Next morning Ike boarded his Air Force Boeing 707 jet at Andrews Air Force Base, Md., flew to the 14,000-acre Blue Springs, Ga. plantation of W. Alton ("Pete") Jones, chairman of the executive committee of Cities Service Co., to put in a couple of days hunting quail.

Ike could hardly wait to start hunting. He would be out with a shotgun, he told reporters, just "as soon as they feed me." Right after lunch in Pete Jones's three-story white colonial mansion. Ike turned out in a rust-colored suède jacket over a tan cashmere shirt. In 3½ hours the President's party flushed 26 coveys of quail, and Ike himself, using a 20-gauge automatic shotgun, brought down eight birds. Next day he returned to the hunt, bagged his legal limit of twelve.

The Georgia trip was a pleasant interlude. But as President Eisenhower prepared to fly back to Washington at week's end, a White House announcement underscored the work that lay ahead. The President of the U.S., said the announcement, had set the dates June 10-19 for his visit to Russia to see Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev.