The "W" in Crawford

I'm a senior in college (english major) and am taking Advanced Writing: The Essay. This was the first assignment and I'm turning it in soon. This is the rough draft...I know it's somewhat undeveloped, but I've already run over the word limit. PLEASE ed

 Crawford had 631 residents, and I was one of them.  The closest grocery store was thirty minutes away and the only thing in between were cornfields.  There was no dot on the map and no one had ever heard of us, and we liked it that way.   The only thing we knew or cared about was high school football, and when our boys went to the playoffs, school let out early, the gas station and barbershop closed, and we all carpooled across Texas with our faces painted black and gold.  Nothing would ever change in this town, we thought—until

everything did.

            My mother was a realtor in Waco, so I was one of the first to hear that the Engelbrecht Farm a few miles from my house had been put up for sale.  Rumors circulated that Troy Aikman was a prospective buyer as well as many other celebrities.  We never believed the rumors though or that anyone famous would ever even set foot in our one stoplight town.  The most famous person we knew was our quarterback.  It never crossed our minds that soon we would be calling the President of the United States our neighbor.

 

            After perhaps the most controversial presidential race in history, George W. Bush was sworn into office on January 20, 2001.  He was the son of a former president, governor of Texas, and a fan of cowboy hats.  In his first few months in office, he dealt with North Korea’s hostility, made progress with stem cell research, and introduced the No Child Left Behind Act, of which even the Democrats were in favor.  He enacted the largest tax cuts ever and held a high approval rating while doing so.

 

            The citizens of Crawford loved him.  I remember smiling and shaking my head in disbelief at the mention of our little town on news channels.  At the time I was working as a waitress in the small café/convenience store in town.  I was used to serving my friends and their parents; I never saw a stranger until Bush moved in.  Soon we were serving members of the Secret Service in their time off.  We still had our everyday lives though, and to us, they were just normal people.   The frequent call from Bush’s ranch for a to-go order became normal, and no matter how many prying reporters came in attempting to find out if our new neighbor was in town, we were not talking.  Honestly, we did not care that much; we would rather protect his privacy than talk to some out-of-towner.  I have to laugh when I think about how much money they would have offered me if they had only known that handwritten on a scrap piece of paper behind my register was the ranch’s phone number.

            Bush even showed up at the Coffee Station himself to eat a cheeseburger a handful of times.   His daughters used our gas pumps and came in for a candy bar as if they were locals.  We just let them go about their business without a word.  We honestly did not care that much about their presence amongst us.  They were people just like us.  In fact, as we would with anyone else new in town, we invited George and his family to our get–togethers.  I know it is hard to believe now, but he actually came to most.  I remember him showing up to a football game once, church on Sunday, a bar-be-que at my friend Brittney’s and the annual dance at the community center.  He sent his driver and presidential limo to our school one day so we could get in it, and another day we walked outside to find one of his helicopters landing on the football field, just so we could see it.  We enjoyed these subtle changes in our lives.  He made us feel special, and we welcomed the Bush’s with open arms, as long as our little farm town stayed quiet.   But it did not for long.

 

            The attacks of September 11, just eight months after Bush had taken office, had a huge impact on our country.  Not only did terrorism affect government leaders, but the average American citizen’s outlook on life and pride for his country changed also.   Lee Greenwood’s “Proud to be an American” was resurrected and every American was singing it while hoisting their flags to full mast.  “Freedom isn’t free” was plastered on every bumper speeding down I-35, putting along a rural ranch road, and parked at the local Wal-Mart.  Patriotism was everywhere.

            George Bush declared a global War on Terrorism against those who had attacked America, and our nation was ready to fight.  Bush’s approval ratings soared up to as high as ninety percent.  Americans wanted something done about what had been done to them, and they needed leadership from someone they trusted. 

 

            In Crawford, patriotism soared as well, but not in the locals.  Soon I was rolling silverware for fifty as I watched stranger after stranger file out of tour buses, just to see the place where Bush lived.  I was busy taking photographs of customers beside our life-size Bush cardboard cutout, selling “Crawford, Texas: Home of President Bush” T-shirts, and keeping up with the waiting list of hungry customers from all over the world.  We never saw George again, just his highly protected convoy stop at the light every now and then. 

 

The war in Iraq was declared in 2003 to apprehend Saddam Hussein and his weapons of mass destruction.  Hussein was arrested and sentenced shortly after, and American troops discovered that no weapons of mass destruction existed.  With no exit strategy implemented, American soldiers remained in Iraq, and the war waged on as Americans watched gas prices soar to an all-time high and their sons die overseas for a war of which the mission was unclear.  They slowly began to lose their jobs and their grocery bills skyrocketed; they were fed up and desperate.  Bush’s approval rating plummeted to below thirty percent.  The nation felt as if they had been betrayed.  They wanted him out of office.

 

We wanted him out of Crawford.   Slowly tourists stopped coming, yet for every tourist that was not visiting, ten protestors were.  They even began to buy up our land.  Cindy Sheehan’s son Casey died in Iraq fighting, and when she came to town to tell Bush how she felt, so did everyone else—and they were mad.  Main Street was now a sea of loud, angry protestors; news vans parked in the street; explicit signs were posted up all over our once sleepy, private town.  Our grass was trampled on, our crops ruined.  Driving became impossible through the mobs of people.  And they stayed for months. 

We hated Cindy Sheehan and her anti-Bush army.  We hated those pro-Bush activists who came to protest the protestors.  We hated the tour buses.  We hated CNN.  We hated anyone with a camera.  Visitors became intruders.  We did not care what they believed in or why they had come; we just wanted them gone.  My neighbors put their houses up for sale, and many people left the town that their great-great grandparents had grown up in and every generation after that.  It was unbearable for us.  Bush became a curse word.

I moved out of Crawford as soon as I could, and although the dot on the map has not moved, my hometown no longer exists.  In less than five months, George W. Bush’s presidential term will be up, and I, like the rest of America, am counting down.

 

Author's Note

Pick it apart. Edit!! The students in my class are too nice, and my prof has too many to grade to pay close attention. Any suggestions, criticism, or comments are welcome. I will not be offended by anything!

Reviews

[SM Davis]

This is a very astute write! Aside from the formatting, I find nothing in here to pick apart. i.e. the first paragraph should be indented OR the rest of the paragraphs should NOT be indented. your puncutation is fine, your use of vocabulary is proper and subject appropriate. I think you'll do fine with this.

[SM Davis]

let's try this again...didn't let me rate it.