Considering the 6-ft. 8-in. size of the man, it was like looking for a needle in a bonefish. Dining with University of British Columbia dons in Vancouver, Harvard Economist John Kenneth Galbraith, 57, choked on a bony hunk of the area's famed broiled salmon. As he told it, "There followed a contest, between myself and the salmon, that was a great sporting event on the whole. At the hospital, they tried casting for it; then they trolled for it, and that didn't work either. And then, after they used, a general anesthetic, I learned that they had tried a fly, but finally extracted it with an old-fashioned worm." Fish story or no, once unplugged, Galbraith politely took his hosts off the hook, said, "I'm sure my salmon was one of the finest local species."

Most of the alumni don't feel overly rah-rah about Tacoma's McNeil Island Federal Penitentiary; but for ex-Teamsters Boss Dave Beck, 72, the place was a veritable Vic Tanny's West. Released 22 months ago, after serving half of a five-year stretch for income tax evasion, Beck boasts that "I came out in better shape than I went in." Since the kind of Gemiitlichkeit that goes with his $50,-000-a-year Teamsters pension was out, he picked up "the exercise habit" in the hoosegow, made it a point "to be out on that exercise track every morning." Now in his Seattle pad, Beck can't shake the stir-born routine of stretching his legs without going anywhere, so he's bought an exercycle for a fast, 15-min-ute spin every morning.

Half a century ago, he started out with a banjo quartet in Altoona, Pa. The nation's most durable bandleader still hits 150 cities a year, playing mostly to packed houses. And so it was in Manhattan, where more than 900 of the faithful and 100 "Pennsylvanians" past and present gathered to toast Fred Waring's five decades on the bandstand. "The greatest thrill of my life," he said, and returned the salute by leading the Pennsylvanians in a nostalgic Waring blend of chorus and orchestra. Next week at 66, Fred's off on his 1966-67 country-wide swing, which he's calling "The First Fifty Years."

Suburban Chevy Chase, Md., was just fine for the Senator from Minnesota when he moved to the neat, two-story house there 17 years ago. But not for the Vice President: Secret Service men camped in the basement, and Hubert Humphrey rarely made the 45-minute drive home in time for dinner. He had turned down a $750,000 congressional appropriation for an official residence as unseemly in view of Viet Nam, so finally last week, "with the advice and counsel" of Wife Muriel, Hubert splurged $89,000 on a six-room co-op apartment in downtown Washington. "We just weren't able to see enough of each other," beamed Humphrey, obviously tickled at the mere nine-minute drive from his Capitol office.

The boys had barely finished their cocktails in La Stella's restaurant out in Queens, when New York's finest burst into the joint to bust up what the Queens D.A. called a meeting even "bigger than Apalachin" of top Cosa Nostra hoodlums from New York, Florida and Louisiana. It did look like a summit at that: Santo ("Louis Santos") Trafficante, 51, boss of Cuba's pre-Castro gambling, Thomas ("Tommy Ryan") Eboli, 55, running the

West Side Manhattan Genovese mob, Carlo ("Don Carlo") Gambino, 64, heir to the late Albert Anastasia's operations, plus ten other bigwigs. The D.A. wanted them to sing before a grand jury on crime in Queens, and a judge set bail at $100,000 each to help clear their throats. No dice. A friendly bondsman put up $1,300,000 for bail, the grand jury got nothing but grunts, and then it was back to La Stella's for that delayed lunch: escarole in brodo, linguini in clam sauce, striped bass, and wine. And just to show no hard feelings, they even raised a glass and fork in toast to newsphotographers and to the D.A.'s plainclothesmen at the next table.

He made the term famous, and now Yankee Baseball Announcer Red Barber, 58, was all tangled up in a rhubarb himself. No sooner was the Yanks' new boss, CBS Vice President Michael Burke, in office than he fired Barber, who had reported Yankee games for 13 years. Reason? None that Burke cared to announce, except that it was part of a general shakeup. Red thought it might have had something to do with the recent night when the Yanks played to exactly 413 paying fans, and he suggested that the cameras pass around so the TV audience could count the house themselves. At any rate, he was happy to be "free to pick and choose" a new job. And it wouldn't be with one of those clubs where "you wind up with more young Ivy League guys in grey flannel britches than you have any idea."

Stalin called his work "noise, not music." Pravda once sneered that it "reeks of the bourgeois." Now the sour notes have died away, and there he was in the Moscow Conservatory, shy, bespectacled and frail as ever, answering cheers at a concert celebrating his 60th birthday. Composer Dmitri Shostakovich received another gift too: the Soviet title of Hero of Socialist Labor. Best of all was the successful first Moscow performance of his new piece, Cello Concerto No. 2, conducted by a similarly slight, bespectacled musician: Dmitri's 28-year-old son Maxim.

Evangelist Billy Graham's huge summer crusade did not so much as rattle a window in Lambeth Palace, residence of the Church of England's Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev. Michael Ramsey, 61. Stepping off a plane in Vancouver, B.C., during a swing of his own through western Canada, Ramsey conceded that Billy may have "won some converts" but insisted that "we don't need his type of evangelism in England." In these perilous times, he continued, England "needs a thoughtful approach to religion, not bursts of emotionalism." Mused Billy, in thoughtful reply: "Interesting, in view of his ecumenical claims."

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