Welcome Home, Bush!
George and Laura Bush are moving down the street from the Dallas home where I grew up. A field guide to their new neighborhood.
I grew up (and my parents still live) six blocks from the former president's future home in Preston Hollow. It's a place New York Post gossip columnist Cindy Adams recently called "a town outside Dallas" where "houses come with horse stables, lake views, mountain views, golf club views." (It's actually a neighborhood inside Dallas that comes with none of those things.) Reporters have called it wealthy, white, and Republican, yet that hardly does it justice. My parents, both avid Democrats, probably have fewer Democratic friends in Preston Hollow than Bush's 8,500-square-foot home has bathrooms.
Of course, Preston Hollow is not Highland Park, the ritzy, incorporated town in the middle of Dallas where the 113-year-old Dallas Country Club didn't count a single African American member until 2007. But the neighborhood includes a small number of estates—huge spreads occupied by Texas Rangers owner Tom Hicks, H. Ross Perot, and oilman T. Boone Pickens, among others—that were once surrounded by a sprawl of postwar tract homes, many of which have since been razed and replaced by McMansions. Stuck into their green lawns are yard signs that say with proud intimacy, "Welcome Home, George and Laura."
Though I could've guessed that Bush would be welcomed back (he also lived here before he was Texas governor), the warm reception brought back memories of the neighborhood's other political signs.
My first inkling of Preston Hollow's conservative ways came in the third grade, when I was riding home with a freckly, redheaded kid named Josh Music, whose mother was a member of my mother's carpool group. At the time, Josh seemed especially cool and especially Texan because he'd run shirtless through a field of bluebonnets in a TV commercial for Blue Bell Ice Cream. When his mom randomly asked me which presidential candidate I liked, I said Mondale. "How could you vote for a woman for vice president?" Josh scolded. "If Mondale gets shot, a woman would be president!"
Preston Hollow now supports Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Tex.), but racial politics remain more complex. Almost no African Americans live in my parents' neighborhood, other than the family that recently took up residence in a gated castle just constructed across the street. It's the home of Rayford Wilkins Jr., the CEO of AT&T. After he and his wife moved in last year, my mom enthusiastically knocked on their door with a plate of warm brownies and later offered to throw them a welcome-to-the-neighborhood party, adding proudly, "And we'll celebrate the election of Obama!" The pretty and fashionable Mrs. Wilkins stared back blankly. My mom briefly entertained the notion that Mrs. Wilkins had misconstrued the brownies as a racial slight, but campaign filings confirm her other guess: that Mr. Wilkins backed McCain.
Unlike the Wilkins' palatial home, with its gurgling fountain and scalloped facade of Austin stone, Bush's new pad looks surprisingly demure; from the street its squat brick exterior seems as old as the neighborhood. My parents don't appear to buy the idea that a man of such unsubtle politics could possess subtle tastes. "I wonder if he's going to tear it down," my mom said.
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Mr. Harkinson is dramatizing Dallas' radical right-wing presence. Good job, Josh, you have officially perpetuated the stereotype that Texas is a bastion for ultra-conservative mongrels, who will key your car if you show any sign of having left-of-center politics. I guess I can kiss goodbye any hope of seeing an influx of MJ reading Dems to Dallas, because you have just scared them away, instead of trying to effect some change in the North Dallas political landscape as I have desperately tried to do for years.
Instead, you whittle away at your Macbook keyboard, in your Bay area townhome, safe and secure from all those "men in black" who terrorize the democrats of Dallas with keys and smoke bombs! Oh my! I can just picture you as the center of attention at a San Francisco cocktail party, describing in detail the horrors you endured in that third-world city called 'Dallas'. "I got here as fast as I could," you tell your friends, "Can you imagine how they treat gay people?"
Of course, it's easy to have such high-handed views coming from Strait lane, right or left. Your parents shouldn't have a problem with the Lexus, being able to put their kids through St. Mark's and Hockaday.
So don't foist your views of MY neighborhood upon the minds of honest MJ readers who might actually find a POINT to your dribble that doesnt really exist.
