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Typewritten daily and weekly schedules of events are issued, though Mrs. Post says the first rule of the house is "Do whatever you want." (The second is "If there is anything you want and you don't ask for it, it's your own fault.") Days at Topridge are spent in picnicking, canoeing, hiking. Nights are for square-dancing, movie watching, black-tie dinners, and late-night snacks from an icebox stocked with General Foods products. Says one guest, Magnavox Co. Vice President Godfrey Mc-Hugh: "The planning is comparable to the successful management of a large corporation."
Frugging till Dawn. Nowhere is the Post hospitality more exquisite than at Mar-A-Lago in Palm Beach. "The only trouble with Palm Beach," cracked White House Aide Robert Kintner, "is that by the time you can afford it, you're too old to enjoy it." The resort enjoyed a considerable revival with the younger international set when John F. Kennedy, son of longtime winter residents, spent a couple of Christmas vacations 'there as President. Now younger socialites seek the more informal social life of Barbados, Hobe Sound, Nassau or Acapulco. Palm Beach is primarily a playground for older Eastern and Mid-western families. Notable among them are Vanderbilts, Phippses, Dodges, Guests and Sanfords. The top social leaders are Mrs. Rose Kennedy and Mrs. Post, and Mar-A-Lago is one of the liveliest places in town.
Guests play golf on Mrs. Post's private, nine-hole course, or the championship course at the Seminole Club. Visitors can also swim in Mrs. Post's pool, at her private beach, or at the hyper-exclusive Bath and Tennis Club. At night, there is often a square dance, and though the music stops at 11 p.m., guests are free to borrow one of the hostess' limousines and cruise into town for frugging at O'Hara's until dawn.
All in all, Mrs. Post's dictum is: "Be useful, be generous, keep busy." What have been the most memorable days of her life? Says she with a smile: "There have been too many of them to single out only a few."
* Like Governor Nelson Rockefeller's wife Happy, who last week was rushed by cab to a hospital at 5 a.m., gave birth to their second son half an hour later. Rocky does not remember the size of the bill he gave the cabbie, but he did not ask for change.