Men in Green by Michael Bamberger Read Free Book Online Page A

circumnavigating the globe in a Lear 36 in about fifty-eight hours. When he spoke of his planes he sounded like he was in his fifties again, when he was winning (on the senior tour), Peggy and Amy were out of the house, Winnie was busy with her stuff (hospital philanthropy), and Arnold could go just about anywhere he wanted, whenever he wanted. What freedom.
    Arnold kept a pilot’s license for fifty-five years and had given it up only recently. He told us about a “dogfight” he once had over the Atlantic with another civilian pilot, each in an F-15 borrowed from the United States Air Force. I didn’t know you could borrow planes from the United States Air Force. Arnold said that was his fee for giving a clinic at the Langley Air Force Base golf course. “I threw up all over myself,” Arnold said. “I’m just being honest.”
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    Arnold’s docent work concluded in the office lobby, where his presidential collection was assembled. The people at the World Golf Hall of Fame must have fantasies about it: filled scorecards, golf balls, clubs, bag tags, all connected to the many golf games and White House visits Arnold has had with many of the twentieth century’s First Duffers.
    Palmer hadn’t met Obama and he never met Kennedy. He and JFK had a Palm Beach golf game in the works for Christmastime 1962 but it got canceled when Kennedy’s back went out. Kennedy didn’t forget. In the summer and early fall of ’63, he had the White House photographer, Cecil Stoughton, shoot sixteen-millimeter film of his swing, with the intention that Palmer would come to the White House, review the footage, and offer the former Harvard golfer (freshman team) some tips. Then came November 22.
    The film was buried in a vault at the Kennedy Library until a reporter on Cape Cod uncovered it. Many years too late to help the man, Arnold analyzed JFK’s stylish, relaxed swing. In one round Kennedy is wearing pink pants and Ray-Bans and his shirttail is out. He looks like a preppy movie producer on vacation. The caddies are skinny teenagers in country-boy dungarees and white T-shirts they borrowed from James Dean. The motorized golf carts have three wheels. Jackie is in the background now and again. A few years earlier I had watched the film with Arnold. He said, “Look at Jackie—she’s smoking!” Arnold’s own war with cigarettes went on for years. His eye for pretty women never diminished.
    Near a corner of the lobby was a golf bag stuffed with Eisenhower’s clubs. A wall was dotted with presidential photos, spanning nearly a half century. One showed Arnold playing with Jerry Ford. They’re cracking up about something. “He was my buddy,” Arnold said. Deacon Palmer was a Roosevelt Democrat, but Arnold, like a lot of golfers, checked in early with the Grand Old Party and stayed there. There was a photo of Kissinger on a sofa with Pat Nixon and Dolores Hope. They all look sort of stuffed. The whole lobby was like a tribute to a lost world. “Jerry Ford’s turning golf into a contact sport,” Bob Hope used to say. Who’s writing golf jokes today?
    Arnold told us about a round he played recently with Bill Clinton at a course called Trump National Golf Club Hudson Valley, in New York. Mike and I played there once with Trump, who played well but didn’t stop talking. I lost a dozen balls and came off the eighteenth green with a throbbing headache. I found aspirin in the locker room, where Trump’s locker sits in a row with others bearing shiny nameplates for Rudy Giuliani, Joe Torre, and Lou Rinaldi, a scratch player and Trump’s pavement guy. Trump made Clinton an honorary member of the club.
    â€œClinton can play a little bit,” Palmer said. “But he hits this one shot that goes way right. A wild shot. He looks at me with this shit-eating grin and says, ‘I promise you: You’ll never