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Afterward, for $70 a couple up to $1,000 for a box seating eight, some 30,000 of the faithful will dance at six inaugural balls, one of them at the Smithsonian Institution; the twelve members of Nixon's Cabinet have been carefully parceled out, two per celebration. The Nixons, of course, will drop in on all six. White tie is preferred, but black tie is permitted; in a concession to the times, turtleneck shirts will be permissible for the men and pants suits for the women. Badgered by fashion writers last week, Inaugural Ball Co-Chairman Mark Evans, a broadcasting executive, conceded: "Women will be admitted in their formal drawers."
Crumpets and Tea. Meyer Davis orchestras and 30 combos will tootle for tripping Republican toes. It will be the ninth inaugural ball for Davis, 70, and he has composed a song for the occasion. In part, it goes:
Julie, pass the crumpets.
Tricia, serve the tea.
David, entertain our friends
With news of Ike and Mamie.
Dick, won't you play the piano so
we can sing
For the nicest family we know?
Because we know where we're at
With Richard Nixon and Pat,
Mister President and our First Lady.
The inaugural ball committee ran a contest for the official inaugural song, which was won by Bring Us Together—Go Forward Together, lyrics by Hal Hackaday. The committee turned down dozens of requests to perform from would-be entertainers all over the land, including an acrobatic group, an Illinois woman who claimed to be a coloratura soprano, and a lady from Texas who said she had shouted "Amen!" during a Nixon campaign speech. "A lot of people get the idea that this is some sort of variety show," says Assistant Ball Chairman Henry Berliner Jr. "It isn't. It is a ball, a dance, and just that." (In 1965, President Johnson's inaugural committee turned down a California man who offered to whistle Dixie, America and Put On Your Old Grey Bonnet while smoking half a dozen cigars, all simultaneously.)
There were some other difficulties. Inaugural Chairman J. Willard Marriott pleaded with Washington hotelmen not to raise rates during the festivities; unknown to him, his own Marriott Motor Hotels had hiked the price of a double room by 20%, to $30 a night.
As his inaugural planners wrestled with last-minute snags, the President-elect journeyed by Air Force Convair to Northampton, Mass., to celebrate his birthday with Daughter Julie and her new husband, David Eisenhower. The birthday dinner was a chicken casserole with broccoli and cheese, followed by a store-bought chocolate cake with 56 candles. Pat gave him a pair of cuff links —"All his cuff links were torn off in the campaign," she explained. There were ties, socks and handkerchiefs from Tricia, and from his staff a small bronze statue of an Irish setter in token of the dog they plan to buy him. The Nixon White House menagerie will also include Blanco, a dog left by the Johnsons because it does not like Texas, a Yorkshire terrier called Pasha, and Vicky, a French poodle.