Cocooning

In Los Angeles, I was not employed by the Industry–as they call the movie business out there–and so was seldom privileged to see the big stars of the time (the 1980s). Anyway, most of them lived in a kind of protective cocoon, surrounded by their “people,” and resided in neighborhoods that didn’t invite scrutiny.

But celebrities of lesser magnitude were not only accessible, but occasionally visible in everyday life. You never knew who you might encounter in a grocery store (Kathy Bates), a restaurant men’s room (Muhammad Ali), a bookstore (Hedy Lamarr), or a hospital waiting room (John Forsythe). My wife and I were once standing in line at a discount frame store when we realized that the pleasant, elderly man waiting beside us–holding two small paintings and some plexiglass frames–was Vincent Price. Our travel agent was Jean Bartel, Miss America of 1943. My dentist fixed the teeth of Stella Stevens, and my wife shared a gynecologist with Madonna.

In Washington, the resident stars of yesteryear are of greater interest to me than in Los Angeles. But, I regret to say, that protective cocoon grows more voluminous by the day, and the kind of security that used to surround the president of the United States is now routine for such dubious figures as the mayor of the District of Columbia.

Any visitor to the nation’s capital is painfully aware of the extent to which fear of terrorism has transformed the life of the city. Busy thoroughfares are now closed to automobiles, and sidewalks are cluttered with barriers and cops. Government offices are fortified like military installations, and familiar tourist sites are cordoned off from easy access. The city looks besieged, and its prominent inhabitants live in a parallel universe.

To be sure, it was not always so. When I was a boy, you could climb the staircase of the Washington Monument, peer through the telescope at the Naval Observatory, and walk into the Treasury to trade eight quarters for a two-dollar bill. An excursion to the White House did not require a background check or prearranged list of names, and the lobby of the General Accounting Office did not feature a metal detector. You could park your car on the grounds of the Capitol, and walk up the steps without triggering an armed response.

Moreover, the famous, and formerly famous, were casually ubiquitous. Harry Truman would take his early morning walk in the company of a single Secret Service agent. I once attended an event a few yards away from Mrs. Woodrow Wilson, and another at a suburban mall featuring Eleanor Roosevelt. No security in evidence. One day, as a high-school student, I screwed up the courage to introduce myself to Dean Acheson in Lafayette Square. He was perfectly cordial, of course, and shook my hand; but clearly he would have preferred me to keep my distance.

Nor was the historic past necessarily remote. The three spinster daughters of the Civil War general Philip Sheridan–Mary, Louise, and Irene–lived comfortably on Massachusetts Avenue, overlooking their father’s equestrian statue. On sunny Saturday mornings, you could see them taking the air on their marble balcony. I took piano lessons, from the daughter of a czarist general, in a studio above a movie theater. Late one Friday afternoon, as I came out the door, there was Pat Nixon parking her station wagon on Connecticut Avenue, and walking with Tricia and Julie into the Avalon.

Today, the vice president’s wife would not casually choose to go to a matinee, drive her own car, park it on the street, nor cross the sidewalk, without a phalanx of uniformed, and plainclothes, guards in attendance. Pedestrians would be held hostage until the perimeter was secure, and the sounds of the neighborhood would be drowned by sirens and horns.

The difference is said to be changing times and a more dangerous world. But is that true? In 1950 two Puerto Rican nationalists tried to assassinate Harry Truman on the sidewalk outside Blair House on Pennsylvania Avenue, killing one White House policeman. Four years later, four Puerto Ricans opened fire in the House of Representatives, wounding five members. Nerves were shattered, to be sure, but Pennsylvania Avenue didn’t close, and Capitol Hill was not transformed into an armory.

For that matter, consider the simpler, happier, more innocent, America at the turn of the 20th century. In 1901, President William McKinley was assassinated while shaking hands in a receiving line. He was the third president in just 36 years to be shot dead while in office (James Garfield, in 1881, at a railroad station, and Abraham Lincoln, in 1865, at a theater). Either the good old days were considerably less pleasant than we care to remember, or it doesn’t take a lot to frighten 21st-century Americans.

–Philip Terzian