UNITD STATES—Pierre Salinger, entered the White House as John F. Kennedy’s press secretary in 1961. Salinger later recalled being called into the oval office one frosty February evening, just a few weeks after the inauguration. For which Robert Frost, a San Franciscan by birth like Salinger, had specially composed a poem, “For John F. Kennedy’s inauguration.” Which concludes with a couplet, heralding: A golden age of poetry and power / Of which this noonday’s the beginning hour.
However, due to this intense solar glare that Washington D.C. morning, Frost could not read it, and in one of the great pivots of history, recited “The Gift Outright.”
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
“Pierre, I need some help,” President Kennedy told Salinger. “Be glad to do anything I can.”
“I need a lot of cigars,” Kennedy told Salinger, whose ears were still struck by Kennedy’s patrician yet raw accent. Salinger was a Californian.
“How many cigars, Mr. President?”
“About 1,000 Petit Upmanns.”
Salinger cringed a bit at the request, but kept his reaction to himself.
“And, when do you need them, Mr. President?”
“Tomorrow morning.”
Press Secretary Salinger worked on the task into the evening. His own fondness for Cuban cigars aided him greatly, for he was able to approach the many shops and tobacconists to supply the fragrant cedar boxes of Petit Upmanns. He was summoned into Kennedy’s office the very next morning.
President Kennedy asked Salinger how he did.
“Quite well” Salinger said and confirmed that he had procured 1,250 cigars.
Kennedy smiled, put a finger to his chin. He then opened up his desk. He took out a long paper which he immediately signed. It was the decree banning all Cuban products from the United States. Cuban cigars were now verboten in the Untied States.
Salinger, by now a veteran of the Kennedy and Johnson White Houses, defeated California senatorial candidate, an architect of RFK’s rise, first moved to France in the wake of RFK’s assassination, and eventually heading ABC’s Paris Bureau. The expat repatriated in that last quarter of the 20th century.
The millennial United States presidential election, which indeed took place and once and for all discredited the end-of-world fears of Y2K caused Salinger to announce he would move to France forever if a certain candidate won. It was taken as bluster. As fate would have it that candidate did win and contributed to Salinger’s fulfillment of that promise. He died in his eightieth year on October 16, 2004, at a hospital in Cavaillon, near his residence in mountainous Le Thor Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region.
When it comes to exiles, you can do a whole lot worse than France.
To be continued…