By the way, Dallas County voted for Obama in last years election, and the county judge, sheriff, and district attorney are all Democrats.
http://www.dallasdemocrats.org/Lists/Elected%20Officials/AllItems.aspx
It is true that Dallas has flipped Democratic recently, but that is certainly not because of votes from Preston Hollow, which remains just as I described it. Clearly, the piece is not about Dallas as a whole.
Also, since you'd made the assumption that I got to San Francisco as quickly as I could, you might be interested to know that from 2002 to 2005--many years after I was out of college--I worked at the Houston Press. That's in Houston, in case you were wondering, a place many people in Dallas consider to be, in your diction, a "third world city."
Finally, it's ironic that you say my "high-handed views" (whatever that means) derive from my Preston Hollow upbringing. If I were instead a right-winger, would my views also derive from my Preston Hollow upbringing? How does a Preston Hollow upbringing explain the fact that most American voters cast ballots for Obama? Were they all raised in Preston Hollow? Did they at one point drink the water there?
Yeah, I grew up two houses down. It's funny how many silly things have been published in national periodicals. Their directly next-door new neighbors, who have been living there for almost eighteen years, are African-American. There's a fact I haven't seen in any publication.
Also, angry Mr. Collin C., Dallas is a deeply conservative town. The judiciary is the only part of Dallas going liberal, and that's a backlash against conservative judges siding with entrenched local business interests over citizens. I work down here buddy, I know.
There are many instances of vandalism inflicted upon vehicles bearing a liberal message in the area of Dallas that was being discussed. You might see that correlation in the really nice suv's driven by the newly licensed youth of the area. Lots and lots of W's. These are the same kids you see in masses at the local shopping center on weekend nights. What do you think a bunch of rich, white, wanna-be W's do for fun?
Over here on the east side of town, things are a bit different. I would also suggest you dust off your Spanish.
I grew up on the edge of Preston Hollow and yes, North Dallas and the Park Cities are uber-conservative -- mostly Business Conservatives, meaning that on social issues they take the default conservative position but hardly get very exercised about such matters.
The rest of Dallas, while certainly no Bay Area, has swung considerably leftward in the last 10-15 years. Dallas is also the fifth-gayest city in the nation, for what it's worth. Obama took Dallas County relatively handily.
So you and your parents also boycotted the Preston Hollow (Dallas) public schools which boast large numbers of minority students?
At the time, the public school system in Dallas was woefully underfunded. My parents always supported funding it adequately, but opted to send us to private school until it was. I'm sure that making one's way though the Texas education system comes with many upsides, and I respect others' decisions to have a go at it. You might more productively ask Bush why he sent his daughters to Hockaday, since he was in a much better position to change things.
Unfortunately Josh is incorrect about Preston Hollow. Neither the former President or the folks on Strait Lane live in Preston Hollow proper. Preston Hollow was a separate city that agreed to be annexed by the City of Dallas post-WW2
here is a link to a map showing the actual boundaries
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Old_Preston_Hollow.JPG
synopsis of authors article
Let me tell yall what its like
Being male, middle class and white
Its a b*tch, if you dont believe
Listen up to my new cd
Sham on
I'm aware of the official boundaries of Preston Hollow. But real estate agents now refer to it as a larger area that includes the homes of Bush and my parents. As has the coverage in the Dallas Morning News.
Josh you forgot to tell your readers how they can get a sign for their yard too.
Call 214 676 0728
I hear that it will cost the Dallas Police a million dollars a year to provide security to Bush.
Just to clear something up for DallasGayGuy. The city of Dallas was 50.83% white in the 2000 census. The Dallas Independent School District (DISD) was 5.0% white according to DISD ethnicity data for 2006-2007. Can you explain that disparity? It would appear that more than just the rich white folk in Preston Hollow have fled the public schools. EVERYONE that can has fled DISD. Further, I'd lay odds that if Mr. Harkinson had attended DISD, arguably one of the worst and most corrupt school districts in These United States, he wouldn't be writing for Mother Jones now.
So you buy into the idea that because a school is largely minority, it is a bad school?
