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from touching the earth. Gravel and hot steaming asphalt. When they finally had it done, a full-fledged asphalt path, a Secret Service agent put his foot through the steam and left a large footprint in the walk that was to keep the president's feet off the ground.
The Secret Service man walked on blithely. He gave no indication that he knew where he was. The workmen muttered and had to go back and fix the walk.
That is on one side of the building. At the front entrance, they built a standard concrete sidewalk through the ground to the entrance.
Down a slight slope from the building were two white tents. Nobody knows who they are for.
"The Secret Service don't tell us anything," a worker said.
"What do you do about the ground?" one of them was asked.
"We put wood chips there," he said.
"When do you do that?"
"When the Secret Service says."
The boss of the job was off to the side.
"They're not wood chips," he said. "They're fiber bark." He pointed over to a large county dump truck that carried enough fiber bark in it to cover the whole park.
Already, the dirt underneath the first of two tents was covered with fiber bark.
The walkway of storm fencing goes along the path that will be in high fiber for Bush and comes to the edge of the lake in the middle of the park. This is the place where the 9/11 memorial will be built.
Supposedly, Bush will not speak in public at the memorial service.
But you are going to have George Pataki and Rudolph Giuliani there. Both will walk through mud with bare feet for the chance to talk.
And that is my report from the ground on preparations for George W. Bush's visit of great magnitude to Eisenhower Public Park in the county of Nassau, New York.
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