Riding with Walt

My Impromptus today is headed “Reviewing Mike Pence, &c.” I have politics, foreign affairs, pickleball, the English language — something for everyone, or for many. Here. Let’s look at some mail.

One of my items concerns Donald Trump and his visit to Arlington Cemetery, where he shot a campaign video. A friend writes,

In Disney’s Land, Richard Snow tells the story of a boy with leukemia who had a dying wish: to ride the train around Disney’s California park. (The Florida one did not exist yet.)

The boy’s family drove from the East Coast to Anaheim. Walt met him on a Saturday morning and said, “I understand you want to see my train. Well, let’s go.” He carried the boy over to the train, lifted him into the cab, and gave him a private tour. Afterward, he told the boy’s parents, “Well, we really saw the place. He liked my train.”

Once the family had driven off, Disney noticed the head of his Guest Relations department, standing around. The man had taken notice of the visit. Disney gave him a “curt order,” as Snow writes: “No publicity.”

That’s the best way to show respect.

In my column, I say,

Trump and J. D. Vance are running on tariffs. Therefore, the Republican Party of Smoot and Hawley is back. (By “Hawley,” I mean Willis C., not Josh.) “Everything old is new again” — for better or worse.

Professor Jeffery Tyler Syck, a political scientist, has circulated a video on Twitter, showing Daniel Patrick Moynihan talking about Smoot-Hawley:

I have heard from John Schmidt, who in 2015 wrote a piece called “How We Created the WTO: A Memoir.” Here is an excerpt:

In all of the draft documents, the new organization had always been called the “Multilateral Trade Organization.” But Pat Moynihan — a man who had opinions on everything — told me during his visit to Geneva that he thought that was a terrible name. “‘Multilateral’ is jargon,” he said, “unworthy of a great institution.”

The Multilateral Trade Organization became the World Trade Organization.

Earlier this week, I recalled the “daisy ad,” which President Johnson launched against Goldwater in 1964. Trump has his own versions of the daisy ad, I said, including this: “There will be no future under Comrade Kamala Harris, because she will take us into a Nuclear World War III!”

A reader writes,

I cast my first presidential-election vote for Senator Goldwater, and the “daisy ad” struck me then, and strikes me now, as dirty tricks — especially in view of Johnson’s handling of the Vietnam War.

Our reader adds,

Tim Walz went way up in my estimation as I rejoiced with his son, Gus. I have a grandson, 33 now, like Gus.

In that column earlier this week, I had a language item in which I explained why British people pronounce the name of London’s principal airport one way while we Americans pronounce it another. We tend to split the name “Hee-throw.” They say “Heath-row.”

Also in that column, I had an item or two on Shohei Ohtani, the baseball great (as a hitter and as a pitcher, both).

A very clever friend of mine writes,

If they ever name an airport for Ohtani, they can have two terminals: Hee-throw and Hee-hit.

A reader writes,

Jay,

I love your detours into language eccentricities.

As you may remember, I served 27 years in the United States Coast Guard. If you ever get bored, throw the following words into the wind: “onboard” and “aboard.” I’ll give you a guarantee: You’ll have some ol’ salts scurrying to battle stations.

Personally, I would say to a person entering a ship or plane, “Welcome aboard.” And I would say, “It is incumbent on all passengers to behave well onboard.”

On Monday, a published a Salzburg journal. A longtime and deeply valued reader writes,

Jay, that’s a beautiful, charming piece, both the prose and the photography. My girlfriend (age 86) and I (age 94) are going to Munich, Innsbruck, and Heidelberg for the second half of September. Now I wish we could work Salzburg into our plans.

Vive l’amour.

One final letter:

Funny you should mention a Japanese woman in a dirndl. I was in Shanghai on business (I know, yuck) earlier this year and met up with a Slovenian colleague, so we went out for Bavarian. The Chinese women in dirndls caught me as well.

Photographic evidence:

Thank you, so much, to all readers and correspondents.