Diner’s Saxophone Lures Clinton, Family

The saxophone worked.

On the last night of his Southern California mini-holiday, President-elect Bill Clinton stopped in at a local burger place whose owner had sprung for a $195 saxophone hoping that it might lure Clinton in for dinner.

In his “wildest dreams,” Doug Taylor, owner of the Nugget bar and grill, did not imagine that Clinton, his wife and daughter and friends would show up. But they did Sunday night, although Clinton left without playing the saxophone that hung on the wall above him in the corner “presidential booth” in the seaside eatery.

On his way out, before wading into the crowd and shaking hands, Clinton picked up a T-shirt that has been selling well in these parts, with the legend: “I saw Elvis. I saw Bill Clinton. Summerland, California 1992.”

Asked why he did not play the newly tuned saxophone, he said: “I came to eat. I’ll be back.”

Joining the Clintons were their friends, Hollywood producers Linda Bloodworth-Thomason and Harry Thomason, owners of a Summerland estate and the Clintons’ hosts for part of the weekend. At the next table sat Chelsea Clinton with two young Arkansas friends, Elizabeth Flammang and Katie Lindsey, there with her father, Bruce Lindsey, a senior Clinton aide.

Clinton and his wife, Hillary, each had a beer and split an order of nachos and sourdough cheeseburger--hold the cheese--with ortega chiles. It was a California capper to a big-calorie day for Clinton. Earlier Sunday he went to a barbecue with Arkansas friends, enjoyed a lavish hotel brunch in Pasadena, where he spent the night after a birthday party for Thomason, and had summoned room service at 2 a.m. for a pizza.

Clinton had promised to enjoy the four-day weekend, and he seemed to.

Clinton appeared in black tie at Pasadena’s Ritz-Carlton Huntington Hotel on Saturday night for a surprise 51st birthday party for Harry Thomason. The several hundred people attending the five-hour party included about 80 Arkansas friends, most of the cast of the sitcom “Designing Women” and actors Robert Wagner, Jill St. John, Markie Post and John Ritter.

“I think he was the last to leave,” Clinton’s mother, Virginia Kelley, said of her son.

Thomason and his wife are Arkansas friends of Clinton’s and creators of “Designing Women” and other TV shows. The Clintons are staying through midafternoon today at the Thomasons’ beachfront estate in Summerland, near Santa Barbara.

Thomason had been told that the event was to formally present Clinton with the National Education Assn.’s “Man of the Year” award. The organizers went so far as to display the teacher group’s name on a screen in the ballroom.

After partying from 8:45 p.m. until about 2 a.m., the President-elect ordered a room service pizza, then went to bed in a Spanish-style cottage at the hotel at 3 a.m.

But at 9 a.m. he was awake and at 10 he asked an aide to invite friends to the hotel for breakfast.

As Clinton ate at the Summerland restaurant Sunday night, Taylor said the saxophone purchase “was the best $195 I ever spent.”

“We’re just old hard-core Republicans” who voted for Bush, he said. “But I’m thinking about changing my ways. . . . (Clinton) wanted to help the economy--he sure helped ours.”