October 19, 2007

1984

This afternoon I stepped out of a cigar shop to face Valley View Mall. For the first time, it looked old.

When I arrived in Dallas to work the 1984 GOP Convention, Valley View was the big deal. So was Dallas, to this Houston native. Dallas seemed to have scooped the cream of Texas—the dazzling blondes, boots, and big-everything—and left all the nasty stuff in places like Pasadena. In the early '80s, Dallas had limousine service and its own TV show. Houston bragged of pickup trucks and a redneck rip-off of Saturday Night Fever. Houston sucked.

"Is that an Uzi?" I asked, sounding and feeling like the little football fan who offered Mean Joe Greene his Coke.

I saw Dallas as this new world of elite opportunity. My elder sister had already arrived and found it to be just that. She referred me to a contact in the Reagan-Bush '84 campaign, and within days I was writing down my driver's license and Social Security numbers and height onto a piece of paper for vetting by the U.S. Secret Service. A week after that, all the volunteers 5'10" and taller reported for duty to one room; all those under, to another. The giraffes would be assigned to Nancy Reagan's motor pool. Reason? If we happened to be photographed on the job, our size would ensure that the First Lady always appeared petite.

The other guys would keep Vice President George Bush looking his full 6'2".

our op center was the new loews anatole hotel, a sparkling red-granite-and-glass complex a couple of miles from Dallas' convention center. We would have charge of a half-dozen luxury cars serving the First Lady's and Vice President's staffs.

One thing I had in common with my charges was, I did not know how to get around Dallas. I'd borrowed my father's Mapsco, a spiral-bound book that mapped the county in excruciating detail. When summoned to pick someone up at the hotel, I scurried out to the parking lot (walled off by concrete barriers and watched by perspiring but tireless Secret Service agents), leapt into a Lincoln, maxed the AC, and raced over to a big green awning. Before I got out to open the doors, I popped the trunk, and as my people stepped into the car I got the destination, nodded, then said something was loose in the back and we'd be leaving momentarily.

Then I bent over the Mapsco I'd stashed in the trunk and searched furiously for the address. With our course mind-mapped, I slammed the lid and prayed they wouldn't ask me any distracting questions.

No one ever figured out I was driving blind, though I wonder what the Secret Service thought of this guy who opened his trunk every time he picked somebody up, even when they had no luggage. Security was everywhere, even under a canopy on the Anatole's rooftop, with binoculars. I saw my first non-Hispanic mowing crew just across from the hotel, grooming the same esplanade for 16 hours. One night, after we delivered a whole motorcade of somebodys to the convention center, we found ourselves parked by the freight entrance amid a small fleet of black Suburbans with agents snacking on the tailgates. They were the most heavily armed non-soldiers I had ever seen, their broad shoulders hung with weaponry straight out of Men in Black.

"Is that an Uzi?" I asked, sounding and feeling like the little football fan who offered Mean Joe Greene his Coke.

"Uh-huh," the agent grinned, and continued wolfing his sandwich. Someone had brought a whole grocery bag full of Schlotzky's out to them, and they ate as if they'd been on post in Nome for a week.

Inside, Reagan and Bush stood arm-in-arm with Ray Charles, who'd just finished "America, the Beautiful" in his inimical style, and the house came down. For Republicans, it would not be this good again for 10 years. For me, it was another light of hope and promise in this glittering new city where everyone prospered and looked forward to more, more, and better, long into the future.

Posted by: Michael Rittenhouse at 08:55 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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