Word: midlanders
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George ("Georgie," "Little George," "Bushtail," "Tweeds," "Lip," "Temporary," "Bombastic Bushkin," "Dubya") Bush knows from nicknames. As in Little Italy or Compton, there must have been something about the tightly knit Wasp community of Midland, Texas, some unique social condition that encouraged the cultivation of nicknames, because everyone had one. From his father George ("Poppy") Bush, the war hero with one of those curiously effeminate preppie nicknames (like "Bunny" and "Pinkie"), to Barbara ("Bar") Bush (no one dared stray farther from the source name), to brother John Ellis ("Jeb") Bush's acronym of a name, to family friends "Spider" and "Wemus...
...bequeathed his son the door-opening, legacy-honoring, line-cutting, fund-raising functionality of a prominent surname. And perhaps it was because of Dubya's early recognition of the power of names (he would later brag that "Bush" was his most valuable asset) that in the dusty backyards of Midland tract houses, he honed his skill at coining them for others...
...Texas Black Tie & Boots Ball--retro, perhaps, but still honoring the great Inaugural tradition of excess and bad taste. All week long the capital was filled with Halloween Texans, dressed in a way they never would have been at home. They sold out of full-length furs in Midland, Texas; for those who had never seen a ranch, $450 Stetsons were selling briskly at the Ritz-Carlton, where the chef was whipping up rattlesnake nachos and Dubya's favorite, a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich, was going...
...outing at the darkest moment of the 36-day postelection battle with Al Gore is almost a country-boy ruse. Of course he wants us to see him here. This ranch, which he bought just a year ago, is a rich Texas symbol of achievement--what kids from the Midland dream of having. And it wasn't handed down. That ranch is all that he sees himself to be: rugged, real and thoroughly Texan. But Bush's persona at the ranch is also more than an act. He seems at peace in this place where he knows each tree...
Shortly after his graduation from Harvard, Bush decided to enter the family business, returning to Midland to form an independent oil and gas exploration company called Arbusto--the Spanish word for Bush...