The Age of Bush, Part I: The Formertative Years

JeffR

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Sat Jul-12-08 07:57 PM
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The Age of Bush, Part I: The Formertative Years

Part I of a continuing series chronicling the life and times of President George Walker Bush.

Part I: The Formertative Years

His is a greatness that stemmed from unlikely beginnings.

The year was 1945. America had beaten the Axis ~~of Evil~~. George "Pork Rind" Bush, a newly demobbed Connecticut sharecropper, was reunited with his vivacious young wife, Barbara, affectionately known to all as "Baboon". Short of money but eager to be part of the celebratory mood of a tired but triumphant nation, they settled on that traditional recreational favorite of the masses, copious sexual intercourse.

In July of 1946, much to the couple's surprise, Barbara gave birth to a son. The shocked couple were further dismayed to learn that their boy's thumbs were not opposable, but were encouraged when their doctor told them that many illustrious Americans, such as Joseph McCarthy and Herbert Hoover, had prospered in spite of the same condition.

Young George learned at an early age what it was like to be poor. He scuffled around the hardscrabble, mean streets of New Haven, barefoot, dirty, but always cheerful. His parents, meanwhile, continued their diligent copulation, and soon the Bush home was filled to the rafters with the fruits of their late-night labors.

Soon after learning to walk marginally upright, George began to help out the ever-precarious family finances by fashioning clever dioramas from discarded tires, selling them at a sidewalk card table the way ordinary children sell lemonade. It was an early indication that his lack of opposable thumbs would not stop him from achieving his dreams.

Cliff Lemmings, now New Haven's oldest resident, still keeps one such diorama on his mantelpiece, a minutely detailed depiction of a Nativity scene on the steps of a miniature Capitol Building, entitled "Separate This, Traitors". Lemmings remembers paying the young artist 25 cents for it in 1953. "That was serious money back then, sure, but I knew that kid was special from the get go," Lemmings says, "Yeah, some of my friends always said he was more 'special needs' than 'special', but I never doubted him for a second." The diorama is now thought by experts to be worth as much as 31 cents. "And I keep watching the rubber diorama market every day," Lemmings adds with a wheezy chuckle.

By night, in the dim light of the household's single kerosene lamp, George devoured the classics of literature, including several Shakespeares, some Dickenses, and the occasional Mary McCarthy. Now and then, George and his siblings – Bunky, Chunky, Savanarola and Jeb – could persuade their father to regale them with stories of his service during World War II. But the senior Bush usually demurred, preferring instead to share tales of the children's grandfather Prescott's more illustrious military career.

"Your gramps is a legend," he would explain to the wide-eyed youngsters. "Beat the Germans in '18, and when they got uppity again, he re-enlisted. Hung Mussolini up by his heels, freed Paris, infiltrated Hitler's bunker and shot him right in the kisser, never took credit for any of it. Personally freed all those poor, poor Jews from their concentration camps and helped found the State of Israel for them. That's the sort of greatness we Bushes must always aspire to. And don't forget he got rich, but never gave me a dime. Said it wouldn't be prudent. Had to make my own way."

It was an example young George took to heart. On July 5, 1950, one day before George's fourth birthday, Task Force Smith of the 24th Infantry Division famously engaged the North Koreans at Osan, suffering heavy casualties in America's first major battle on the Korean Peninsula. The following morning, shaking off the enticements of a birthday cake and some modest presents, the plucky young George presented himself at the nearest recruiting center. Though he was turned away for meeting neither the height nor thumb requirements, he didn't cry. He knew that his time as a proud member of America's Armed Forces would come, and that he would one day know glory in uniform. Back at home that afternoon, he insisted that his cake be donated to someone in need. "But snookums, we're the poorest people in town," his mother explained with tears in her eyes. George then gave the cake to a stray, starving dog, which unfortunately succumbed to chocolate toxicity.

It wasn't all hardship, however. His father began taking seasonal work shining shoes in scenic Kennebunkport, Maine, eventually earning enough to bring the whole clan up every summer. They shared a single pup tent out near the town limits, in a family sleeping arrangement George would one day describe as "gerbilish, but cozy".

In Kennebunkport, George became an avid amateur naturalist, working hard to reattach the wings of abused flies. Here, sadly, his non-opposable thumbs frustrated his best efforts. He found another solution, though, by collecting bottles at the beach and donating the proceeds to the local SPCA chapter, with the stern stipulation that the money be devoted to fly microsurgery. (The Kennebunkport SPCA has since become internationally famous for its pioneering wing reattachment research, and continues to achieve miraculous breakthroughs in their new George W. Bush Fly Center, funded by an anonymous donor.)

Thus was nurtured George's passionate, lifelong interest in flight. "What do you want to be when you grow up, George?" his parents would ask him. "A flyboy," was always his terse answer.

Years passed, as years generally do, and young George grew into a sort of Ted Bundy handsomeness. Bush père eventually found a job with the Central Intelligence Agency, and was posted to Midland, Texas, where he monitored the growing insurgence of Tex-Mex cuisine into an area that had once boasted the highest per-capita availability of instant mashed potatoes and chipped beef on the Southern Plains. His father's evident concern for preserving the sanctity of American culinary blandness touched young George deeply, though being his own man, he would later develop an inordinate fondness for Frito pie and the occasional chimichanga.

As luck would have it, Ronald Reagan, then host of General Electric Theater, was in Midland one day, scouting locations. Dazed and confused with the Texas heat, the future Greatest President Ever approached a young man on a corner on W. Ohio Avenue to ask directions. "Where am I and what time is it, son?" asked Reagan. "Why, this is America and it's morning, sir," the young fellow replied with a guileless smile.

That young man was George W. Bush, and his response affected Reagan so strongly that he returned the next day with a check for tuition at the Phillips Andover Academy in Massachusetts and a promise that if he ever decided to forsake being a B-movie actor and soap salesman to pursue a political career, he would make the lad's father his Vice-President.

That chance encounter on a dusty day in Midland in 1961 would reverberate for decades to come, and change America forever.

Next Saturday, Part II: School Daze.