The Reagan Ranch
Hannaford, Peter D.
"The Reagan Ranch" AUTHOR TOP OF THE WORLD The Reagan Ranch, 1981-1989 Admiral Greer, Bob Ritter (Deputy Director, Operations) and Judge Arthur Moore (Director of Central Intelligence)—never really emerge as...
...To the left and further up the hill is the building that once housed the Secret Service command center...
...The president is Ronald Reagan, not one of Clancy's fictional constructs...
...The attempt on the pope's life was, of course, real...
...The core of the main house is an adobe cottagewhich dates from the 1870s...
...To the left, the road rises on a hill to reach the tack barn, above and about one hundred feet beyond the houses...
...It was the U.S...
...You do get there and you do want to get there...
...Beyond and above it is the hay barn and stable...
...The Chaplain and I would undertake an extended pub crawl through Richmond's Fan District...
...At its western end, the Goddess of Beer dispenses grog that can stagger a rhino...
...I'd use it to shoot rattlesnakes from the saddle," he told Anderson...
...Martin Anderson, a senior aide, recalls Reagan telling him that in earlier days he would sometimes ride out on the back trails with a .38-caliber pistol armed with shot shell, bullets which carried the same small shot as used in shotgun shells...
...Unfortunately, just before departure the Chaplain took a tumble down a stairwell (circumstances undisclosed) and was forced to seek medical attention...
...It is as if there had been a note on the front door: "We've gone for a ride...
...You are struck by the warm informality of the place...
...Should one's funds run dry the partner is likely to ante up—something I a bartender will seldom do...
...Most remarkably for a Clancy novel, there is, until the very end, no action at all...
...Clancy also betrays some awkwardness in having to deal with more real history than ever before...
...Think of the truly brilliant set pieces of the Clancy oeuvre—the 100-plus-page description of the final battle and helicopter evacuation of U.S...
...Rancho del Cielo lies 27 miles north of Santa Barbara, up a narrow, steep road that snakes its way through Refugio Canyon from the Pacific Coast Highway...
...he plan was simple...
...Reagan and another agent rode right behind them...
...Ceiling fans Dave Shiflett is a writer in Midlothian, Virginia...
...MORNING RIDES Early mornings at the ranch, President Reagan devoted to what he called his "Washington homework" Then, about 9 o'clock, he rang the bell out-side the tack barn to summon the first lady for their daily ride...
...Beyond it is the ranch foreman's cottage...
...If you're out with a drinking partner, after all, you are likely to try and keep pace, which can take on a dangerously competitive air...
...He writes "The Virginian" column for The American Prowler...
...Published in August by Images From the Past, Bennington, Vermont, including 32 pages of color photographs...
...There is much danger in between...
...Then, near the end, Jack Ryan, together with a woefully small team of British agents, straps on a gun and a radio and pushes into the crowd in St...
...back soon...
...I was left to my own devices...
...That is vintage Clancy and vintage Ryan...
...Yet we are not amateurs, and I looked forward to picking the Chaplain's brain on a wide variety of topics: the likelihood of Visigoths in Purgatory, the proper way to execute youth-buggering priests and perhaps a return to the dog-soul question...
...There's a hammerhead shark on the wall near the door, reminding us of nature's ever-present threat, and deeper in are large paintings of a man with a rooster on his shoulder and a girl riding a pig, both of which are open to various interpretations, none especially ennobling...
...no reservations needed...
...The Secret Service's John Barletta would ride abreast of the president...
...The presidential rides would often take them to a favored high point where, as Reagan once put it, "You can watch boats cruising across the Santa Barbara Channel, then turn your head and see the Santa Ynez Valley unfold like a huge wilderness amphitheater before your eyes...
...The 85-block Victorian residential area hosts around 50 bar/restaurants...
...74 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR • SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2002...
...That loyalty was to God Himself—the one power higher than that of the United States of America, and his country acknowledged that...
...On the flat, the road passes lemon and avocado groves...
...The Fan is perfectly flat, very walkable and teeming with attractive females...
...Rancho del Cielo consists of 688 acres—pasture, coastal oaks, madrone, dense chaparral and other scrub, and riding trails...
...Legends also makes terrific beers, especially the porter and brown ale, whose 6-percent alcohol content makes them worthy of respect and adoration ($3.75 a pint...
...Yet solitude was my sole companion, so I headed for the Border Chop House, at 1501 Main...
...At its east-ern border are dangerous sinkholes where one might meet the devil himself...
...That's not all bad...
...Waiting for the pope to appear before the multitudes, Ryan thinks: Jack reminded himself of his time in the Marine Corps...
...You wind down the road, emerging from a grove of oak trees to see the ranch house, its guest house and guest-room trailer just below you...
...Every sixth week or so I play there as well, so if I didn't mention Legends I might lose my gig (the owner appears to be a Spectator reader...
...Indeed, a good case can be made that solitary drinking is the safest kind, despite warnings that one should never drink alone...
