Stag Night at the White House: ‘Just Levity and Jokes’

--While Nancy Reagan was in New York for discussions with Random House about her memoirs, President Reagan opted for a night in with the boys. He sent invitations to several lawmakers “to have dinner and have a bull session,” said Sen. Howell Heflin (D-Ala.), one of the guests. “Most of it was just levity and jokes.” Heflin said he told a story about expectations, in which an elderly woman on a plane pats the elderly gentleman next to her on the knee and says he reminds her of her third husband. Then she tells him she has only been married twice. As to what other stories were told, especially by Reagan, Heflin said: “There were a lot of good ones, but they’re all super-secret.” He said the discussion rarely turned serious, such as when Rep. Dan Rostenkowski (D-Ill.) asked Reagan what he wished his successor to accomplish, and Reagan spoke of hopes for a balanced-budget amendment and a line-item veto. Reagan also talked about some of his discussions with Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev and about his early days in the movies, decrying the way films now leave nothing to the imagination and describing the “ethics boards and everything” required before Clark Gable could say “damn” in “Gone With the Wind,” Heflin said. Other guests were Sen. Alan K. Simpson (R-Wyo.), House Minority Leader Robert H. Michel (R-Ill.), Rep. Gene Taylor (R-Mo.) Rep. Marvin Leath (D-Tex.) and Kenneth M. Duberstein, White House chief of staff.

--The Soviet Union’s top-ranked military officer, Marshal Sergei Fedorovich Akhromeyev, toured the Alamo and was made an honorary mayor by San Antonio Mayor Henry G. Cisneros. “I especially like the way you keep the memory of the heroes of your past,” Akhromeyev said. “As a military man, I think it’s very important.” Akhromeyev left 13 medals commemorating Soviet cities that battled the Nazis in World War II to the mission, where Texas revolutionaries including Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie were killed by Mexican troops in 1836.

--Herb Caen was honored for 50 years of columns about San Francisco with an editorial headlined “Caengratulations” in the Chronicle. And in a short article, Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco) said Caen “has painted word portraits of San Francisco” that “may not always be the city we remember, but it is the city we want to remember.” Caen recalled starting out at age 22 as a greenhorn from Sacramento and called himself the “kid in the candy store, Dorothy in Oz, Alice in Wonderland, Tom Swift and his Electric Column.”