It was unusually warm that night in December of 1973. The grass was thick with dew, each little droplet brilliant with the reflected image of the bright moon above. Breaking the stillness of the 2:00 AM hour, a cacophany of clanging metal, screeching tires, and crazed shouts erupted which woke some residents of this toney neighborhood inside the DC Beltway.
Among them were a well-respected and well-heeled couple from Texas, George and Barbara Bush. George was in the midst of an upward rise in the Republican Party, recently having been asked by President Nixon to lead the Republican National Committee, an offer he was seriously considering.
The future head of the RNC was dismayed to look out his window and see a familiar Lincoln Town Car amidst several garbage cans and their recent contents, most of which were strewn across the Bush lawn as well as the two lawns south of the Bush home.
He pounded the wall next to the window with his open palm. “Got-dammit! Got-dammit, Dubya!”
Barbara Bush, having not heard the crash, stirred from her sleep and removed her baby blue sleep mask. “George? George, honey, what is it?”
By this time, George had stepped into his slippers and was slinging his robe on. “It’s Dubya. Looks like he and Marvin took out Alan Cranston's garbage for him.”
Barbara, half asleep and confused, said “Oh…why that was nice of them to do that for Alan. Come to bed George.” She slid her sleep mask back over her eyes, and was dreaming before George had made it to the stairs.
Meanwhile, George Bush’s sons were busying themselves with trying to undo what had been so loudly accomplished moments before. Sixteen year-old Marvin Bush, drunk for only the second time in his life, stumbled and fell over one of the four garbage cans as he tried to pick up a turkey carcass. A cry of agony escaped his lungs as his shoulder rolled over the top of the metal can, but as he sank into the dew-softened grass his eyelids grew heavy and closed, leaving the events of the next 20 minutes or so a complete mystery to him.
Marvin’s brother, George W. Bush, Dubya to his parents, was tip-toeing hurriedly from can to fallen can, stopping at each one as he considered where to begin. But he was too overwhelmed by the carnage of Christmas dinner leftovers, wine bottles and juice-stained newspapers, and rather than pick anything up, he merely ran about muttering “Oh, holy shit. Shit. Jesus Christ.”
This was the scene that greeted George Bush, the elder, as he stomped across his lawn while trying to tie his robe. “Dubya!”, he hissed, trying and failing to suppress his rage so as not to wake the neighbors, as evidenced by the many porch and yard lights that were now increasingly illuminating his approach to the curb-straddling Town Car.
“Dubya! What in Sam Hell is going on here?”
Dubya recoiled at the sound of his father’s voice. He turned to face him, but also took a few steps backward and behind one of the fallen cans. He could see the rage in his father’s face and instinctively grasped for something to deflect blame. Pointing at Marvin’s resting body, he stammered, “Marvin…Marvin did some…Marvin was out and he called me, and he was drunk as all Hell and then he crashed the Town Car but I tried…”
“Shut up, Dubya! Look what you did. You missed the damn driveway by 40 yards. You’re drunk as a skunk, aren’t you? You got Marvin drunk, too, didn’t ya?”
Dubya abruptly bent down and began gathering loose garbage up in his arms. “Help me, Daddy. We can put this garbage back away and we’ll just go to bed. Nobody heard us yet.”
“Ah, bullshit, Dubya!,” said George, losing his battle to keep his voice low. “You woke up the whole damn neighborhood. You trying to ruin me? Might as well go drive through Nixon’s yard tonight, too. I’ve about had it with your shenanigans, mister!”
Dubya was incensed by his father’s mention of Nixon. His face contorted with disgust as he spat out his words. “Oh, you’re so important. You’re such a big man, I forgot. You don’t care about me.” George Bush’s shoulders slumped, for he was already well-familiar with this particular discussion, though it was the first time he would have it in the midst of a pile of garbage.
