RICHARD NIXON: 1913-1994 : DATELINE: YORBA LINDA : Some Drenched by Rain, Others Soaked by Fellow Citizens

Line Time: Like weddings, funerals are said to bring out the best and worst in people. The rain-soaked, four-hour, miles-long lines to view the former President’s casket at the Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace were no exception. Some residents along the route offered mourners cups of tea and coffee, while another charged two little girls $1 to use her bathroom. A similar treatment awaited journalists covering the event. Some were offered lemonade and tuna fish sandwiches; Others were charged $100 to park.

Tin Can: Admirers of Richard Nixon who did not want to brave the crowds in Yorba Linda paid their respects by visiting the one-room Nixon museum at Casa Romantica in San Clemente, which was decorated with bouquets of flowers for the occasion. Dorothy Fuller, president of the San Clemente Historical Society, said 47 people signed into the museum Tuesday, compared to “four or five” who usually come to see the memorabilia of the Nixon presidency on other days.

Among the mourners was Phil Wilson, a 40-year-old construction worker from San Clemente who paid tribute to Nixon with a few yellow roses standing in a Campbell’s Soup can.

“I’m a bachelor and this is the best stuff I have around the house in terms of glassware,” he said.

Many Takers? At the entrance to the Yorba Linda Station shopping center a few blocks from the library sat a sign: “FREE COFFEE FOR FORMER PRESIDENTS.”

Cloudy Skies: As the former President’s motorcade moved from El Toro to Yorba Linda, a cluster of helicopters hovered overhead. The sunny skies gave way to thunderclouds and a downpour as Nixon’s hearse moved from the Riverside Freeway to Imperial Highway--also called the Richard M. Nixon Freeway.

“This is the second time Nixon’s come home under a dark cloud,” one helicopter pilot observed over the airwaves.

Homeboy: Yorba Linda city leaders said a private goodby to Nixon, presenting a wreath at the casket Tuesday in a brief ceremony.

Flanked by two Army sergeants, Mayor Barbara Kiley, City Manager Arthur C. Simonian and councilmen John M. Gullixson, Henry W. Wedaa, Mark Schwing and Daniel T. Welch slowly filed into the library’s main lobby, where Nixon’s body was lying in state.

Kiley read a poem she wrote in honor of the former President, which concluded, “He now returns to where it all began, to the whistle of the train.”

No Dummy: Ever since former movie star Ronald Reagan went to the White House, the Movieland Wax Museum in Buena Park has placed an effigy of the current occupant in a reconstructed Oval Office, according to spokeswoman Betty Cholewinski. New arrivals are ushered in with an inaugural ceremony.

When former Presidents leave Movieland, the figures are shipped up to the President’s Gallery at the Wax Museum on San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf, to join more than 20 of their predecessors. On Friday, museum officials there placed a black wreath in front of President Nixon’s figure in the gallery. “We’ll probably leave it there for a month,” museum president Ron Fong said.

The Movieland figure closest ideologically to Nixon--whose wax likeness never appeared in Buena Park--is the President’s old friend, John Wayne.