Warblers, Lemonade and Surf

By Hugh Sidey

The big-beaked Tipper flapped out of the White House in a huff the other day and may not come back until fall. To heck with him. There was a robin that built a nest in a fig tree on the North Portico, raised a brood of four, flew off to the East Porch and did it all over again in a juniper. She loves the place and will return next year, or so believes Fred Evenden, Executive Director of the Wildlife Society, who has been watching the Robin all this summer.

A mourning dove has set up housekeeping in Jackie Kennedy's garden and another that has nested under Andrew Jackson's magnolia. The mockingbirds are getting into the concord grapes, which are just turning juicy in the arbor. There are in fact about 16 kinds of permanent bird residents on the White House's 18 acres--catbird, house finch, downy woodpecker, fish crow, rock dove, gold finch. And another 38 kinds drop by for visits. A couple of Mallard scooted in to see the South Fountain. Evenden, lurking in the bushes, spotted itinerant yellow-throats, towhees, pewees, chickadees, ruby-throated hummingbirds, red-eyed vireos and a red-breasted nuthatch.

There may be a bunch of Politicians outside the fence, mad and complaining. Inside at high summer it isn't a bad life. Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter like to watch from the Truman Balcony as the swifts dive and soar in the evening light. They tilt back and forth in their Brumby rockers and quaff homemade-in-the-White-House lemonade by the quart (Maitre d' John Ficklin's brew of fresh-squeezed lemons, a touch of sugar and a sprig of mint, served in tall glasses).

Amy has graduated from a straight front dive to a back jackknife and is now into the flip (comes by it naturally, chuckles a friend). It is a time for good nature, with the high crowns of the trees at their deepest green, the geraniums at their best and the lone White House crape myrtle blooming its heart out over in the southeast corner.

Gardener, Irvin Williams has been harvesting sprigs of chives, rosemary, thyme and marjoram to give the summer table a little lift. The First Couple are down to two meals a day as heat climbs. But they have other nourishments, like the pad, pad of the bare feet of Grandson Jamie, 18 months, and Shelby Foote's novel September September.

Williams has spotted a few raccoons skulking in the shadows at night, and he has the usual population of gray squirrels that scamper between the lawn and Lafayette Park across Pennsylvania Avenue. How they survive the traffic is another of summer's miracles. Apparently the garter snakes have not. Williams used to find a few of the friendly fellows around the place, but no more.

Workmen resurfaced the tennis court, so there is good play when the cool comes in the evening. Before they went to work they took a boring of the old court, fearing that they would have to start with a new foundation. But what they found was three or four other surfaces laid down like geologic strata--late Cal Coolidge, early Franklin Roosevelt, middle Ike.

Curator Clem Conger shut the East Room and put in a new parquet floor. After 30 million tourists since 1948, Lyndon Johnson's Fox-Trot, Jimmy Carter's Charleston and a few other indignities, the wood was paper thin.

Old George has been shipped off for a bath and a touch-up. That is Gilbert Stuart's 9 ft. original of the Founding Father. It is the only thing that has hung in the White House since day one. It is the picture Dolley Madison decided to rescue on the afternoon of Aug. 24, 1814. She couldn't budge it herself, so she called in a carpenter, who axed the lower part of the frame and let the canvas fall out. Dolley rolled it up, gave it to two men who sneaked through the British lines going North, while Dolley rode South to safety. The most historic painting in the place.

But there is a new beauty over in the West Wing reception area that is attracting a lot of attention--Thomas Moran's painting of the California coast. It beckons the beset, cries out for the troubled, to come smell the surf. Jimmy got the message. He is going out that way for a vacation in a few days.

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