Bush Would Rather Be Relaxing in Texas

KENNEBUNKPORT, Maine — This, for George Walker Bush, is the un-Crawford.

His nearly 1,600-acre ranch in Texas is secluded, the house he built situated far from the public road.

But here in Kennebunkport, the rambling wood and stone family home where he spent childhood summers stands on Walker's Point, a low promontory that juts into the Gulf of Maine. For years, tourists have been able to catch a glimpse of the seaside compound.

More important than privacy, though, is the fact that since Bush moved to Crawford from Austin in 2000, shortly before entering the White House, Prairie Chapel Ranch has represented a touchstone for Bush -- as fitting for him politically as his work boots and jeans are to the ranch land he is always trying to tame.

Still, he returned to Walker's Point on Thursday for a four-day visit at his parents' home, drawn by family ties and family events into the web of his often-overlooked New England origins, generations deeper than his nearly six decades in Texas.

Although Bush grew up in Texas -- and the twang in his speech suggests generations of Texans behind him -- his family roots are in the Northeast: His grandfather represented Connecticut in the U.S. Senate. His father was born in Massachusetts. His mother was raised in a tony suburb of New York City. He was born in Connecticut.

It was the wedding of a nephew, George Prescott Bush, the son of Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, that brought him here two years ago, his most recent visit. It is the wedding of a cousin (actually his father's cousin's son, Walker Stapleton) on Saturday at the small stone chapel of St. Ann's Episcopal Church, just a few hundred yards down the road from Walker's Point, that has brought him here again.

In a confluence of unanticipated occurrences, the family this weekend is celebrating a baptism and mourning the death of the president's great-aunt, 91-year-old Grace Walker.

Walker's Point is an ancestral home of the summer variety -- albeit one where the president is still reminded to mind his manners.

Two years ago, during a campaign visit to New Hampshire, his wife recounted a much-told tale about a visit she and the president had paid to Walker's Point a few years before.

"George woke up at 6 a.m., early in the morning as usual, and he padded downstairs for a cup of coffee. And then he went in his parents' bedroom and sat on the sofa and put his feet up," Laura Bush said.