A week of Inaugural fun-and serious work as well
As movers packed up their belongings, the departing couple exchanged alternately jocular and tearful reminiscences with friends and neighbors at a series of farewell get-togethers. After a final embrace in the empty house that they had regretfully put up for sale, they boarded a plane for a flight to a distant city, where the husband plunged into a round of urgent business conferences. Another upwardly mobile executive family pulling up roots because of the husband's career? Well, yes, but with a difference: the job in this case is the presidency of the U.S.
Ronald Reagan was to assume that awesome responsibility at noon Tuesday, in the midst of the most lavish festivities ever to surround a presidential Inauguration. They officially got under way Saturday night with a fireworks show at the Lincoln Memorial, followed by this week's succession of parties and balls. But that was only the televised surface. Reagan's own final preparations for his new post were both more personal and more businesslike: an emotional farewell to California, where he had risen from obscurity to show-biz celebrity and political power, and the final drafting in Washington of a series of directives designed to get him off to a fast start on mending a battered economy.
At the start of his last week as a private citizen, Reagan helped his wife Nancy pack up at their home in Pacific Palisades, which they are offering for sale through the Coldwell Banker real estate agency (asking price: $1.9 million). Their activities, said Press Aide Joseph Holmes, were "remarkably like anybody else getting ready to move." Reagan wandered through the house gathering up belongings and taking long looks at the stunning ocean views. He also accepted possession of a white Arabian stallion, a gift from Mexican President José López Portillo that Reagan had trouble quieting because of the press of onlookers.
The next day, he and Nancy rode in a motorcade to downtown Los Angeles for a red-carpet reception at city hall and a lunch with businessmen and other admirers at the Biltmore Hotel. Jesse Unruh, a Democrat who ran against Reagan for Governor in 1970, had an imaginative compliment. Said Unruh: "You rarely get into trouble in the political field because of your enemies. It is the most difficult part of leadership to be able to say no to your friends." That, he added, was one thing Reagan had proved himself capable of doing.
At city hall, Reagan, who was in high good humor much of the week, gave a dissertation on jelly beans, which seems likely to become as much a symbol for President Reagan as peanuts were for Jimmy Carter. Reagan observed that he "became addicted" to jelly beans when he gave up smoking decades ago. He kept a jar on the cabinet-room table in Sacramento when he was Governor, and even found them a useful tool in judging his associates. Said Reagan: "You can tell a lot about a fella's character by whether he picks out all of one color or just grabs a handful." Thus was born The Ronald Reagan Jelly Bean Character Test, which obviously needs some clarification before Reagan uses it in Washington.