Neighbors Bird-Dog a Quayle

We stood at the end of Bayview Avenue last Thursday evening--my neighbors and family and I--watching how the other half lives over the top of a police barricade. We were mostly in shorts and T-shirts, riding bikes, pushing strollers and generally hanging out. It’s not every day the vice president of the United States visits your neighborhood, and even though this particular vice president happened to be J. Danforth Quayle, we were curious. So we went and looked.

Although the cocktail party for Quayle took place only a few blocks from our home, it isn’t strictly our neighborhood. Santa Ana Heights--unlike Gaul--is divided into two parts: the rich folks and the peasants. We live--appropriately and happily--in the peasant section. The rich folks live in a group of estates on Mesa Drive overlooking Newport Bay. One of those estates--still abuilding--belongs to mobile-home tycoon John Crean, who appears to be creating his own town there. Another belongs to Buck Johns, owner of a land-acquisition firm, who is big in Orange County Republican politics. He also has a tennis court which, presumably with the net down, will accommodate a large crowd for social affairs. Like entertaining the vice president of the United States.

It was a thoroughly democratic--sorry, small “d”--affair. Anybody with a hundred bucks could come and schmooze with Quayle for about 45 minutes. Since that’s a little out of our range, both socially and economically, we chose to watch the action from a distance. Besides, as I heard one man in a pair of red jogging shorts comment: “I figure the vice president ought to pay a hundred bucks to see me “--a sentiment that may well have been sour grapes but appeared to be shared by most of the onlookers.

There was plenty of action. An hour and a half before Quayle was to arrive, the valet parkers began depositing Continentals and Mercedeses in front of our houses and then streaking back to get more. They wore red jackets and were sweating profusely. By the time our neighborhood retinue wandered down to the corner of Bayview and Mesa, the intersection was barricaded and guarded by a sheriff’s deputy who seemed reasonably amiable until some homeowners on that corner came out from behind their front-yard fence to have a look and he ordered them back. They went, looking both irritated and bewildered.

The area was infested with security. It occurred to me that if a bad guy wanted to infiltrate such a scene, he would only have to wear a dark suit, white shirt and sunglasses. Nobody would suspect he wasn’t part of the Secret Service. Guests kept wandering up to our check point wondering what to do. This was one event where being fashionably late was the kiss of death. As time for the Quayle motorcade grew close, the valet parkers suspended operations and a police helicopter buzzed the area with an air of self-importance.

About that time, a Continental pulled up beside us. An elderly woman got out and was stopped at the barricade while her husband drove off to look for parking. She was still standing there when we left, and on our way home, we met her husband huffing up the street. He told us rather resignedly: “I told her to hurry when she was getting ready, and she wouldn’t listen to me.”

Quayle’s arrival reminded me of the day in Huntington, Ind., when I stood with my grandchildren and watched George Bush and Quayle launch their campaign in the vice president’s home town. Same scene, same pomp and circumstance. Presidents and vice presidents are the closest things we have to royalty, and so we treat them that way. I counted 22 motorcycles--mostly from the CHP--leading the Quayle motorcade from the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station. Presumably crime was suspended while we got the vice president settled in. That was about the same number of motorcycles required in Indiana, and I wondered how they arrived at that figure--and how much it cost each of us.

The motorcade arrived from the other end of Mesa Drive, so we didn’t get a chance to see the entourage very closely. It was all over in a few seconds, the motorcycles roaring up the street and parking directly in front of us while the motorcade turned in at the gates of the Johns estate. Quayle was programmed so tightly that he had no chance to check out the new wallpaper in the Johns home or the jasmine and geraniums planted especially for the occasion. I wondered if he had a chance to gulp a drink. Or if he drinks.

We were all rather pensive returning to our homes. I felt an odd sort of empathy for the man we met walking to the party from his distant parking place. It had cost him two hundred bucks to bring his wife, and she had probably dawdled them out of a chance to see the vice president.

Three thoughts gnawed at me as I walked home. The first was relief that I was headed home instead of gussied up and attending the cocktail party. The second was a recognition that Americans tend to merge the man and the position even when we don’t respect the man. And finally was a powerful awareness of the caste system--and it surely works in both political parties--in this democratic society. The power centers are small, tight and exclusive. And the principal requirement to join is money. Lots of money.

We were eating dinner when the cocktail party broke up, and we watched through our front windows as the valet parking action was played out in reverse. Slowly, our neighborhood resumed its normal appearance, the Continentals and Mercedeses replaced by vans and RVs and pickup trucks. Our neighbors who live on the big estates receded once again in our consciousness. The helicopters and motorcycles and men in dark suits and sunglasses moved on to Fashion Island where Quayle was supposed to eat dinner--and didn’t have time--with the real power elite.

By that time, we were watching the Angels play Kansas City on TV and the whole affair was growing dim in our memory.