GEORGE W. BUSH once ate a hamburger here at the Coffee Station in Crawford, Texas. I know that because on your left as you enter, at eye height, is a framed bill from this past August that Bush himself paid. It’s bill #173803, and it lists orders for eight people. Bush paid $35–plus half that again in tip, according to the owner, Kirk Baird. Also on the wall is a framed letter from Bush. At the bottom, in his own hand, the president wrote: “The burgers are great!” I’ll bet they are. Unfortunately, I had time in Crawford for only one meal. The menu made my choice tough, offering all sorts of sandwiches, plates of chicken cooked every which way, and plenty of steaks: T-bones, rib eyes, and sirloins. I ordered chicken-fried steak, not the half portion, which my doctor would have recommended (actually, he would have told me to just say no), but the whole thing. It arrived, taking up more than half a big plate, and lying, as all good chicken-fried steak should, under a thick spread of cream (light, not dark) gravy. With mashed potatoes (real, with chunks) and green beans, and a huge glass of iced tea, constantly refilled, this was some meal. I was in Crawford a few days before the president took Vladimir Putin to his ranch to do some summitry. The ranch is about eight miles northwest of Crawford, which is the furthest town west in McLennan County, and I can see why the president decided to make it his new home. It’s not just the food around here. It’s also the isolation. When the Bushes began looking for a ranch a few years ago, they said they wanted “a rural retreat.” It’s hard to get more rural than the 1,600 acres they bought in 1999 for a reported $1.3 million. Crawford is the closest town, and with a population of 705 it is no metropolis. Valley Mills (pop. 1,085) is about nine miles north of Crawford, and McGregor (pop. 4,754) about seven miles south. Thirteen miles west there’s Coryell City (pop. 125). Crawford is the town you’re most likely to drive through if you’re going to the ranch. It’s twenty-one miles west of Waco (pop. 104,706), which is on the interstate that connects Dallas/Fort Worth to Austin and San Antonio. Waco has an airport that people fly into before driving to Crawford. Established in the 1850s, Crawford was named, though this is still in dispute, after a man who graded a river crossing. Its downtown, so to speak, lies at the intersection of Highway 317 and Farm Road 185. It includes a barber shop, two “antique” stores, the post office, a gas station, and a Bottlinger grain elevator. The Coffee Station, right on the intersection, is the only sit-down eatery, though take-out pizza is available from a house trailer with a Pizza Hut sign. There’s no place to stay in Crawford–you have to go to Valley Mills or McGregor. And there’s little to do–though if it’s fall you can catch some football, which here, as elsewhere in Texas, is big. (Even seventh-grade games make the local papers.) To see a movie, you have to go to Waco or maybe Clifton, in Bosque County, which has a “Last Picture Show”-type theater called the Cliftex. As for saloons and such, I think the counsel that Putin aides gave Kremlin reporters last week constitutes an adequate travel guide: “Spirits are not sold practically anywhere in town.” When Bush is at the ranch, the press stays in Waco and comes out when events demand. Bush is quite at home on his ranch, far from the crowds of Washington. But he’s not been a hermit. He’s shown up for a number of local events and given money to the school system. Last week, he took Putin to Crawford High for a Q&A with students. Crawford has a Democratic mayor, but it voted for Bush, and it’s obvious Bush is well liked here. A sign atop the grain elevator says Crawford is “Bush country.” I’d say it’s that, but in more ways than one. As a Dallas native, I can tell you that Texas divides into several parts, one of which is western. Bush, who spent many years in Midland, is a westerner, and Crawford lies at the beginning of the west. You can see that as you approach Crawford from the east. The flat, black, waxy soil–great for cotton farming–gives way to a more varied terrain whose surfaces are rocky and more often than not commanded by cows and goats and horses. Bush’s ranch has rolling hills and creeks and cliffs and even some caves (probably not much like those in Afghanistan). It’s full of scrub brush, and it demands, I would imagine, a lot of work. I didn’t get to see it–security waved me on. My consolation prize, a considerable one indeed, was that chicken-fried steak. As Bush might say, “It is great!” November 26, 2001 – Volume 7, Number 11
