A Place Called Midland: George W. Bush's Home Ground

By LYNN SMITH

Sept. 7, 2000 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

MIDLAND, Texas —

“In Midland, Texas, where I grew up, the town motto was ‘The sky is the limit’ . . . and we believed it. There was a restless energy, a basic conviction that, with hard work, anybody could succeed, and everybody deserved a chance. . . .”

--From Republican presidential nominee George W. Bush’s acceptance speech

Folks here are outwardly friendly toward strangers. They tip their hats, open doors and say, “Hello. How ya dewin?”

When outsiders don’t know the customary response, longtime resident Bill Munn says he advises them. “If you don’t say, ‘Fine, how are you, nice day,’ you’re a pompous jerk,” the Midland oil company executive explains. “That’s the game.”

These days, George W. Bush is busy polishing the halo of Midland as a typical American small town. Outsiders, however, might find it an unusually close-knit community with attitude. A place of extremes, with opportunity for some and, like many towns across America, a history of race and class distinctions. A place where parents raise children to say “Yes, Ma’am,” to go to church on Sunday but to kick butt at the Friday night football game.

Sort of like “It’s a Wonderful Life,” starring Tommy Lee Jones. Jones (who later was Democratic nominee Al Gore’s college roommate) actually grew up in Midland, as did George W.’s wife, Laura. Bush himself lived there from age 2 to 13.

Physically, the town appears Eisenhower-era normal with its orderly street grids, twittering birds and solid brick homes, schools and churches. Civic leaders have preserved a block of “Old Town Midland” from the ‘50s, which includes the Rexall drugstore where Laura and her friends sat on red plastic stools sipping malteds and cherry Cokes.

A few blocks east, however, a handful of 26-story “high-rises” in a miniature downtown hint at the city’s reason for being--oil and the chance to make fortunes.

A few more blocks in any direction and it becomes apparent the city of 100,000 is an island that, along with neighboring city Odessa, is surrounded by miles and miles of hot, flat, sandy nothing. Midland, 300 miles from El Paso to the west and Fort Worth to the east, is connected with the outside world mostly by airplanes, telephones, television and computers.

Besides their unusual sociability, the citizens of Midland have some other distinguishing characteristics.

* Their inconspicuous wealth: Periodically, Midland, a boom or bust town about 65% dependent on the oil and gas industry, has one of the highest per-capita incomes in the United States. Currently, it is recovering from a bust when oil prices plummeted in 1998. But even during the boom years when the Bushes were there, you didn’t see many fancy cars or much jewelry, as in Dallas.

* Their love of winning: Friday nights during football season in Midland, cars line up for five miles, lights flashing, horns honking, to welcome home the high school teams. If the team has lost, only a couple of cars show up.

* Their oversized hearts: In 1987 when toddler Jessica McClure fell into an abandoned backyard water well in Midland, 400 volunteers rushed to the rescue. Twenty thousand people signed a get-well card for her after she was saved.

* Their resistance to change: In the 1950s, African Americans and Latinos lived literally across the tracks from whites, worked menial jobs and attended separate schools. Midland was one of the nation’s last cities to desegregate its elementary schools, devising a plan after the federal government filed suit against the Midland school district in 1976.

“There is a lot of poverty in Midland,” said Louisa Valencia, 68, a longtime resident who is the lone Democrat on the county board that sets tax rates. “The rich people don’t see it.”

“Our sense of community was just as strong as that sense of promise. Neighbors helped each other. There were dry wells and sandstorms to keep you humble, and lifelong friends to take your side, and churches to remind us that every soul is equal in value and equal in need.

“This background leaves more than an accent, it leaves an outlook. Optimistic. Impatient with pretense. Confident that people can chart their own course. . . .”

Now the Bushes live in Austin, the state capital. Before that, they lived in Dallas. They and their friends sound nostalgic when they talk about their hometown and its values. They point to the integrity and honesty of the old-time cattle ranchers and independent oilmen, the can-do attitude of its civic leaders, the stability of its families.

Growing up in the ‘50s, when the town had less than 30,000 people, children felt safe, secure and accountable, they say. Friendships, however, rarely crossed class or racial lines. Children, the Bushes recall, felt free to roam and to dream of making their lives whatever they wanted.

Bush feels so tied to Midland, he has said he wants to be buried there.

The town would never have developed its distinct personality were it not for the individuals who built the first multi-story buildings in the late ‘20s.

