By Erin Quinn
Cox News Service
CRAWFORD, Texas — To say this tiny town made famous by President Bush is all abuzz with excitement for his daughter’s May 10 ranch wedding would be a vast exaggeration.
It’s just not.
Or so many of its residents say.
With the exception of a coffee mug being sold at the Yellow Rose, the dwindling number of gift shops that have made money for years off eclectic Bush souvenirs aren’t pushing any wedding paraphernalia.
The Coffee Station restaurant and convenience store isn’t running a menu special named for the 26-year-old first daughter — not even a slice of wedding cake.
Even celebrity-crazed high school girls say they’re making plans to avoid the havoc in town that weekend.
Is it possible that Crawford residents are, well — Bushed?
Not really.
“Regardless of what everybody says, it’s an exciting time,” says Dorothy Spanos, owner of the Coffee Station. “You don’t always have the president’s daughter marrying in your backyard.”
The first family announced in August the engagement of their daughter and Henry Hager, 26, a former White House intern. Weeks later, the couple announced the wedding would take place at the president’s 1,600-acre ranch just west of here.
Spanos says she was thrilled because the wedding will bolster Crawford’s role in history. She fondly remembers when President Nixon’s daughter, Tricia, was married in the White House in 1971.
Other Crawford residents are less excited about it.
“I’m just going to hide (that day),” 44-year-old Kirt Love says. “It’s not like I have an invitation. I’d just as soon duck out and hide out because of all the traffic and the craziness. All it’s going to be is people asking directions to the ranch.”
Love, a Gulf War veteran and farmer, acknowledges some other Crawford residents’ sentiments, especially about the town’s fleeting time in the presidential limelight.
“This is going to be kind of the last hoorah for Crawford,” he says. “Once he goes, he’ll pretty much take the last of the economy with him.”
Marilyn Judy, a teacher who heads the Crawford Chamber of Commerce, partially agrees.
“It’ll be the last dance for Crawford — his last big event,” she says. “He’ll come here occasionally after but the media won’t follow him around as much.”
So then what happens to Crawford?
“I’ve lived here 30 years, and it’ll just go back to the little town it was,” Judy says. “The shop owners will still get some tourists wanting to see where he lived and what it was all about.”
As for that “last dance,” Judy says, locals aren’t likely to see the wedding attendees, only some news media types and curious onlookers and tourists from far and near.
She says she has been told wedding guests will park or land in Waco, then travel to President Bush’s Prairie Chapel Ranch in vans.
Spanos says that’s just as well.
“We’re just going to do business as usual that day,” she says. “It’s going to be a low-key wedding anyway.”
She says she’ll likely put a message of congratulations to the couple on the restaurant’s marquee and have extra food and staff on hand.
Jenna Bush visited the restaurant on several occasions during her time at the University of Texas — each time ordering the fried jalapenos, Spanos says.
“That’s her mom’s choice, too,” she says.
Bill Johnson, Crawford resident and owner of the Yellow Rose novelty shop, says he anticipates his store’s mug, emblazoned with the couple’s engagement photo, will be a hot-ticket item, along with other Bush family souvenirs.
“It’s beginning to pick up,” he says. “It’s really going to be hellbent for leather (for the wedding).”
Even so, Johnson chose not to go all-out.
“This is enough, really,” he says of the mug. “Originally, she wanted the whole thing to be very private and we’re going to respect that.”
equinn@wacotrib.com
757-5748
