PEOPLE

"They're just keeping us on our feet so we'll be too tired to beat the Senators," grumbled Twin Pitcher Camilo Pascual as he waited with his Minnesota teammates to meet President Johnson. But after shaking hands with L.B.J. half an hour later, he heard that his family was en route to the U.S. from Cuba. Nothing could stop Pascual then. He beat the Senators easily for his 13th win of the season, flew off to meet his mother, father and two married sisters. He had not seen them since he left Havana in 1961.

"I'm Lady Bird Johnson from Karnack, Texas," said the First Lady of the land as she hopped into a 32-foot rubber raft last week for a float trip down Wyoming's Snake River (below). After her party of 17, including Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall, had settled down to enjoy the 3½-hour jaunt, Mrs. Johnson, clad in bright red stretch pants and a black sweater, picked up a pair of binoculars. In short order she spied a mule deer, an osprey, several trout, a formation of Canada geese ("Hey say, what are they?" she asked), a bald eagle ("Look, look, look," she gasped), a cow elk ("Oh, gosh") and last but not least a 1,000-pound moose. "She's the best game spotter we've ever had," said the tour guide as his famous guest disembarked for a fish fry.

Former British High Commissioner to Australia, Sir Stephen Holmes, who is now a councilman in Sandwich, England, gets his daily exercise by riding on a merry-go-round. Last week, however, he ran into trouble. "It won't go round anymore, it's just too stiff," complained the dignified 68-year-old. "You shouldn't be riding on it," retorted the manager. "Nobody over 16 is allowed to use it." "But you ride on it sometimes," said Sir Stephen. "But I'm in charge of the place," explained the 50-year-old manager patiently. "I shall go on riding," snapped Sir Stephen. "It's my duty as a councilman to see that it's quite safe. Besides," he added, "it's fun."

Rodger Ward had some trouble holding the road last week, but no driving championships were at stake. Ward, a World War II pilot, was flying his wife and 3-month-old son to a Milwaukee stock car race when his four-seater Bonanza developed engine trouble. He brought the plane down successfully on a highway in Brownsburg, Ind., but it skidded into a ditch. Nobody was hurt.

Riviera gossip had it that Actress Greta Garbo was swimming in a topless bikini. But the solitary Swede haughtily denied it. "I swim in the nude," she said.

Good sports and good sportswomen, 24-year-old Noriko Ikeda and her sister Sachiko, 22, the daughters of Japan's Prime Minister, last week signed on with 27 other Japanese socialites to serve as official Olympic Companions. Dressed in neat uniforms, they will "entertain heads of state and members of the International Olympic Committee" during the Games in Tokyo. "I took the job because I thought all I needed to do was to pass out medals to the winners," said Sachiko. "I now know better but I'll do my very best." Ah so.

At each performance of the Broadway hit Any Wednesday, 50 helium-filled balloons are set free, and for the rest of the show they bounce around up on the ceiling of the theater. How does the management get them down? Up to last week it was easy, with the unpaid but ardent assistance of blonde star Sandy Dennis. As soon as the audience left, Miss Dennis would pick up an air rifle, pull the hair out of her eyes and blast away. Then some spoilsport decided it was dangerous. Now sharpshooter Sandy has been replaced by a net.

Some people walk along beaches to collect shells or sniff the good salt air. U.S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas does it to save the beach. Last week the 65-year-old archconservationist and author (My Wilderness, Of Men and Mountains) led 160 like-minded strollers, including his 24-year-old wife Joan, on a three-day, 15-mile hike to protest a planned beachfront highway on Washington's Olympic Peninsula. "We are a group of people who love the outdoors," said the Justice at a salmon barbecue before the march. "Our goal is to make as many friends as possible for the beach wilderness." But after fighting high tides, rain and hungry mosquitoes, one member of the Wilderness Army went AWOL. "You can have your hike and your wilderness, too," he snarled as he scooted off in search of a highway.

To keep his Monaco oceanographic museum well stocked with exhibits, Underwaterman Jacques-Yves Cousteau has inspired France's sun-sitters to become supersaturated Frank Bucks. In response to Cousteau's offer of prizes ranging from complete scuba outfits to mere face masks for the best Bring 'Em Back Alives, Riviera vacationers have hauled in more than a thousand potential museum pieces. "People on beaches are like animals in zoos," explained Cousteau, in a slightly inverted simile, "they're bored and want to be entertained."

For the moment anyway, life is beer and skittles for England's Tories, but former Prime Minister Harold Macmillan is still among the losers. At the annual Conservative Party fete in Bromley the other day, Mac shied three balls at a stand of skittles to try to win a pig. Alas, when the game was done, his wife Lady Dorothy had to award the pig to another Tory.

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