Champagne & Tea

For matronly Bess Truman the week brought two minor troubles and one triumph:

P:At Washington's National Airport she murmured, "I christen you the U.S. Capitol" and smartly swung a scored, netcovered* bottle of domestic champagne against the shiny nose of an Army C-54 hospital plane. Nothing happened. Pursing her lips, Bess Truman struck again, a backhand swipe. There were nervous titters. After nine determined tries the plane's nose was dented, the bottle still unbroken. Bess Truman passed it to an Air Forces major; when he failed to break it the party admitted defeat, moved on to christen a Navy plane with another bottle. There, on Mrs. Truman's second swing, a lieutenant deftly hammered the descending bottle from below. Champagne spurted up his sleeve, on the sponsor's black Shantung suit, and, as intended, on the plane's nose. Daughter Margaret rode home with the stubborn first bottle in her lap.

P:At the White House, Bess Truman had the female press in for tea and a tour. Her 200 guests had plenty of time for a good long look around. They saw Margaret's light blue living room, where her parents drop in for after-dinner parlor-sitting. They noted the titles of her unexceptionable books (101 Greatest Mystery Stories, It's Always Tomorrow, Gone With the Wind). They got a careful eyeful of Mrs. Truman's oyster white corner bedroom and the President's big bedroom with the blue-canopied bed. In the next-door oval study, on the glass-topped desk, now knickknackless, they spied the 1945 annual of Independence (Mo.) High School, dedicated to Harry Truman.

P:At Independence, Bess Truman, like millions of other U.S. women, faced a servant problem. Vietta Garr, Negro cook who had worked 16 years for the Trumans, is now back of the counter in a Kansas City drugstore. Surveying her array of mechanical aids to soda-jerking, Vietta confessed that she is dubious about returning to what will be the summer White House: "I'm sort of on the outs with the cooking. I'm fountain manager now, and you don't give up that kind of a job without thinking it over. I think an awful lot of them all. ..." This week Vietta and Mrs. Truman were negotiating.

*Scored, or cut, vertically in six places to help it break; net-encased to keep the glass from flying.

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