Things You Never Asked

But reporters did

Maybe you didn't know, and perhaps you don't care, but if you were to ask, the White House could tell you that Jimmy Carter's favorite color is blue. The President of the U.S. is 5 ft. 9 in. tall, weighs 155 Ibs., has a 39-in. chest and a 33-in. waist. His favorite spectator sport is stock car races. His favorite poet is Dylan Thomas. His favorite books are James Agee's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men and Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace. His favorite car is still the Studebaker Commander that he owned in 1948.

He was whipped by his father for stealing a penny from a church collection plate at the age of five. He once shot his sister Gloria in the fanny with a BB gun after she threw a wrench at him. He drove alone on highways for the first time at 13, and he had his first date at the same age. During his last week in high school, he played hooky and went to a movie; he was punished by not being chosen as valedictorian. He believed in UFOs as late as 1969, when he reported seeing one near a Lions Club in Leary, Ga.

All those revelations, and many more, are contained in a 13-page White House memo that was uncovered by a U.P.I, correspondent last week when he inquired whether the President plays canasta. The list was compiled in the summer of 1977 by a student intern who was assigned to the White House Office of Media Liaison. Why? Well, these are the kinds of questions often asked by reporters. And that, in turn, is a kind of commentary on the press. Many reporters would rather call the White House on such trivial questions than leaf through the book from which most of the answers came: Jimmy Carter's 1975 autobiography, Why Not the Best?

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