Bush on Vacation: Bass, Bran and a Butterfinger

MONTGOMERY, Ala. —  This is about the President of the United States and his breakfast habits. If you are feeling a bit queasy this morning, don’t read it.

Here it is: He has been known to spice up his oat bran at breakfast by crumbling a Butterfinger candy bar over the cereal.

True. It was reported in the Houston Post Sunday morning, the last full day of the President’s year-end vacation in his adopted hometown.

“He said, ‘Oh, nobody will notice,’ ” said Julie Miller, who spied him in the serving line of the Center Court restaurant at the Houstonian, a hotel-condominium-athletic club development that is his residence in Texas.

From time to time, but mostly in the cooler months, the President visits Texas, renewing his roots in the state to which he moved in 1948 as a young World War II veteran seeking a living in the booming oil business of the Western reaches. In the warmer months, this New Englander-by-birth heads home to Kennebunkport, Me., where he has passed every summer of his life, save for one spent on duty in the South Pacific during the ar.

And, on New Year’s Day, as of late, he has been bass fishing. Which is why on Monday he could be found in Pintlala, Ala., population 1,000 or so.

His host in Pintlala, 12 miles from Montgomery, is Ray W. Scott Jr., founder of a company that publishes five fishing and outdoor magazines.

Scott’s 350-acre estate, Cloverhill, includes a 55-acre lake he designed, built and stocked with largemouth bass and bait fish. To encourage the bass to congregate in a particular area, fallen trees have been placed in the water. Limbs breaking the surface serve to tip Scott and his guests to the fishes’ likely gathering points.

It is the sort of fishing grounds, one visitor suggested, where rod and reel may be superfluous. An exaggeration, to be sure, but a quick hand plunged into the water just might be sufficient to grab a fish. Just the site, in other words, to restore a President’s confidence after the incident last summer in Kennebunkport when Bush was unable to catch a fish for days.

First Lady Barbara Bush accompanied her husband to Scott’s estate. When asked what she would do while her husband pursued the bass, she replied with mock anger at the temerity of the question: “I’m fishing.

“I love fishing, but you all have almost, like my golf game, done it in,” she told reporters. “I’m one who catches (fishing equipment) on trees and things, and I don’t like to do it in public. I mean, I spend half my life on the trees. I don’t want to see it on the tube.”

So what happened on Monday? When practicing her casting, she cast her rod into the water.

Once out on the lake, in a small boat powered by an electric trolling motor, Mrs. Bush snagged what looked to experts on shore to be a one-pounder. And the competition between the Bushes--akin to a scene between George and Gracie crossed with one between and Luci and Desi--was on.

“That’s a cute little one you’ve got,” the President said. Adding syrup to his voice, he called out across the pond, “sweet little fish--nice going, darling.”

“So jealous,” she replied, suggesting that the President might want to take a picture of her prize.

“Nobody wants to take a picture of a little minnow,” he responded.

But the picture changed as the First Family headed home, for it turned out that Mrs. Bush landed the biggest bass of the day, a six-pounder. When asked how the President reacted, White House Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater told a reporter that Bush responded “in the spirit of their earlier conversations; they had a friendly argument about it.”

In winter, Bush’s sports seemed less aerobic than in the summer. The frenetic pace--from speed boat to tennis court to golf course--is gone, too.

The lightning assaults on the golf course--he could race through 18 holes last summer in two hours--slowed the other day to three hours.

And it was an almost reflective President who made his final foray of 1989 on the green of the 18th hole of the Houston Country Club.

He took more than a minute lining up his putt, stooping down, bending over the ball, measuring all the angles. It was George Bush at his most measured, deliberate best--George Bush of the Oval Office, not the playing field.

It was 5:40 p.m. on New Year’s Eve. The light was failing, the temperature falling, the wind picking up.

“Last putt of the year. A good omen for next year,” the President said. And then he let out a yelp--”Ow”--as he missed the putt by inches. So much for good omens.

Bush’s New Year’s holiday was quite different from those of his predecessor.

Ronald and Nancy Reagan spent each New Year’s Eve of their White House years as they had for more than a decade before: at a black-tie party--dinner and dancing, of course--at the Rancho Mirage estate of millionaire publisher and former Ambassador Walter H. Annenberg.

The Bushes greeted the new year asleep, Mrs. Bush said.

“We had Chinese dinner and candlelight,” with that romantic touch added “only because someone gave it to us,” she said. And not a sip of champagne. They ate in their room, carry-out style, because the hotel restaurant was closed.

“We were the earliest people in bed in America, I think. Nine o’clock, reading in bed,” she said.

Asleep before midnight?

“You bet. I haven’t seen midnight in for 40 years, I don’t think,” she said.

Her New Year’s resolution?

“I’m going to give up desserts,” she said, adding that it was her daughter’s recollection that the same resolution had been made annually.

“She said you do that for one day every year. All day long today, I’m going to give it up, until tonight, maybe,” the First Lady said.

As for the President, his New Year’s resolution was more, well, more business-like.

“Peace,” he said. “World peace.”

The holiday was also one tinged with personal sadness over the death of the President’s brother-in-law, Alexander Ellis, last Friday, and excitement over the news that the Bushes’ youngest son, Marvin, and his wife, Margaret, had adopted their second child, Charles Walker Bush.

“That makes it, what? Five boys and seven girls,” Mrs. Bush said.

“There’s something exciting. We heard about the baby the day our brother-in-law died. There’s something nice about that, isn’t there? Sort of magical,” she said in a conversation with reporters aboard Air Force One. “They came sort of in juxtaposition, so I cried all day. I cried from happiness and sadness all day. But they sort of passed nicely.”