Pershing Elementary is a recognized school and the majority-minority high school which serves the area, Hillcrest, is ranked in Newsweek's top high schools in the nation for 2008 (along with five other Dallas ISD high schools). It regularly sends graduates to Ivy League schools.
I'm sorry that does not support the picture you have tried to paint. True, there are not as many school-aged children in Preston Hollow, but there are whites who aren't afraid to put their kids in the public schools. Too bad the author's ostensibly egaliatarian family was in that frightened category.
It's really getting tiring to see otherwise excellent progressive publications resorting to the typical stereotypes used by the political right. The writer's characterization of a North Dallas neighborhood as reactionary is quite simply not supported by facts. Preston Hollow encompasses the zip codes 75220, 75225, 75229, 75230, and 75244. Election results from 2008 show that Obama received an average of 44 percent of the votes cast (to McCain's 55 percent) -- hardly indicative of neighborhoods with "few Democratic friends," as the writer suggests. Yes, North Dallas does lean Republican, as do the wealthy areas of most large U.S. cities (Obama's numbers were similar Orange County, the Hamptons, and other upscale areas). It's not 1957 and you are not in Kansas anymore.
Your mom might be right about tearing down the house. The National Trust for Historic Preservation lists Preston Hollow as one of the many communities in the nation experiencing teardowns. This wholesale demolition of perfectly fine houses for bigger and "better" homes is not only a preservation issue, it is a green issue. The "use it up and throw it away" philosophy is just not sustainable. The greenest house is one that is already built! (For information on teardowns and their environmental cost, www.preservationnation.org and www.thegreenesthouse.org) If Bush keeps the house instead of tearing it down, it will be the first thing he's done that I approve of!
I'm just happy that Pres.and Mrs. Bush have moved!
"Who knows? In California, it might just be too easy."
Ya ain't from Orange County are ya? Or Stanford, or Geneva. They're everywhere, fortified to the teeth, breathtakingly certain of their power. If mama's house gets irradiated this summer, be certain all the neighbors will be skiing in Dubai.
Didn't Preston Hollow's charter state that only white people could own property? And wasn't it repealed just eight years ago?
I'm from Dallas and I know that Texas is actually much more moderate than national perceptions suggest. Howvever, I also know that when you descend into GATED communities in Texas... you're likely to be surrounded by Republicans that would make Liddy look like McGovern.
So where's a sharpshooter when you really need one???
Those Texan Democrats who feel I'm ignoring the gains they've made should read this:
http://www.motherjones.com/mojoblog/archives/2006/11/2884_big_d_stands_f...
and this:
http://www.motherjones.com/news/update/2006/10/martha_wong.html
Also, to clear up any confusion, here's what the Dallas Morning News says about the neighborhood:
•It's in reliably Republican precinct. No GOP candidate drew less than 63 percent of the vote there in last month's general election.
•It's in a politically active ZIP code, 75229, contributing $1.6 million last year in federal races – 30 times as much as the average ZIP code. Top recipients: John McCain and the Republican National Committee.
•Most residents in 75229 are white, nearly 80 percent
(From: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/localnews/stories/DN-la... )
How nice; at least now we know that not all of Mother Jones' writers are basement/garret dwelling subversives; some are, indeed, from well to do families and want nothing more than to perpetuate their family's position in the cultural norm.
Lakewooder - No. I don't think that a largely minority school is necessarily a bad school. I think that DISD is a hopelessly corrupt and broken school system. There's a scandal a month reported from that snakepit. You cite a couple of good schools and that's supposed to make up for the whole district. It doesn't. What I was pointing out was that DallasGayGuy was bashing Preston Hollow parents for having fled DISD, when the numbers bear out that white kids fleeing to private academies goes much farther than the fuzzy borders of Preston Hollow. Just because you may be "brave enough" to put your kids into one of the few high achieving schools in a district doesn't prove any point at all, except that you're saving between 10 and 25 thou a year on private school tuition.
wow, this read to me as nothing more than a little filler/memoir about life on the old block, must've been those drugs back in the 70's did some brain damage i never noticed before. come on now, don't take it so personal, wasn't he talking about "his" neighborhood? let's not pick fights with our allies when we've finally liberated our poor nation from the bushcheneyrovedelay. what would Molly Ivins say? WWMD?