After oil was discovered in west Texas in 1921, companies wanted to move closer to the center of activity. At the time, Midland was the only place in the Permian Basin with an office building and a hotel. Eventually, as many as 600 oil companies located there; with each came more engineers and geologists, bankers and entrepreneurs.

As a result, Midland morphed into middle- and upper-class respectability, while its neighbor, Odessa, developed 16 miles to the west as home to the roughnecks--the workers in the oil fields. The two similar-size towns have been rivals ever since. Midland votes Republican, Odessa Democrat.

Midland attracted risk-takers, including George Bush, who moved his young family there after World War II and did well in the oil business. Children knew the grown-ups might be “rich one day and broke the next,” said Robert McCleskey, a Midland accountant who grew up with the Bushes. Residents who inherited their parents’ or grandparents’ wealth call themselves members of the “Lucky Sperm Club.” Just as many, if not more, however, came up losers.

What people don’t understand about the oil business, McCleskey said, is that you can do everything right and still wind up broke. “The great thing about this place is that you get a chance to get up to the plate.”

With its all-or-nothing ambience, he said, the stakes are high. “The name of the game is survival,” McCleskey said.

In the ‘50s and ‘60s, the elements posed part of that challenge. Weather patterns have since changed, residents say, but back then they faced ice storms, below-zero temperatures and sandstorms of 70 mph. Tumbleweeds taller than people frightened drivers on the highway. George W. recalls going to school mornings and finding his desktop covered with a fine layer of sand. Laura remembers a storm that blew out her bedroom window.

Understandably, people spent a lot of time inside their brick structures. When they got together for church socials and dances in groups of 40 and 50, it was a chance to hone their social skills, Munn said. “In this size of social setting, you just engage. . . . Shy, bashful people get pulled out.”

Though George W. left Midland for private schools in the Northeast and didn’t return until the mid 1970s, some suggest Midland’s sociability accounts for his comfort with people, including a remarkable ability to recall names. Laura, they say, is even better at remembering people.

“The largest lesson I learned in Midland still guides me as governor. . . . Everyone, from immigrant to entrepreneur, has an equal claim on this country’s promise. . . .”

During the years George W. Bush was growing up in Midland, social boundaries were fluid, since nearly everyone was young and “nobody had been who they were for very long,” recalled longtime resident Dede Casbeer, a retired draftsman and wife of a driller who worked in Odessa. Still, there was a subtle but undeniable two-tiered social structure of white-collar and blue-collar families. “Everybody was nice to everybody, but that doesn’t mean you’re invited over for dinner,” Casbeer said.

Today, the demographics as well as the economy have shifted. Anglos constitute 45% of the elementary school population; the largest ethnic minority is Latino. Several high-rises are empty now, as oil companies have merged and moved out to Houston. Other businesses have migrated north to the outlying malls.

The city is already thinking of putting a plaque on a small house on Ohio Street where George Bush and his wife, Barbara, lived for a while with their children. It might become the former home of two presidents, they say. If Bush wins the election, folks say they’ll probably hold a parade with Shriners and high school bands.

In general, the town has already become accustomed to the Secret Service personnel that accompany the former president or the current governor when they come to town to visit Laura’s mother, play golf at the country club or dine at Johnny’s BBQ.

Some folks remember George W. only as a boy playing Little League baseball, and some never knew him at all. But at Johnny’s, it’s always like a friendly reunion.

“It’s not unusual for him to walk in and greet the owners,” says longtime resident and Bush friend Munn, “then continue on and go back into the kitchen and say hi to the dishwashers.”

And whatever they think of his politics, they probably won’t call George W. a pompous jerk. He’s one of their own. He’s learned the game.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

An Image That’s

Fair to Midland

Profile: Midland, Texas

Hometown of Laura Welch Bush and George W. Bush. With his family, he moved there from New Haven, Conn., in 1948 at age 2 and left for Houston at age 13. Midland was named in 1880 for its location between El Paso and Fort Worth on the Texas Pacific railway. It is now the county seat for the Permian Basin, source of 22% of the nation’s oil reserves.

Population: 100,000

Average temperature in January: 31 degrees

In July: 95 degrees

Elevation: 2,550 to 2,900 feet above sea level

Median family income: $36,998

Elementary Schools:

Public: 56.1%

Private: 43.9%

Number of Golf Courses: six

Number of churches: 150

Rush hour: 7:30 a.m. to 7:59 a.m.

Slogan: “In the Middle of Somewhere”