"I BET OL' GEORGE HATES all this nonsense," said his neighbor, Larry Mattlage, on my last day in Crawford. Larry has never met the president, but his proximity to George W. Bush means that he thinks about the man a great deal. As we talked, Larry leaned on a cedar fence post, squinting in the noonday sun, and pointed out landmarks on the Bush ranch, three quarters of a mile away. On the northernmost side of the ranch ran the Middle Bosque River: a stream of gin-clear water that threaded its way through the prairie grass, past thick stands of cedar elm and burr oak. Farther west was the original ranch house—just a gray blur through Larry's binoculars—and a fleet of Secret Service vehicles. Out of sight behind a rocky ridgeline lay the scenery that makes this western corner of McLennan County so starkly beautiful: the box canyons, limestone bluffs, caves, and slow-moving creeks that dot the ranch's two and a half square miles. "I bet George Bush would love to just get in his pickup and drive around his land and clear his mind," Larry said. "He can't ever be by himself, and that's a terrible burden for anyone to bear. A man needs a little freedom."
The 59-year-old rancher wore an old blue baseball cap pulled down over his eyes; his shaggy salt-and-pepper hair fell against his neck, which was tanned and creased from the sun. A recent divorcé, he lives alone with his old and half-blind dog, Dan, who is bewildered by the F-16s and Blackhawk helicopters that now fly overhead. "It's like a ground war over here," Larry said with a chuckle. His ranch, like the president's, is on Prairie Chapel Road, the main artery that runs through Crawford's farmland and ranchland. Families of German extraction have worked the land along this road since the Civil War and mostly keep to themselves. "People out here want to be left alone," Larry said. "We'd rather be scooping manure out of a barn than going to a fancy social event in Waco." Larry remembers barn raisings and long days picking cotton and relatives who whispered in German. "We'd work our tails off in the fields in the day, and we'd practice football at night, and then we'd cool off in Tonk Creek," he said. "It was like Mayberry. Everyone knew your parents. Everyone watched after everyone. The night watchman in town had a key to the drugstore. He'd let us in for ice cream after we went swimming, and we'd leave our money on the cash register."
Staring out toward the Bush ranch, Larry explained that before Bush bought the ranch it had been a hog farm. Nowadays, Larry finds himself feeling nostalgic for the time when the hogs made the air more pungent. "Sometimes I wish I could still smell those hogs and hear them squealing instead of listening to all those F-16s," Larry said, breaking into a grin. "Don't get me wrong; the Bushes are fine folks. It's not about George Bush. It's about what comes with him." Larry ticked off a long list of grievances: Secret Service roadblocks on Prairie Chapel Road where he was asked to show identification, property taxes that have become so high that he worries he will have no legacy to pass on to his sons. He and his neighbors are concerned about a proposed new road, to be constructed so that the presidential motorcade will not have to slow down for curves; if built, it would bisect Larry's ranch and several other ranches. Most of all, he is angry that Secret Service agents speed past him each day without having the common courtesy to wave. "Country people drive slow," he said. "We're used to pulling over to the side of the road and visiting. But if you wave at the Secret Service, they think, 'What's his problem?' It used to be you knew everybody when you drove by. Now everyone's a stranger."
Larry wanted to give me a tour of his ranch, so we talked in his pickup, lurching down rutted dirt roads. "No one used to talk about politics around here," he said, steering past Black Angus cattle that lay napping in the shade. "Family feuds have started over all this. You used to be just a neighbor. Now you're a Republican neighbor or a Democratic neighbor. It's taken away the closeness of the community." He pondered this for a moment as he drove, and sighed. "I'll make some people mad for saying this, but I'll tell you what really ticks me off. Bush portrays this as his hometown, and it ain't. He just barreled in here." We kept driving, past cedar thickets and a pasture studded with blooming prickly pear cactus. As we made our way down meandering cow paths, Larry expressed his hope that Bush will take more of an interest in conservation and using natural energy now that he has shown an affinity for the land. "God owns all this," Larry said. "We're just caretakers who are here on this earth for a little while." We had reached his favorite spot, along the banks of Bluff Creek, a peaceful place shaded by hackberries and horse apple trees. The dry creek bed ran past a white limestone bluff, where the ground was littered with the old arrowheads of Tonkawa Indians who had once camped there.
"It is so gorgeous here," Larry said. "Just listen for a minute to the quiet." And so we did. There was no distant rumbling of F-16s or military helicopters—only the wind rustling through the leaves and then a bird calling from far away. Larry turned to me after a long silence and asked, "Am I selfish to want this all to myself?"
http://tinyurl.com/cuuqg
Larry turned to me after a long silence and asked, "Am I selfish to want this all to myself?"
Larry sounds a bit conflicted but hardly malicious.