The uproar died down, and if Luci Baines Johnson, 18, had indeed taken her boyfriend Pat Nugent, 22, down to the LBJ Ranch specifically to ask dad's permission to marry, she just wasn't talking about it. "My personal life is my own," said Luci, as she returned to classes at Georgetown University's School of Nursing. Pat was doggedly silent, too. Ever since he started dating Luci last summer, friends have been kidding him about not getting drafted, but now he is putting a stop to that by going on active duty soon, probably in the Air Force Reserve. A lot of people thought they detected a presidential veto in what the White House staff called "the Luci matter."

Ah, yes, cooed the great-great-great-granddaughter of George Calvert, the first Lord Baltimore, "it's so romantic, this history and genealogy business. I'm so happy the flag is going back to America." Mrs. Barbara Soames was also delighted at what the flag was leaving behind for her: the $15,120 paid for the rare bunting, a modified Old Glory made about 1795, with 15 six-pointed stars and 15 stripes to represent the original colonies and newly admitted Vermont and Kentucky. The faded flag had been among the English Calverts for generations. Last week, with a fine blend of loyalty and public relations, Edgar M. Bronfman, president of Joseph E. Seagram & Sons, bought the flag at a Sotheby's auction in London to return to the colonies as the property of an offshoot of the family tree, his Calvert Distillers Co.

The motorcade swung on down South Rampart Street, and Louis Armstrong, 65, felt like doing a little swinging himself. "These are my old stomping grounds," graveled Satchmo. "Everybody was blowin' good stuff here when I was a kid." Louis came back to his home town on Louis Armstrong Day to play a benefit concert for the New Orleans Jazz Museum. "I used to stand on the corners and play until the cops came along and ran us away," recalled' Louis, fingering the cornet he first learned to toot 52 years ago at the old Waifs Home. Then he grinned at Peter Davis, 87, the man who taught him to play it. Said Satch: "You sure taught us the rudimentals."

Ambassador Talat AI-Ghoussein of Kuwait looked bewildered as he stared at the three-tiered wedding cake in the party-packed penthouse of Washington Hostess Perle Mesta, 84. "I don't know why I'm here," admitted the ambassador. A lot of the other capital society types were wondering too. Then Perle led them over to meet Television Actress Inger Stevens and explained that the "wedding reception" was cooked up to "celebrate" Inger's "marriage" to a "Congressman," played by William Windom on The Farmer's Daughter. The show's producers had promised the sponsors that they would come up with a publicity gimmick, and that was Perle.

"I am a servant of the muses," twinkled Charlie Chaplin, 76, at a London press conference. "And when they say, 'Get back to work, you lazy bum,' I get back." Reviving a script he wrote more than 20 years ago, Charlie will produce, direct and compose the music for The Countess from Hong Kong, his first film since 1957's The King in New York. Charlie, alas, will do only a walk-on part in the "romantic comedy," leaving the comedy to Marlon Brando and the romance to a romantic named Sophia Loren.

It was the first South Vietnamese beauty contest in years, and look what they got. Not bad at all. But poor little (33-23-33) Kim Huong, 18, just wasn't up to the mysterious standards of the Saigon purists. "Atomic breasts and Brigitte Bardot lips," snipped the connoisseur for the daily Dan Tien (People Forward). He didn't explain what was so awfully wrong with that, but another paper had the same fixation: "Is it true that the breast became a magnet before the jury?" As everyone hotly debated her assets, the miserable Miss Viet Nam went into hiding. At last, the contest officials gallantly ruled that Kim can go to Manila after all to compete in the Miss Asia contest.

Pravda calls him a "sadistic rapist," and every other good Communist sees red at the mere mention of James Bond, "the embodiment of capitalist and bourgeois vice." Now, the Czechs have finally got his number. Installing 007 in a comic strip in the weekly Obrana Lidu, they have Bond invade their nation, armed with a "superlarge pistol" to try to corrupt clean-cut "Bob," a Czech soldier. Bond fails miserably, ends up trying to flee the country through a railroad tunnel. He checks the train schedule, notes that the track should be clear, enters the tunnel--and is squashed to death by an oncoming train. Notes Obrana Lidu with some acid:

"As usual, the Czech trains were running late."

A few poets are mad at U.S. foreign policy but L.B.J. knows where his next rhyme is coming from. Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall has a twelve-line poem published in the autumn Hudson Review. Title: "On Seeing a Photograph of Citizen Khrushchev at an Art Exhibition." Muses Udall:

No longer master of the state, A Lear look on his famous face, He knows the passing of all power And rails within against his fate. Indulging in a bit of hyperbole, the review's poetry editor, Joseph Bennett, said the verse reminded him of "the chronicle plays of Shakespeare."

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