SORRY, NO OCEAN: Three Orange County homes...
SORRY, NO OCEAN: Three Orange County homes sold for $4 million-plus last year, all with spacious views of the deep blue Pacific. This year just one house has hit that mark. An eight-acre horse ranch recently sold in Coto de Caza for $4.2 million. . . . Broker John Evans says the new owners, a couple moving here from Washington, didn’t want to see anything else after touring it. Included is a guest house, a carriage house and an apartment above the stables. The sellers made a hefty 25% profit after living there just 15 months.
A FEDERAL GNAT: The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which has now delayed until September hammering out the final rules regarding the gnatcatcher, has set up hearings to get your input first: Aug. 11 at the Irvine Marriott Hotel, and two others that week in San Diego and Riverside. . . . Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt’s compromise plan to protect the rare bird would set up sagebrush preserves without delaying all development.
RECALLS PAT: Country music legend Merle Haggard, who does two shows at the Orange County Fair tonight (OC LIVE!), gives thanks in his autobiography to Ronald Reagan who, as California governor, pardoned him following his three years at San Quentin state prison. But he also jokes that “I beat ol’ Ronnie to the White House.” . . . . First Lady Pat Nixon requested he perform there for her 61st birthday 20 years ago. He writes: “It came as a big surprise. I had no idea the First Lady was a fan of Merle Haggard.”
HONORS PAT: White House visitors now can see the official portrait of Pat Nixon, who was buried last month on the grounds of the Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace. Hillary Rodham Clinton had it moved to the main corridor to honor her. . . . Nixon daughter Julie Eisenhower has written that her mother posed for the portrait, painted by Henriette Wyeth Hurd, in the breakfast room at the Nixon home in San Clemente in 1978, but wasn’t very happy with it. “It makes me look too sad,” she told her daughter.
