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Special Report

(Page 3 of 4)

"Midland was a small town, with small-town values. We learned to respect our elders, to do what they said, and to be good neighbors. We went to church," he writes. "The town's leading citizens worked hard to attract the best teachers to our schools. No one locked their doors because you could trust your friends and neighbors."

"Everyone's parents watched out for everyone else's kids. Midland was a place where other people's mothers felt it was not only their right, but also their duty, to lecture you when you did something wrong, just as your own mother did," he writes. Bush remembered a friend's mom "running out of her house to yell at me for running out into the street without looking. She got my attention, and I never did it again."

Midland is still the small town Christian America of Bush's memory. Visitors to Midland will see the inevitable Starbucks and the usual American food and clothing chains. But they will also see the marks of open Christianity that have long been erased from most American towns.

Hence the left's hostility to Midland. Author Michael Lind calls Midland one of the most "reactionary" cities in America. Texas columnist Molly Ivins quotes approvingly Larry L. King's description of Midland as a city of "oillionaires and Neanderthal Republicans with low, sloping foreheads."

In downtown Midland "Satan Is Defeated" appears on the window of the House of Refuge Ministries building. (The sign is close enough to the downtown Hilton where reporters stay that it has appeared in stories. Reporters can stumble out of bed, walk a few steps, see "Satan Is Defeated," then use it to insinuate that Midlanders are unbalanced Christians. GQ's September story, which morphed Bush into Jesus Christ in a photo, fastened on the "Satan Is Defeated" sign.) Painted on the curb outside of Bush's modest boyhood home is a cross and dove of the Holy Spirit. "Park and pray" signs appear alongside roads overlooking oil fields.

The first successful oil well in Midland, which dates to the 1920s, was called Santa Rita No. 1. The name, say Midlanders, came from East Coast Catholic investors who gave money to Texas oil men after speaking to their priest about whether or not to invest in Texas oil. The priest told them to make the investment, provided the oil well was dedicated to St. Rita, the saint of the impossible. The well became the gusher that spawned the oil industry in Midland.

Midlanders mention miracles and prayer in conversation. They also speak of duty. The Boy Scouts of America -- this also no doubt gets the Linds red-faced about Midland -- have a strong presence in Midland. In front of the Midland courthouse, for example, stands a memorial to the statue of liberty that the Boy Scouts built.

Pictured on the front page of the Midland Reporter-Telegram on the second day of my visit was a boy scout awarding the Distinguished Citizen Award to Tommy Franks. To a crowd in "high cotton," the paper reported, Franks said, "It's just a durned hoot to be here…I always get a warm glow when I return to Midland America." Franks told the crowd that he belonged to Boy Scout Troop 158 in Midland where he learned "what leadership is about."

A Boy Scout spirit of helpfulness and friendliness pervades the town. When you pass Midlanders on the road, they actually wave. One Midlander said that to measure the friendliness of the town's citizens all one would need to do is drive to the side of the road and open up the hood. "I would be surprised if three people passed you without stopping," she said.

Few people move away from Midland, I was told, and those who do often return after longing for its strong community life. More than one Midlander told me that they arrived in this "dust bowl of a city" thinking they could never live in such a bleak place and now think they could never leave it. "We don't have mountains and trees," said one. "We just have each other and our churches."

LIKE BUSH, THE CITY WEARS ITS wealth lightly. Though it once was home to more millionaires per capita than any other city in America, its downtown buildings and neighborhoods are unpretentious. The sprawling mansions of Houston and Dallas are nowhere to be seen. Midland's wealth is similar to the land -- the riches are hidden below the surface.

The city betrays a few traces of the Ivy League oil investors who descended on Midland during the last century -- avenue names include Dartmouth, Harvard, and Princeton -- but for the most part it is a Bible Belt city. Its politics are conservative -- Republicans get up to 80 percent of the vote ("This is probably the most conservative town in America," said one Midlander) -- and Midlanders are justifiably wary of the liberal media. (One Midlander hoped that I wouldn't portray them as "dumb asses in the desert.") Homeschooling is popular with parents here, as are Christian schools. I saw at least three Christian high schools, a significant number for such a small town.

Faith-based charities also thrive in Midland. The city offers teens education for free at Midland's community college if they perform charitable deeds for a certain number of hours.

Midland's Christianity seems like Bush's, at once direct and affable, evangelical and ecumenical, salt-of-the-earth and perhaps a bit salty -- not surprising given its frontier atmosphere through which "roughnecks," "wildcatters," and "bombardiers" (Midland Army Air Field was the center for the largest bombardier training base of World War II) have passed. The churches in town seem to represent the traditional branches of their respective denominations. Midland's Episcopalians, for example, are considering a break from the American Episcopalian church that recently ordained a homosexual bishop.

Bush's return to religion, I was told, occurred at a time when many other oil men in Midland turned to God. It was in the 1980s after oil plunged from $40 a barrel to as low as $10. The town had been riding high -- there was even talk that it might become the next San Antonio -- but OPEC politics caused it to stumble. The largest bank in town, which had lent money on the assumption oil prices would remain high, folded. Bush, at the encouragement of Don Evans, joined a Community Bible Study class where he studied the Gospels and New Testament intensely.

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Education, Business, Religion, Military, Iraq, NATO, Alaska, Oil