...But here and now he swore to himself to fight against God's own enemies...
...First stop: Legend Brewery, which is not in the Fan but just across the James and a perfect staging area...
...Although the Reagans did not refer to it as "The Western White House," they did enter into the spirit of the idea by naming the main road into the ranch "Pennsylvania Avenue" One sign near the ranch house even reads "1600 Pennsylvania Avenue...
...This was no minor assignment...
...Excerpted from Ronald Reagan and His Ranch: TheWestern White House, 1981-1989 by Peter Hannaford...
...Like many Fan bars, the Chop House is narrow and long and is a good place for solitary afternoon sipping...
...Rancho del Cielo was purchased in April 1998 by YoungAmerica's Foundation of Herndon, Virginia and Santa Barbara California, which is preserving the ranch as an historical landmark and educational center...
...This custom all-terrain adaptation of the squat, wide-tread military vehicle held several more Secret Service agents, their weapons, medical emergency equipment, telephones and the "football"—the case containing the nation's nuclear-missile launch codes...
...And veteran Clancy readers, glad enough to read the book, will likely not reread it nearly as happily or frequently as they reread many of the others...
...Margaret Thatcher similarly appears only peripherally...
...Together, we might have criss-crossed the area, stopping in at the Straw-berry Street Cafe, then trotting a few blocks over to Joe's Inn on Shields Street and from there to Bogart's on Lombardy, where you can listen to jazz in the back room...
...Open the front door and you are in the L-shaped living room/dining room...
...They do talk a lot...
...They renamed it Rancho del Cielo—Ranch in the Sky, or Sky Ranch...
...Crossing the Atlantic on his helicopter landing ship . . . on Sunday, they'd held church services, and at that moment the church pennant had been run up to the truck...
...Next to it an expanse of lawn leads to Lake Lucky and a tree-covered hill beyond...
...It's a long time in coming, in Red Rabbit...
...These wonderful beers can loosen the tongue, of course, and were the Chaplain around we could discuss the glories of the Fan District as we took the short hop to the easternmost border...
...For further information, visit www.reaganranch.org...
...Further in the distance (and not seen in the many photos taken by the White House photographers of them on their rides) was a Hummer...
...Once above the woods, it twists and curves its way up the mountain-side...
...If you pass the ranch gate, the road will take you all the way over the mountain and down to the Santa Ynez Valley...
...To the right is a large open pasture with a mountain rising beyond it, covered with trees on its lower slopes, then chaparral and other native shrubs above...
...Jack could feel it, here and now, carrying a gun . . . Ryan had sworn as a Marine to fight his country's enemies...
...as a result, we never see him directly...
...Its staff tends to be female and very attractive, and there is no canned music on the deck, though on Sunday evenings acoustic acts play (6-10 p.m...
...The partner might also, in a moment of exaltation, announce his intention to spring for a cab, all but guaranteeing cataclysmic overindulgence...
...But Yuri Andropov, just on the verge of assuming the premiership of the Soviet Union, plays a central role, indeed sets the whole plot in motion by ordering the assassination of the pope...
...Special Forces from Colombia in Clear and Present Danger, the terrorist attack on the day care center in Executive Orders—and realize that there is nothing like that at all in Red Rabbit...
...Peter's Square to try to intercept the man they have identified as the likely assassin of the pope...
...Navy's way of acknowledging that there was one higher loyalty than the one a man had for his country...
...Legends, as it is known, has a spectacular deck that over-looks Richmond's humble skyline, most notable for the Federal Reserve Bank, a miniature of a World Trade Center tower (same architect, local stories told us after the strike...
...Heart Rock was another trail ride land-mark...
...On my own, I opted to visit a handful of favorite haunts...
...It flew over the national ensign...
...BY PETER HANNAFORD onald and Nancy Reagan purchased Tip Top Ranch in Santa Barbara County, California on November 13, 1974...
...But all told, Red Rabbit is not a likely introduction to Clancy's world for a new reader...
...One can only conclude that the caution against solitary drinking is the work of the alcohol industry...
...Come in and make yourself comfortable—the Reagans...
...This large sandstone block, at the intersection of two trails, carried the initials "RR + NR" within a heart—carved by Ronald Reagan himself in August 1977...
...Riding was more casual in pre-presidential days...
...TATOR AUTHOR TOP OF THE WORLD The Reagan Ranch, 1981-1989 Admiral Greer, Bob Ritter (Deputy Director, Operations) and Judge Arthur Moore (Director of Central Intelligence)—never really emerge as characters at all...
...Well done, lads...
...SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2002 • THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 73 THE GREAT AMERICAN SALOON SERIES By Dave Shiflett Guzzling With the Ghosts Pull up to the ranch house and you step out upon the covered sandstone entry patio laid by President Reagan...
...As it rises, it fords several creeks (usually dry, but sometimes full), crosses two cattle guards and passes by several dwellings under a canopy of oaks...
Vol. 35 • September 2002 • No. 5
