President Bush learns: You can go home again

Thomas Wolfe notwithstanding, you can go home again — if you are President Bush.

Barely three months before he will move back to Texas, the president and his wife, Laura, visited his boyhood home today in Midland, Texas, for the first time since moving to Washington.

Speaking briefly with reporters after touring the gray ranch-style home, the president said:

It's an amazing experience to come back to a place where you were raised. Laura was raised in Midland, I was raised in Midland. This is one of the three homes I lived in, and I kind of remember it. The bedroom — actually I do remember the wood on the wall in the bedroom.

"I learned a lot of values that I hold dear here," the president said, adding that he told friends in the community "that, you know, even though I had to deal with a lot of tough issues, that I'm still the same person that they knew before and that, you know, I'm wiser, more experienced, but my heart and my values didn't change."

The home, built in the 1940s, was, of course, the home of two future presidents. The first President Bush grew up in the considerably more posh surroundings of Greenwich, Conn. He and his wife, Barbara, moved to Midland when he was starting out in the oil business in the years after World War II.

The second President Bush and his wife also lived in Midland as newlyweds. As Countdown to Crawford reported last month, their first house there recently went on the market for $239,900.

The president was in Midland to attend today to speak at a fundraiser for the Republican National Committee and Republican congressional candidates.

As for his return to Texas, the president owns a 1,600-acre spread near Crawford, down Prairie Chapel Road. That's where he's spending the weekend.

— James Gerstenzang

Photo: Saul Loeb / AFP/Getty Images

Comments

[Ed]

Who cares about him anymore? It's just so sad what he and his buddies did to this country. :-(

[beatupfromfeetup]

Mission Accomplished!

[Cindy]

He says "I kind of remember it."...The "wood on the wall"..Well, I remember something: he should remember the wood, and can probably find some of the beebees that he shot into that woodwork when torturing his younger sibs. In several bios of The jerk, it is recounted that he would be left in charge of the younger ones while Barbara and GHW were off doing whatever they were doing...and the jerk would terrorize the kids by shooting his beebee gun at them. Maybe he can find some old dead frog skeletons if he looks around the yard: he used to blow them up with firecrackers. Past is prologue, as Biden just reminded us.