On Plains, Crawford, and Woodstock
From the Star-Telegram:
Six years after President Bush and his wife bought an old turkey and hog farm and turned it into his Prairie Chapel ranch, tourists are actually visiting Crawford.
Of course, some of the 1,000 or so daily visitors this month are not simply coming to buy a T-shirt or see the ranch gate. They're in town for an anti-war protest promoted around a grieving mom turned presidential shadow who starred in TV campaign commercials last year for Democratic candidate John Kerry.
The nearby motel rooms are booked. The salad bars are busy. The folks I interviewed by phone are happy.
"Some of them don't want to drink coffee out of our George W. Bush mugs," said Sammy Citrano, owner of the Coffee Shop Cafe buffet in McGregor. "There's definitely a lot more activity and business this year. We meet a lot more people from out of town."...
When Bush was elected, Crawford expected the same kind of tourist boom that Plains, Ga., enjoyed from Jimmy Carter's presidency. But the fears of 9-11 made life as the president's neighbor more complicated.
The fears melted away this month at the first annual Great Crawford Peace Protest, sponsored by the anti-war Crawford Peace House (slogan: "Let us see what love can do").
The arrival of folk singer Joan Baez for a Sunday concert only completed the connection to 1969 and Woodstock.
At the nearest motel, the Weston Inn in McGregor, day clerk Juana Rodriguez is 20. She had never heard of Joan Baez.
"This guy starts telling me all about this big Joan Baez concert, and how I should come along," she said by phone. Reporters estimated the concert crowd at about 500.
"I told him I had never heard of her. He said, like, it was going to be cool."...
Citrano said his business at the Coffee Shop Cafe is probably up 10 percent over the typical August, when reporters and Secret Service agents fill the restaurant during a Bush vacation. And he's selling a lot more vegetable plates....
Rodriguez, the clerk at the Weston Inn, said she has met people from "New York, Chicago, California -- all over."
"They are very sweet people. They have a right to their opinion. We just have another opinion here," she said.
She talked about one man she met Sunday who described himself as an "old hippie."...
I knew she had never heard of Joan Baez. So I asked whether she had ever heard of Woodstock.
She laughed.
"No," she replied. "But I'm hearing a lot about it."
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