“Jim Dilley, the father of the Laguna Greenbelt, used to take roses to the secretaries of the county Board of Supervisors when he'd go to do battle over open space with the secretaries' bosses. Jim Dilley was a nice man, kind and gentle. He smoked a pipe. His eyes twinkled as though he knew a joke the rest of us didn't. But he's dead, and the Board is still alive, and that is a joke on us of monstrous proportions. I'm not nice, kind or gentle. The Board keeps rubber-stamping building permits, and this is my goodbye to these shores. After 36 years, my wife and I will soon leave Orange County for Costa Rica, to join the Peace Corps, and that, too, is a joke. We traipse off to bring peace to Costa Rica, which hasn't had an army since 1948.”

—  Arnold Hano

From "OC Forum: O.C. Can You Say?" https://books.google.com/books?id=FhEEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA8 in Orange Coast Magazine (July 1991), p. 8
Other Topics

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Jim Dilley, the father of the Laguna Greenbelt, used to take roses to the secretaries of the county Board of Supervisor…" by Arnold Hano?
Arnold Hano photo
Arnold Hano 34
American writer 1922

Related quotes

Dean Acheson photo
Margaret Cho photo

“Like when Jay Leno made jokes about Koreans eating dog, but the hidden messages, our invisibility, is more harmful to us than any of those fools on "board."”

Margaret Cho (1968) American stand-up comedian

From Her Books, I Have Chosen To Stay And Fight, INVISIBILITY

Richard Rodríguez photo
Ken Ham photo

“Put a lot of paint & a wooden ball or other object on a board. Push to the other end of the board. Use this in a painting.”

Jasper Johns (1930) American artist

ruler on board.
Book A (sketchbook), p 52, c 1964: as quoted in Jasper Johns, Writings, sketchbook Notes, Interviews, ed. Kirk Varnedoe, Moma New York, 1996, p. 58
1960s

Oliver Goldsmith photo

“A kind and gentle heart he had,
To comfort friends and foes;
The naked every day he clad
When he put on his clothes.”

Source: The Vicar of Wakefield (1766), Ch. 17, An Elegy on the Death of a Mad Dog, st. 3.

Nicholas Sparks photo

“I knew my dad was a good man, a kind man, and though he'd led a wounded life, he'd done the best he could in raising me.”

John Tyree, Chapter 16, p. 198
2000s, Dear John (2006)
Source: The Best of Me

George Eliot photo
Sam Manekshaw photo

Related topics