Long-awaited visit to childhood home for Bush

MIDLAND, Texas — President Bush almost made it through his two terms without visiting his boyhood hometown. He broke the more than 7-year, 8-month streak on Saturday for a quick and lucrative fundraising stop in this West Texas oil patch.

The lunchtime event, closed to the public and press, attracted a big crowd to Republican Rep. Mike Conaway's home benefited a joint fund set up by the national Republican Party and the House GOP's political arm. Between the Midland fundraiser and a second set for Monday in San Antonio, Bush was helping draw in about $1 million for the party.

He stayed less than three hours on his first visit back to Midland since he breezed through town on his way to Washington for his 2001 inauguration.

That stop was an emotional send-off rally for a Texas native who promised at the time that his stay in Washington would be temporary. Indeed, Bush has said he will return to Texas full time when his second term ends in January, though the president and first lady Laura Bush probably are headed for the cosmopolitan center of Dallas rather than West Texas.

As they got off Air Force One on a typically hot and windy day, the Bushes were greeted with hugs and kisses from ex-Commerce Secretary Don Evans, the former oilman who is one of Bush's oldest and closest friends and who has returned to live in Midland.

Laura Bush grew up in Midland and has returned frequently during her White House year to visit her mother, Jenna Welch, who still lives in the city and attended the fundraiser.

After that event, the president paid a surprise visit to the first home where he lived as a boy with his parents. The modest gray-and-rust three-bedroom ranch house in a blue-collar neighborhood is now a privately owned museum. It has been restored to look as it did when the Bush family owned it — complete with a red tricycle outside.

"It's an amazing experience to come back to a place you were raised," the president told reporters after spending about 15 minutes inside. He said he had told his Texas friends that the tough times in Washington had not changed him from the person they knew. "I'm wiser, more experienced, but my heart and my values didn't change."

He reflected on the fact that, in a time of war and economic mess, his remaining time in office will not be easy. Bush said the financial rescue plan provided the tools necessary to stabilize credit markets, but that there still is "a lot of work to be done."

"We got a couple more hard months to go," he said, his wife at his side. "In the meantime, it's good to come back where it all started for us."

With pumpjacks dotting the landscape and tumbleweeds rolling across the flat, dusty plains, Midland is the heart of the Texas oil patch. It fell on hard times with the oil bust of the mid-1980s and somewhat diversified its economy. But it has remained the administrative center for the petroleum-producing region known as the Permian Basin and is seeing a resurgence amid the recent high prices for crude.

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