My 41st Birthday – After hearing of the disappointing news that Marineland is no more, vacated and sold for housing development with the animals sold or dead, we considered the trip to the San Diego Marine World but ended up back at Disneyland for our last day with Tom Sawyer’s Island the girls’ favourite attraction. Wall Streets is retreating again, Casper Weinberger resigns after conflict with George Shultz and Reagan’s latest Supreme Court nominee, Justice Ginsberg, is in trouble over cable TV conflicts of interest.
Had an unsettled night. First, my bed covers became deranged and then I lay awake thinking of a new pet project to buy up The Anchor pub in Little Paxton and convert it for a greater family and community use. Went across to join Di in the other bed for half of the night and she welcomed me readily, but I slept no better afterwards. At 5.00am, I got up and scanned the TV channels and soon Di was awake and making the morning drinks. After I had bathed and shaved & dressed, the family gave me a few presents and cards, which was nice. Off then to Coco’s on a fine and sunny day for a change, which boded well for the day ahead. Once back at our hotel room, we got a phone call from the Jetsave tour guide, wanting to know our travel plans for tomorrow. In view of the fact that we had a hire car to return to LA Airport, we had no need of her services tomorrow and we had rather wasted their offers of help. She was able to make us aware of one development – Marineland is now no more. The property developers have bought the site and started a housing development. Some of the marine animals were sold and many are now dead. We had planned to go via there to the airport tomorrow and are rather disappointed.
It seems that profit rules everything here and there are no planning constraints to temper speculation. As the girls said, ‘If you own land, you can do what you want with it’, and seemed to approve. I tried to persuade Di to change our plans and go to San Diego Marine World for the day today and then Disneyland for the few hours tomorrow, but she would not approve of the 2 hour drive and so an opportunity to see the marine animal tricks and displays is lost! We sat quietly a while in the hotel, until Disneyland was open at 10.00am, and I wrote up my journal and caught up on some financial magazines. The Dow Jones was modestly up yesterday, being the first positive Monday’s trade since the crash. Weinberger, Reagan’s Defence Secretary, is expected to resign soon and so the US President’s problems continue to deepen. He has been a close aide since his old California Governor days. Away to park at Disneyland and amongst the first into the park. A full day of rides, doing most of the things we had missed on previous days and also taking repeat trips on the rides that we enjoyed most. I don’t think that we could have crammed any more in and we just about satisfied the girl’s appetites. Della enjoyed the traditional roundabout, the parades and the shows most and Debbie was keenest on Tom Sawyers Island, where she insisted Daniel play hide and seek in the rocks. As we stayed late, we only had time to get a McDonalds tea of ‘hamburgers and fries’ from a ‘drive-thru’. We had this food as a picnic tea in the hotel room and then we brought the day to a close. I retrieved my money, tickets and passport from the hotel security box and then sat in bed and wrote up today’s journal. The financial news today was of Wall Street retreating again, to end up 55 points down. It had been 100 points down at one time. Casper Weinberger’s resignation is confirmed and, though personal reasons and concern over his wife’s health is quoted, there are also deep policy divisions with George Shultz that are probably the real reason. Latest Justice nominee, Ginsberg, is already in trouble in his ratification over his accepting a case for judgement on cable TV interests, when he was in possession of $150,000 worth of Cable TV stock. Reagan has his full share of problems and, even with the planned East/West arms summit, the treaty is being questioned over the certification procedures.