Thanks for your depiction of your neighborhood. It is insightful and helpful. I respect your honesty.
To people knocking Mr. Harkinson's take on Preston Hollow, why don't you write your own narrative of your hometown, and we can compare side-by-side?? For those of us not from Dallas, I appreciate a progressive voice who loves his parents and neighborhood friends.
With ray living so close I bet the whole place is so sealed off and guarded by predators that the President doesnt need a SS to guard them .ATT is owner of all telecomfrom batt. to antenna in every countryon earth.And with friends like Ross perot alot of jobless should get work..
All in all every president makes a mistake!Actualy mr.Cheynny made them swimming in oil now?
Great article! That community deserves to be segregated behind a wall instead of a gate and those lovely Democrats need to migrate out of that stinky neighborhood.
Interesting travel guide article Josh.
We already knew that Texas has been one of the bluest of the GOP KKK Blue states. Bush’s election campaigns plus the 2008 election campaign most certainly proved beyond all doubt that the KKK is the root source of blue state cultural values.
It was expected that Bush would fortify himself inside a v.2009 Neocon KKK castle which Neocons can gaze up at in the sky as their holy shrine, and you confirmed that fact.
I very much enjoyed this piece, and your candor in writing from your particular point of view. Did you claim to write from any else's? America is full of weird sub-cultures which transcend stereotypes, and this is clearly true of your home. I felt some universals through the particulars, and truly enjoyed the humor and honesty you brought to it.
Josh, I enjoyed your article. I'm glad you went to a good school and got a good education so you could write with openness and truth. I'm sorry for the children who aren't as fortunate and angry with the powerful who keep them that way. What kind of light is shown to the world when those espousing Christianity the loudest (the Pharisees beating their chests) are the ones sneaking around damaging others property and endangering others lives and telling lie after lie. God forgive them - I'm only human and I cannot. Maybe Bush & Company will pay one day in the afterlife for their evil.
Will some brave individual purchse a copy of Mother Jones Magazine and hand it to George W. and his wife? It would be real fun to hear their reaction. Maybe the brave one delivering the magazine should wear a listening devise, and later have fun writing about it.
Mr. Harkinson,
I grew up in Carrollton, a very conservative suburb in Dallas County. As a child, I also remembered being rebuked, by a classmate, for voicing my support for Mondale. Luckily, your exchange was a bit more civilized than mine. The little boy who asked me if I supported Reagan or Mondale, actually tried to beat me up after I told him I supported Mondale.
I'm a Canadian who throroughly enjoyed reading the article and the many comments about it, I empathize with Josh's mother, I also would not feel safe with Bush living so close, I would like to praise this article for being so well written and for the passionate replies it ellicited, a good article always does that, it brings out emotions and makes people react
dumb bitch
dear Mary.take your sorry drug addicted ass back to Michigan.
love Rick
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Eventually, Bush’s new home may be a prison.
“Bugliosi’s Book Being Mailed Now to All Prosecutors” to have George W. Bush prosecuted for murder.
Submitted by Andrew Yu-Jen Wang
B.S., Summa Cum Laude, 1996
Messiah College, Grantham, PA
Lower Merion High School, Ardmore, PA, 1993
For the record nearly half of all DISD schools are recognized or exemplary. If you don't take the time to investigate, what does that say about you?
Collin C., as a fellow Texas resident, I completely agree with Mr. Harkinsons views of the area, and find them to be almost completely accurate and in step with the treatment I, and other friends, have received.
LW - You keep dodging the point. 50% of Dallas residents are white. 5% of Dallas school kids are white. Where did all the white kids go? That's what I was talking about. But since you've hijacked things to make some ever-evolving point that seems to have something to do with classifying "nearly half" of DISD schools as exemplary, then let me ask you a couple of questions:
How far do you have to bury your head in the sand so that you don 't see the corruption endemic to DISD? Do you not read the paper? Do the names Gonzales or Buhochot not ring any bells? How's about the credit card scandal and the way it was swept under the rug?
