‘When he left, we all lined up at the window and waved.’ : The Day Dick Came to Camarillo

There are moments in life of enduring truth and beauty that glow with neon intensity in the shadows of memory, as bright and breath-taking as the seconds of their birth.

They are instances that quicken the blood, that widen the eyes, that leave one dazed and floating. A first love, a first child, a first job, a first byline . . . and the Day Dick Nixon Came to Camarillo.

Ah, what a day. Oh, what a time.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking For God’s sake leave the poor man alone, hasn’t the left-wing pig press done enough by badgering a great American out of office in disgrace, and now you want to jump him from the bushes because he stops off for a little cheeseburger in suburbia?

You’ve got it all wrong.

Granted that the former President probably altered the course of a promising career by not including me on his media enemy’s list, thereby setting me on a spur track to Chatsworth while everyone else went chuggin’ off to Washington, but I bear him no ill will.

In fact, I write today with soaring spirit of Mr. Nixon’s visit last week to Carl’s Jr. in the unspoiled city of Camarillo on a day alive with the promise of spring.

I think we have the makings here of an American tapestry.

I mean what could be more American than an ex-President in a fast-food restaurant of a white suburban community eating a $1.89 Western bacon-burger? All the scene lacks is Nixon and Henry Kissinger on their knees by the happy-faced Carl’s Star praying for redemption.

Camarillo, for those unfamiliar with the perky outskirts of Los Angeles, is a community of 42,452 God-loving souls nestled in the Pleasant Valley portion of the Oxnard Plain just, as they like to say, 379 miles south of San Francisco.

Home of the Las Posas Leopards, it is an amiable mix of houses, parks and shopping centers, the quintessential blend of those seeking refuge from the scruffy, dope-sucking ruffians of the scary inner-city.

Here one finds a cluster of churches, there a cluster of stores. Trinity Episcopal. Speedy’s Pizza. Peace Lutheran. The Luv Bug hair salon. Church of the Nazarene. Donna Lee Donuts. St. Mary Magadalen. The Knitty Gritty sewing center.

There is even a town bum who is so very bum-like he could be a cardboard cut-out propelled on rollers across a shopping center parking lot for balance in a flawless cultural biome.

This, I tell you, America, is one damned sweet town.

And into this sweetness one day a week ago drifted Richard Milhous Nixon, his driver and two bodyguards. It was front-page stuff in the Camarillo Daily News.

“I couldn’t believe my eyes,” says Carl’s Jr. manager Don Spring, a clean-cut man of 25 who could pass for pep chairman of the Young Americans for Freedom.

“I wondered what was going on when I saw the Cadillac, and suddenly there he was. I recognized him the moment he walked in the door.”

But why Carl’s Jr.? Why not Bob’s Big Boy across the street or the Marie Callender Pie Shop at the Las Posas offramp?

“His driver told him we had good hamburgers,” Spring says, still heady with the memory. “I don’t think he had ever eaten one before.”

Nixon’s sudden appearance in hamburger heaven was equal in emotional impact only to the day Frank Sinatra came to Oakland or Jesus Christ to Galilee.

A patron shouted, “Oh, my God,” and stared.

Another hugged and kissed the fallen hero of the Watergate Wars.

A volleyball team begged him to pose for pictures.

A leper was made whole again.

Well, I guess I got a little carried away there. There were actually no lepers, for the simple reason that lepers are not allowed in Camarillo. Just kids with pimples. Acne knows no bucolic boundaries.

But the Old Republican was greeted with warmth and cordiality and returned it with a willingness to make small talk and sign autographs between bites of his burger and fries, which he thought lip-smackin’ good.

“Everyone was really thrilled,” Don Spring says. “When he left, we all lined up at the window and waved. This is a friendly town.”

It was unclear exactly where Nixon was going from Friendlyville, which is no surprise, since it has never been clear where Nixon was going from anywhere.

All we know is that he was northward bound along 101, perhaps to pause later in the day for a soda in Santa Maria or a piece of pie in Nipomo.

But wherever you go, Richard Nixon, know that for one brief, shining moment you brought to Camarillo what Camarillo has never had before: a little attention. There may even be a Nixonburger at Carl’s Jr. someday to commemorate the tasty occasion.

(There now, wasn’t that one damned sweet column? I knew you’d like it.)