My Personal Barbara Bush Story

It’s not exactly pretty…

It was the 1980s. Some parts of that decade are a bit fuzzy to me. Other parts are crystal clear in my memory. Overall, for me it was one hell of a decade.

Ronald Reagan was president and I was just way too busy living life to even care about that much. George Herbert Walker Bush, Sr. was vice-president and his wife Barbara never, ever appeared in public without wearing a pearl necklace. I saw the whole national political scene as utter buffoonery and I was far too pre-occupied with sex, drugs and rock and roll to care.

I had recently moved from Southern California to West Texas. Who, in their right mind, does such a thing? Apparently, me. I was young and stupid.

I found myself living in Midland, Fucking, Texas. The son of the vice president and his pearl necklace wearing wife used to live there. He once ran for Congress from there… and lost. For a Republican to lose an election in that neck of the woods is utterly inconceivable but that is exactly what George Dubya did. It was his first foray into politics.

Anyway, there I was living in Midland, Fucking, Texas. I was the manager of a bookstore that was part of a large corporate chain of thousands of bookstores. The bookstore was in a shopping mall. Back in the Eighties, shopping malls were the…