The Right Places by Stephen; Birmingham Page A

forlorn state as a stepping-stone to some loftier position.And Jay’s and Sharon’s glad-handing manner with the simple folk of the little towns has been called a practiced artifice. It is true that some of the things Jay Rockefeller says sound a bit manufactured. For example, to Mrs. Mitchell, proprietress of Mitchell’s Esso Station, he inquired cheerily, “Who’s your closest competition?” Mrs. Mitchell looked blank for a moment, and then said, “Don’t got no competition.” “Say, that’s just great! ” beamed the young Standard Oil (Esso) heir whom the opposition had already begun calling “Jay-Bird.” At other times, though, his logic slips a gear and fails him, revealing his youth. At a gathering of school board officials, in Hamlin, West Virginia, Jay Rockefeller made a speech which included the puzzling statement, “I believe in spending money on educating children, which is what most children really are.” Well, it had been a long day.
    He can, on the other hand, be fast with a quip. When a reporter asked him not long ago whether or not he would someday like to live at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Jay Rockefeller replied, “Route Ten doesn’t go that far.” To which Sharon added, “And at the rate we’re going we’ll never make it.”
    By those who consider themselves sophisticated politicians, Jay and Sharon Rockefeller have been labeled naïve and square. Perhaps they are—a bit. They hardly ever drink, don’t smoke, and pop breath-sweetening lozenges into each other’s mouths before each stop along a campaign route. In their car they carry packages of Oreo cookies for snacks and marshmallow-filled chocolate bars for quick energy, along with the boxes of campaign literature and buttons. When informed that ahead of them, in the sheriff’s car that was leading their entourage, the sheriff and his men were amusing themselves listening to pornographic tapes on the car’s tape deck, Sharon Rockefeller was shocked. “Why, I simply can’t imagine such a thing!” she cried. Another Rockefeller aide was chatting casually about his personal trips with pot and LSD. “But don’t ever mention that sort of thing in front of Jay and Sharon!” he warned. “I mean, man, they’re straight .” And the Rockefellers seem sincerely to love what they are doing. When two-and-a-half-year-old Jamie (as John D. Rockefeller V is called) complained to his mother not long ago that she was never home, Sharon simply patted his head and said, “You’ll just have to get used to it, that’s all.” Also, the Rockefellers do seem genuinely to love their adopted state.Perhaps for the simple reason that it is so totally unlike the palaces and playhouses in which they grew up.
    Jay’s folksy manner, his friends insist, is not a put-on. He really does want to be liked for the guy he is, not for the money or the name. His friend Ray La Montaigne likes to tell the story of how, one day when Ray’s father was visiting him from New Hampshire, Jay Rockefeller dropped by. Ray introduced Jay to his father, and then, after visiting for an hour or so, Jay announced that he had to be on his way. He started out the back door toward where the XK–E was parked. “Oh, Jay,” said Ray La Montaigne. “If you’re going out that way, would you mind dropping that bag of garbage in the can as you go by?” “Sure,” Jay Rockefeller replied, scooped up the garbage, and was off.
    â€œMy father,” says Ray La Montaigne, “was born in French Canada, of poor parents, and became a self-made man in the restaurant business, in a little New Hampshire town. To him and to others like him of his generation, the great symbol of American success was John D. Rockefeller. For weeks after that day Jay came by, all my father could do was shake his head and say, ‘Can you imagine?