George Bush's Mayberry lives on

MIDLAND, Texas -- The house at 1412 West Ohio Ave. is a Boys' Life ideal of mid-20th-century America, with Cub Scout uniforms, baseballs, even a big old TV from when kids watched Walt Disney's "Davy Crockett" on Wednesday nights and then stormed the neighborhood in coonskin caps.

Homes like this existed in every corner of the United States in the 1950s, but this one is in a city that blossomed in the '50s, in the state where Davy Crockett was a real-life inspiration.

It is also a place where, due to a one-industry economy and geographical isolation, some of the attributes of the '50s still live, albeit tarnished a bit, with pawnshops and chicken franchises just blocks from West Ohio Avenue.

"Midland is very Mayberry," insisted the guide at the house at 1412 West Ohio Ave., which is now known as The George W. Bush Childhood Home.

The Bushes lived in this house from late 1951 to late 1955, one of three houses in Midland where the family lived during a nine-year stretch when George W. grew from age 4 to 13. During this period, he was in the Buffalo Trail Council of Texas Cub Scouts, spent six years at Sam Houston Elementary School, and went on to San Jacinto Junior High.

Then the family moved to Houston, and George W. was sent up north to his father's alma maters of Phillips Academy and Yale University. For a boy who loved his Texas childhood, Andover and New Haven represented the direst form of family duty.

So after another fish-out-of-water experience at Harvard Business School, where he tweaked the East Coast snobs by chewing tobacco in class, Bush did something that many people only dream of: He came home again.

At 29, he reconnected with the same boys he knew at Sam Houston Elementary. And two years later, a pal introduced him to Laura Welch, the Midland girl he quickly married. They stayed another 11 years in Midland, as Bush overcame a drinking problem and business reversals.

Midland is where Bush confronted his demons and developed the character to be president; for him, it's a combination of Bill Clinton's "Place Called Hope" and Franklin Roosevelt's "Sunrise at Campobello."

Much has been made of Bush's discomfort with the world of his father's preppie childhood, a world of East Coast elites that reached its zenith in the 1930s. Much has also been made of his discomfort with the protests and some of the social changes of the 1960s. His world, his place, is a 1950s oil boomtown where people lived humble lives while seeking big fortunes.

"It is here where I learned what it means to be a good neighbor at backyard barbecues or just chatting across the fence," Bush declared on Jan. 17, 2001, on his way to be inaugurated as president. "It is here in West Texas where I learned to trust in God."

He also said: "I'm going to take a lot of Midland and a lot of Texas with me up there."

More than six years into his presidency, it's clear that he has: He's sought to revive the spirit of his Cold War childhood in the war on terrorism, hoping that "fighting for freedom" abroad will lead to a '50s-era sense of unity and morale at home.

He's also sought to put faith and family at the forefront of his agenda, even if his social policies -- guided by a strict right-to-life approach to abortion, end-of-life issues, and medical research -- aren't everyone's idea of chatting-across-the-fence friendliness.

And he's kept his ties to Midland, where his mother-in-law, Jenna Welch, still lives. She even donated her old refrigerator -- gleaming like a chrome Cadillac -- to help re - create the look of the '50s in Bush's childhood home.

Midland has never quite grown beyond its decade of prosperity, though enough oil money remains to maintain one luxury hotel and a few expense-account restaurants. Except for next-door Odessa, setting for the TV drama of mid-America isolation "Friday Night Lights," Midland is at least five hours from any major urban area.

Lately, it has been trying to turn its '50s lifestyle into a selling point, calling itself "an attractive retirement location for people interested in a safe and fun place to live."

No doubt it hopes its favorite son returns here after the White House. Some wags might suggest it would be a great place to remember the Alamo and forget about Baghdad. But in good times and bad, it's been Bush's version of something everyone needs.

Home.

Peter S. Canellos is the Globe's Washington bureau chief. National Perspective is his weekly analysis of events in the capital and beyond.