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COPYRIGHT 2001 Texas Monthly, Inc.
THE NIGHT BEFORE GEORGE W. BUSH'S INAUGURATION, DUTIFUL TEXANS WHOOPED IT UP ALL OVER WASHINGTON. THE PARTIES OVERFLOWED WITH BIG HAIR, RIDICULOUS WESTERN GETUPS, AND TONS OF BARBECUE, AND WHEN IT WAS OVER, I KEPT THINKING ONE THING: GOD BLESS TEXAS.
I KNEW that things were going to get a little out of hand when I saw George W. Bush make his formal good-bye to Texas at a celebration in Midland, where he had lived for a while as a boy and then later when he worked in the oil business. Bush came out onstage wearing cowboy boots and a white-felt cowboy hat.
"Wait a second," I said to Charlie Younger, his longtime Midland buddy. "Did you ever see Bush wear a cowboy hat when he lived in Midland?"
"Well, um, no."
"And as I recall, you once told me that Bush never wore cowboy boots. You said his shoe of choice during his Midland days was a pair of flimsy black slippers that he got in China."
"That's not quite true," said Younger. "He also wore a pair of loafers that his uncle gave him that were a size and a half too big. He wore them because he was too cheap back then to buy himself a pair of nice shoes or boots."
But here was Bush, waving his cowboy hat in the air as if he'd been living on his Crawford ranch his whole life, doing that pinch-assed walk that you have...
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