LAT: Midland restores Bush homestead, and will open it to visitors

[DeepModem Mom]

Son Shines Bright From This Old West Texas Home
George W. Bush and his blue-blood family lived in a modest Midland house in the 1950s. Now, local leaders and family friends have restored it.
By Peter Wallsten, Times Staff Writer
April 11, 2006

MIDLAND, Texas — Virginia has George Washington's Mount Vernon plantation. New York has the Hyde Park estate of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Yorba Linda embraces the modest farmhouse that was Richard Nixon's childhood home. And Hodgenville, Ky., has Sinking Spring Farm, where Abraham Lincoln was born.

Today, this dry, dusty town in the aging heart of the West Texas oil patch is bidding to join the select list of communities that bask in the glow of history — and in the golden tide of tourist dollars that may come with it. Midland, after all, was the home of not one but two American presidents: George W. Bush and his father, George H.W. Bush.

Yet the local leaders and Bush family friends behind Midland's bid for the spotlight are struggling with a problem: Just what, exactly, is the story they want to tell?

Most sites associated with the early lives of future presidents have unmistakable story lines, clear symbolic messages that help visitors understand the figures associated with them. The rude log cabin at Lincoln's birthplace — one cramped room with a dirt floor — underscores the humble origins of one of America's greatest presidents. The classical lines of Mount Vernon suggest the Roman virtues of the man who became the father of his country. The stateliness of Hyde Park bespeaks the noblesse oblige that moved sons of aristocrats to public service....

***

"We've understood throughout the project that we cannot portray them as coming from a lifting-yourselves-by-the-bootstraps background with no resources," said Bill Scott, a Midland real estate broker and one of the organizers of the Bush home project....Instead, in addition to honoring the family that — perhaps more than even oil and high school football — put Midland on the map, developers suggest that this is where the Bush family may have learned Heartland values....

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-nubushhome11apr11,0,2918450.story?coll=la-home-headlines

[Avalux]

1. Sounds like a perfect place for a protest.

Midland is so misguided; they may be sorry they've decided to do this. :puke:

[Missy M]

2. If the Bush family has Heartland values than the Heartland....

is in sorry shape. I sure wouldn't want the Bush family values. They are just trying to make G.W. look like he came from the middle class which is a bunch of hogwash.

[Sadie5]

3. Careful going into that house

The fungus might still be present.This neocon fungus might rub off on you.

[boot@9]

4. and "w" won't be there

Midland is so proud of him and laura yet he has not been back in Midland since before his "inaugruation" in 2000. Of course he has spent umpteen thousand days in crawford.

[Tim4319]

5. Wait, I thought GWB was from Connecticut?

So, shouldn't they have a pig farm built in Connecticut?