Page 153 - Just Deserts

Playa de los Borregos

She paused, waiting for some response to what she thought was a
pretty fair witticism, but her audience was taking it all quite seriously.
“Well, by the time of the federal hearings to decide on the
disposition of the land, we had just about given up hope. We couldn’t
even afford to send more than one person to testify against the
giveaway. All that the rest of us could do was march around City Hall
with our picket signs, things like ‘You Can’t Buy a Playa Once it’s
Gone.’ Well, you can imagine our amazement when the report came
over the radio that the Coastal Commission was in total disarray and
the wetlands would probably remain untouched for a very long
time.”
“What changed their minds?” asked the young man, who had kept
in lock step with her.
“According to Grover Green, our chairman and representative in
Washington, he was sitting at the hearing waiting for his turn,
listening to the fat cats making their case to a very sympathetic row
of commissioners, when a man slipped into the chamber and handed
him two sealed manila envelopes. Grover told me that he turned
around to ask the guy what it was all about, but he was already
heading for the door. So the Lone Ranger didn’t even need a mask—
Grover never saw his face.”
She glanced at her chief listener’s face, but he didn’t seem to
appreciate this reference either.
“Well, one of the envelopes had written on it, ‘Use this first,’ and
the other, ‘Use this second.’ Grover, being an intelligent man and a
rather gutsy fighter for our cause, figured: why not? He opened them,
read through their contents, and immediately decided to follow the
instructions. When he got on the stand, it was clear that he was being
indulged only as a pro forma politeness; the commissioners were
shuffling papers, looking at their watches and giving every sign of
their impatience at having to sit through meaningless testimony. But
Grover soon got their attention. I think he had a long speech all
typed out, listing the benefits to future generations of preserving the
Playa, and so on, but he abandoned it and went right to this material
which had, so to speak, dropped from the sky.”
“‘Let the record show,’ he thundered—Grover is a Baptist
minister—‘that each of the petitioners before this commission, men
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