But Dubya was just getting started. Instead of retreating, he was now emboldened by his rage and drunkeness. He kicked the can he was previously hiding behind out from between them. “THONK!” It skidded across the wet lawn and for a moment both George Bushes and a small number of assorted window-watching neighbors watched it glide along, coming to a rest under a neatly-trimmed juniper next to Senator Cranston's house.
He stepped forward, pointing at his father. “And I’m tired of you telling me what to do. I’m old enough to do my own thing now. I don’t need you!”
George Bush snorted and sneered and cried out, “Oh, really? You don’t need me? That’s a laugh. I didn’t hear you refusing my help when I got you into Yale and the National Guard, or when I got you that date with…”
Dubya cut in, pounding a fist into his open hand. “I did those things. I did that all by myself. You have to respect me, because I’m a pilot. I’m just as good as you!”
George Bush couldn’t believe he was hearing this. “Son, we both know you aren’t a pilot. It was one thing to say all that while you needed that Guard assignment, but now it’s just sad. I know what you do. I know you wear that flight suit around at parties and stuff, and I’m sure the girls all think it’s real foxy, but you got to cut that out. If any of my friends from the service caught wind of that, I’d never hear the end of it.”
Dubya was pacing back and forth, tears streaming down his face as he clenched his fists and teeth. “I AM a pilot! I AM! I can fly big airplanes, because I done it before.”
Exasperated, his father countered: “You were on a training flight, son. You know the other guy was flying the plane. It was a training flight.”
Dubya was vehement now, stamping his feet and screaming, “Why do you have to say all bad stuff about me? I’m sick of you talking down on me. You don’t treat Neil and Jebby that way. I’m not a stupid!” He put up his fists in an exaggerated boxing style and began circling slowly around his father. “I wanna fight you. Right now! Manomano! Manomano!”
George Bush was confused by his son’s aggressive display and language. “Do you mean mano a mano? Well you’re out of luck, son, because there’s only one man on this lawn right now.”
Dubya began punching the air. “Fight me! Fight me!”
That was the scene Donald Horton, curator of the Hirschhorn Museum and Bush neighbor, saw when he finally opened his front door. “Bush!”, he screamed. “Keep that goddamn half-wit son of yours out of my yard. And I better not see any of Cranston’s goddamned garbage or your other halfwit son on my lawn tomorrow morning.”
Dubya turned and yelled, “Shut up, Mr. Horton! You talk to me with respect, because I’m a pilot and I’ll shoot your house with my airplane!” This deeply embarrassed his father, who could only look at his now-dew-soaked slippers and pray that Horton would never repeat what Dubya had just said.
Mercifully, Horton let it slide. “Outta my yard, Bush. Keep ‘im out.”
As the door closed, George Bush turned to his son, who was rapidly losing steam after a night of partying topped by the heavy adrenaline rush of challenging his father. He softened his tone and extended his hand to his son, standing 10 feet away and laboring to keep his breath. “Listen, Georgie. Let’s just forget about all this, OK? Look at us, out here in the yard when we should be all tucked in. Is this any way for Yale men to act?”
It was a smooth ploy. Dubya’s eye’s perked up at the mention of Yale in a positive context. “We are Yalies, aren’t we Daddy? And that ain’t right for a Yalie to do the wrasslin' and hollerin’, is it?”
Bush knew he had his son now. “Oh, you’re just going through a tough time in life, Dubya. Everybody struggles to find their path. We’ll get you straightened out, get you a job down in Houston, get you set up with one of our drilling companies. How’s that sound? You wanna be an oilman like your Daddy?”
Dubya was crying again, nodding as he reached for his father’s warm embrace. “Come on, Dubya, let’s get Marvin all rounded up here. He is just drunk, right?”
Dubya nodded, and soon they were able to stir Marvin enough that he asked why he was all wet and whether there was any more sloe gin.
And so the three of them trudged across the lawn of Don Horton, back toward the Bush house. Then Dubya stopped and said, “What about all of that garbage, Daddy? Hadn’t we oughta clean that up?”
But George Bush didn’t even break his stride, barking back over his shoulder, “Shit, Dubya, we pay people to do that.”
