For days now, the job at Eisenhower Park in Nassau County has been to follow the order from the White House through the Secret Service and down to the park workers:
"The president's feet are not to touch the dirt."
So all yesterday, large crews drawn from all county parks worked to ensure that, as always in his life, George Bush's feet do not touch the ground when he appears in the big park today.
Bush arrives for a fund-raiser at a restaurant in the park. That is indoors and he doesn't have to worry about his feet there. But he has to go over ground to an administration building where he is to meet with families of 9/11 victims. After that, he has to go over more ground to get to the site of a memorial to the victims.
He doesn't want his feet on the ground and he will be at a groundbreaking ceremony.
Yesterday, a big guy, who had been fixing serious pipe leaks in the county executive's building, was on the walkway unrolling wooden storm fencing that would create an alley for Bush to walk down.
"When you get the fence up, what do you do?" he was asked.
"Cover the ground so his feet don't touch it."
"Is that true?"
"My boss told me that. If he says so, it's true."
"That sounds crazy."
"It sounds like I get paid every week," he said.
The 9/11 memorial is not up. Someday it will be a site by a pond. What happened was that Bush was coming in for this big fund-raiser. The county executive, Suozzi, a Democrat, heard about it and rushed an invitation to Bush to be at the dedication to the memorial and also to meet the 9/11 families.
There was no way for Bush to turn this down. So he appears today for a local Democrat. The county Democrats fell all over themselves to have a memorial site and the paths around it following the Secret Service regulations.
Yesterday, a big guy, who had been fixing serious pipe leaks in the county executive's building, was on the walkway unrolling wooden storm fencing that would create an alley for Bush to walk down.
"When you get the fence up, what do you do?" he was asked.
"Cover the ground so his feet don't touch it."
"Is that true?"
"My boss told me that. If he says so, it's true."
"That sounds crazy."
"It sounds like I get paid every week," he said.
Bush's day was to start with him landing in his big plane at Republic Airport. He could either drive or go by helicopter to the park. There is room to land on one of Eisenhower Park's golf fairways. But the job of building whole concrete streets from the plane to the memorial site would be extraordinarily hard, as they would have to remove the streets immediately after today in order to have the place ready for golfers in this Republican county.
Bush was to move to a couple of locations on dirty parkland. Last Thursday, the bureaucrats in charge of the park heard from the Secret Service. The word immediately ran through the halls of local government.
Not a foot touches the earth.
And the workers went to work. First, there was the ground from a parking lot to a wood building used for special activities. This probably will be where Bush meets with the families.
"We're not even sure he will use this," a foreman said. "They just tell us he is going to meet with families. We ask, 'Where?' They won't tell us. So we went ahead, anyway."
They put up a concrete sidewalk from the parking lot to a ramp leading into a side entrance to the building.
The rain and sleet made it impossible for the concrete to dry. So they changed from concrete to the asphalt used on streets. They hoped the president wouldn't mind this. After all, it would protect his feet from touching the earth. Gravel and hot steaming asphalt.
When they finally had it done, a full-fledged asphalt path, a Secret Service agent put his foot through the steam and left a large footprint in the walk that was to keep the president's feet off the ground.
The Secret Service man walked on blithely. He gave no indication that he knew where he was. The workmen muttered and had to go back and fix the walk.
That is on one side of the building. At the front entrance, they built a standard concrete sidewalk through the ground to the entrance.
Down a slight slope from the building were two white tents. Nobody knows who they are for.
"The Secret Service don't tell us anything," a worker said.
"What do you do about the ground?" one of them was asked.
"We put wood chips there," he said.
"When do you do that?"
"When the Secret Service says."
The boss of the job was off to the side.
"They're not wood chips," he said. "They're fiber bark." He pointed over to a large county dump truck that carried enough fiber bark in it to cover the whole park.
Already, the dirt underneath the first of two tents was covered with fiber bark.
The walkway of storm fencing goes along the path that will be in high fiber for Bush and comes to the edge of the lake in the middle of the park.
This is the place where the 9/11 memorial will be built. Supposedly, Bush will not speak in public at the memorial service.
But you are going to have George Pataki and Rudolph Giuliani there. Both will walk through mud with bare feet for the chance to talk.
And that is my report from the ground on preparations for George W. Bush's visit of great magnitude to Eisenhower Public Park in the county of Nassau, New York.
in·san·i·ty n. 1 a : a deranged state of the mind usually occurring as a specific disorder (as schizophrenia) and usually excluding such states as mental retardation, psychoneurosis, and various character disorders
b : a mental disorder
2 : such unsoundness of mind or lack of understanding as prevents one from having the mental capacity required by law to enter into a particular relationship, status, or transaction or as removes one from criminal or civil responsibility
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