We first got settled at the Plaza Hotel and then drove to see many of the sights. In B.A. they also drive pretty much by horn. I am told it is the second sized city in the Western Hemisphere— bigger than Chicago even. Anyway, it is big.
The sights of Buenos Aires are many and varied. About like any other S.A. city, only bigger. . . The shops are elaborate. . . Prices are reputedly relatively higher in B.A. than at home. I sincerely doubt this. I positively do. Especially if you get your money changed into pesos at what some are willing to give for American dollars. It may be a bit shady, but it is done rather openly. Never go to a bank. The banks are pegged. They can give you 9.3 pesos per dollar. Our blessed friend at the dock warned us. He told us to have our (get that possessive) chauffeur stop at one of the cambios, I think they call them, and go in—just like that. . .We got 15 for 1.
Due to the number of us arriving via S.S. Del Mar, we were not required to go to the police station to register. The authorities detailed a man to come to the Plaza Hotel and do the job. . . He had a big sign, "Silence," on his desk; also a typewriter. He assumed a very important look, much the same as the one I took on when the lobbyists began calling me "Senator." The job was soon over. We received our tourist cards with instructions to carry them at all times—or else.
JOCKEY'S CLUB—WHERE THE BEEF IS
Beef is the staple food, killed that morning. No self-respecting Argentine would touch ripened meat or chilled or deep freeze stuff. He wants it right off the hoof. And yet, I am inclined to think they want it fairly well-done. Sugar Foot has been having trouble getting hers rare enough.
The best meat I have had was at the Jockey's Club. Every town down here seems to have a Jockey's Club. . . All of them are owned and operated by the same people. Who started them? The farmers of the Argentine. Away back there these beef growers began to get rich. Then they got feudal. They were the Aristocracy of hereabouts. Big holdings and immense herds. Then they moved to town and took over. Now some of them have gone to Monte Carlo and Cannes and New York while the overseers and hired men run the place back home. That is the way I am told. . . To be a member you have to be one of those farmers. Or else a descendant of one of those farmers—you've got to have Hereford blood somewhere in you.
The Club has all the dignity it is possible to have. Marble floors, big well-spaced tables with large roomy chairs, heavy dark polished woodwork, immense wide stairways and steps with low risers, an enormous library with old men in dignified dress asleep here and there, kinda like English clubs, say.
On Sunday we went to the races at Palermo track. . . We had as our guests Captain Jones and Purser Stricker of the Del Mar and a Mrs. Somebody who operates a girls' school in Buenos Aires. The captain and Mrs. Somebody go to bet on the races, and bet they did, on every race. I said above that we were hosts. That's wrong. The good captain had the big thing—access to the Jockey's Club part of the track, the stand right at the wire. In my innocence I had asked them as guests. They had accepted as such. Having sat at table with the good captain for about three weeks, he had long since gotten my number and what I knew about Palermo and everything else south of the Putnam County line. He just bided his time and then let me down as easy as possible. He's that way.
EVALUATING THE WOMEN
I remember what Claud Smith (now a pious, sedate lawyer and ex- judge down at Princeton) said once when we had gathered in a room at Indiana U for the usual talk. In his blunt, matter-of-fact way, Claud spoke up first. He said, "Well, shall we begin talking about the girls right off the bat, or gradually lead up to them like we've been doing?"