The Americans: Letters From America 1969–1979 by Alistair Cooke

Author:Alistair Cooke [Cooke, Alistair]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Literary Collections, essays, history, United States, 20th Century, Social Science
ISBN: 9781497682795
Google: 8FEnBgAAQBAJ
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2015-03-03T23:49:26.073811+00:00

Workers, Arise! Shout ‘Fore!’

27 December 1974

There is something I ought to talk about and something I must talk about. What I ought to talk about is the end of the annual General Assembly of the United Nations, a leaden piece of Christmas cake I have obediently chewed on for the past thirty-odd years. What I must tell you about is an encounter I recently had with the Russians that is altogether cockeyed and hilarious, but it is not without deep significance of a ritual kind. Let us skip the cake and come to the icing.

A few weeks ago, I was staying in San Francisco, and I had a call one morning asking me to lunch with the Russian Consul General and his deputy. The invitation came from an unlikely host, a friend, a lawyer, an affable and fastidious gent, a Republican and a first-rate golfer, to whom the great game is not only a major exercise in military strategy and tactics but also a minor rehearsal of the Ten Commandments. He is, indeed, the chairman of the championship committee – and will without doubt soon become the President – of the United States Golf Association. His pairing with the Russian Consul General seemed improbable in the extreme. Where, I asked, shall we meet? ‘At the golf club, of course,’ was his mad reply. But why, why? ‘It is very important,’ he said. ‘I should surmise that the Consul General is coming under orders, and the whole point of the lunch is to talk golf.’ This was like being invited by a rabbi to lunch with the Pope to discuss stud poker. I accepted instantly.

The co-host was a young American, a boyish type who is associated with his famous father in the most successful golf architecture firm on earth. Golf architecture is the art and science of designing and building golf courses, and it involves much knowledge of landscape, soils, grasses, water drainage, engineering, meteorology and sometimes – I feel – black magic. Let us call the young man Mr Jones, for that happily is his name.

It seems he had recently got back from Moscow, where he and his father had responded to what must have sounded like a joke more unlikely than the reason for our lunch: a call from the Mayor of Moscow to consider building the first Russian golf course. The impulse, apparently, had come from a Soviet diplomat who had been exposed to the decadent West and had become one maniacal golfer. This in itself should give us a pause. I should have guessed that any Russian who had yielded to such a capitalist diversionary activity as golf would have been, on his first homecoming, bundled off to Siberia, where he’d have been condemned to play golf with a red ball and a snow sledge. But he was a close friend of the Mayor of Moscow. When he returned from a foreign, Western, post, he came into the airport carrying a golf bag. The customs men –

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