How do you get exemplary schools when you run the 7th highest dropout rate in the US? DISD has a budget of $1.65 billion and something like a 56% dropout rate. What exactly do the students have to do to be cited as exemplary? Show up? Citing any school in a system like that as exemplary is truly putting lipstick on a pig.
If you set the bar low enough, eventually everyone will be able to clear it. And then you'll be able to claim that "100% of DISD schools are recognized as exemplary". Further, you won't have to admit that for kids to get a good education in Dallas, it's pretty much a requirement that they attend a private school, or live in the Park Cities.
LW - One more thing. Remember Preston Hollow Elementary? Where they tried to attract white kids from the neighborhood by shoving minority kids into ESL classes, whether they needed ESL or not, so they could show visiting white parents higher numbers of whites in the non-ESL classrooms?
The judge at the trial chastised DISD for using a "separate but equal" defense. Said that it "insults the court's intelligence".
It's not ancient history, either. It was 2006. Just a few years after the Preston Hollow homeowners association amended their charter to "allow" other than whites to own property there.
Is that school on your list as exemplary? Is this the school district you so ardently defend?
Go back to Taxas and stay there, "w".
Worst president ever.
50% may be white but what percentage of those folks have school-aged children?
I (and others)do not approve of the administration at 3700 Ross. But they come and go and we will survive and flourish in spite of them. Believe me I know the shenanigans they have tried to pull over the last 35 years. But I am sticking with the students and not cowering in some white flight academy. I monitor and check their moves, not criticize them from afar.
You haven't proved your point that it is impossible to get a good education in Dallas schools. For instance, DISD schools are ranked by the same TEA rules by which Highland Park is ranked. However, it's easier for HP to make the grade, as they don't have multitudes of subgroups which also must pass to get the ranking. Unfortunately that comes back to bite them when they grow up and can't deal with people in the real world.
And the real world of Dallas is all colors, all incomes and all political views (but the Democrats have been winning) which the author seems to discount to support the prevailing bias against the Bush family.
The point is moot. Of course a child can overcome adversity, study hard and go on to achieve, in spite of the handicap of attending Dallas public schools. But your most recent posit, that attending HPISD is it's own handicap in learning to "deal with people in the real world" is one of your most amusing comments ever.
Those poor, disadvantaged kids. If only they'd had the opportunity that Ross Ave could have afforded them, huh?
But we have wandered far afield here, and we're about the last two left standing. Have we become the Toots and ROB of this thread?
Risking that, I just have to ask you about that last paragraph: "And the real world of Dallas is all colors, all incomes and all political views (but the Democrats have been winning) which the author seems to discount to support the prevailing bias against the Bush family".
May I borrow your rose colored glasses?
I was born in Dallas, raised in "Little Mexico Village" just south of McKinney, attended St. Ann's School off Harry Hines and Akard. My family moved from Big D when I was fourteen, but I don't ever recall going through Preston Hollow or Highland Park in my young years. We were told police would stop non-white people who inadvertently entered those suburbs. I've gone back to Dallas several times as an adult and have driven through Preston Hollow and Highland Park. I always exepect to be stopped even though I am merely passing through. This apprehension is a remnant of racism experienced by many of
us who did not know why we were despised.
closer to the truth than not
enjoyed the warmly informative article thanks.
surprising how quickly toxic bushie lite has given up the howdy yarrr callous spit rancher cowboy image.
git r done
mom
Janis Music made her son Josh walk home from carpool that day
A few days after Christmas,
A few days after Christmas, while visiting family in Dallas, I was driving with my parents to dinner in their Lexus (bumper sticker: "Don't Mess With Texas"). Along the way we passed an elementary school, which is just down the street from the ranch-style house at 10141 Daria Place that George and Laura Bush now call home. "Can you believe he put all those kids in danger?" my mom gasped. She fears Bush will be assassinated in a dirty bomb attack that will also incinerate the rest of the zip code.
