It was during George W. Bush’s second term, if I remember the timing correctly, that a sculptor friend meticulously made a model of the White House residence from driftwood picked up on the South Fork ocean shoreline. It was exquisitely rendered with a portico, columns, and the central, peaked roof. It did not include the West or East Wing.
My friend J.J. Veronis’s White House was a work of art and sheer determination, and was extremely heavy. With a plan to burn it on the night of the Devon Yacht Club fireworks, a group of us carried it around a neighbor’s house and then floated it along the beach on a dinghy. This, rather than breaking our backs by dragging it over the higher dune and down the stairs at my place. Once the fireworks show was done, we torched the thing.
Over the years, we had burned all manner of constructions during Fourth of July festivities. Perhaps the crowning glory was the night a flotsam pirate ship laden with fireworks went off all at once and a Roman candle hit the Vogue theater critic in the nuts then set the dune on fire. But the White House was different and evoked deep and conflicting reactions among the people there.
One response stands out in my mind. One of the night’s guests, more of a right-winger than the rest of us, stormed over and demanded to know what we thought we were doing. It was clear that, for him, the symbolism of burning even a driftwood model of the White House was unacceptable. I did not have an answer.
As President Trump rolled the heavy machinery over the East Wing last week, I recalled this interaction and wondered what the angry guest might have to say now.