Pilgrims Depart With Stuff of Tales : Logistics: In the White House, furniture movers follow painters and the pantry is stocked. Outside, the satisfied spectators head for home.

The pilgrims have come and, now, are fast leaving, having witnessed the passing of torches.

And so this Chaucerian morality play at Canterbury on the Potomac ends. As the new President and his lady wrestle open packing boxes, the voices of young and old are heard in the 202 area code, speaking of a new beginning.

Here follow the Sixth and Final Tales.

The Movers’ Tale

It snewed in his hous of mete and drynke.

Well, it didn’t snow Wednesday but the Clintons’ favorite mete (meat) and drynke (drink) were being moved into the kitchen even as the new President was being sworn in. Three large yellow vans with Arkansas license plates wheeled into the driveway outside the Oval Office just as Bill Clinton and George Bush left the White House in a limousine to go to the Capitol for the inauguration.

The pictures of former President George Bush and nearly all of his and wife Barbara’s personal belongings were packed and shipped to Houston in recent days, so that painters could go to work.

Hauling in the Clintons’ goods were platoons of blue-uniformed movers from United Van Lines. They hefted furniture and cartons packed with books, clothes and other personal possessions of the new First Family: Chelsea’s encyclopedia, Bill’s new Ping golf clubs (a Christmas present from Hillary), a well-worn edition of Trivial Pursuit, a plaque that bore the inscription “Don’t Stop Thinkin’ About Tomorrow” (the Fleetwood Mac song that became the Clinton campaign’s unofficial anthem).

In the great mansion’s corridors of power, there was the distinct aroma of fresh paint. Down one of those corridors, moving men struggled with a large wooden desk bearing a sticker that said: “Desk to the Oval Office.” A gift from Georgetown University, the newly refinished desk came from one of the student dorms where Clinton studied as an undergraduate.

McDonald’s hamburgers aside, the Clinton White House may become known more for its chicken enchiladas and baked fish than for its red mete , according to the Clintons’ longtime cook. Liza Ashley, who cooked for most of their 12 years in the governor’s mansion in Little Rock, said that the new President’s favorite dishes include sweet potato casseroles, chicken enchiladas and all kinds of baked fish--except catfish.

Wife Hillary is partial to pickles, while daughter Chelsea, in a noteworthy contrast to her father’s predecessor, actually likes broccoli.

Restocking the presidential pantry is only one of many changes under way at the White House, however. Out went the dog biscuits for former First Canines Millie and Ranger. In came the litter box for First Feline Socks. Out went the Sinatra tapes; in came Kenny G and Fleetwood Mac.

Bush, in his last act as host, greeted the Clintons at the White House with the words “Welcome to your new home.” Later, the Clintons returned the courtesy, walking the Bushes to the helicopter that took them to Andrews Air Force Base for the flight to Houston--the last trip aboard their home in the sky, Air Force One.

The People’s Tale

O stormy peple! unsad . . .

Be ay of chiere as light as leef on lynde.

Once before, winter winds of change whistled down Pennsylvania Avenue, rustling leaves on the nation’s main street and warming the hands and hearts of many Democrats--though perhaps chilling the parallel tissue of many Republicans.

Then, it was the youthful John F. Kennedy relieving the aging Dwight D. Eisenhower, as the topsy-turvy 1960s moved quickly beyond the placid ‘50s.

Now, as the boomers supplant the Bushes in the White House and the nation hurtles toward a new millennium, We the People are mulling what we, at the polls, have wrought.

The baby boomers beamed broadly along the inaugural parade route Wednesday, as if thinking: “Heck, he’s our age and now he holds the cards with the nuclear codes.”

“Oh, it’s very exciting,” said Arlington, Va., teacher Gretchen Martin, 46. “I feel as though my generation has come of age.” She remembers the hopeful fervor that she and her friends felt when, as teen-agers, they watched Kennedy sworn in as President. It seemed, she said, as though her generation was poised at the beginning of something big and powerful. But then Kennedy, his brother Robert and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. were gunned down. And the Vietnam War and Watergate stripped her of any illusions that she still cherished.

“We felt like nothing was going to go right,” Martin said.

Now she believes that, once again, things are getting better. With Bill Clinton taking office, she said, “there’s a renewal of hope for me.”

Many inauguration watchers related closely to Clinton. “I have all of Fleetwood Mac’s albums,” said Oxnard firefighter Ralph Revelez, 44, noting the new President’s affinity for the ‘70s rock group.

Reminiscent of the idealism inspired by Kennedy, Laura Tedder, 30, of Jackson, Miss., declared of the new chief executive: “He’s like a silver cord that draws all our hearts together.”

In his inaugural address, Clinton said: “Yes, you, my fellow Americans, have forced the spring.”

To his followers, he clearly is as fressh as is the month of May.

Times staff writer Constance Sommer contributed to these tales.