Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
'Experienced Gang Pusher Wanted' read the signs on the way into Midland. They're not
talking about a new vendor for the Crips and the Bloods; it's just another of the countless
pleas for workers in the booming local energy industry.
Midland is the more dudelike of the twin cities, a sprawling series of middle class,
white-collar subdivisions, with mirrored high-rises towering above a nearly lifeless down-
town. The oil industry is conservative, and Midland County has one of the most conser-
vative voting records in the country: in 2012 80% of voters chose Mitt Romney.
Sights
CAF Airpower Museum
( 432-563-1000;
www.airpowermuseum.org
;
9600 Wright Dr; adult/child $10/7; 9am-5pm Tue-Sat)
Historic
warplanes are the stars at this impressive museum at Midland International Airport. The
home of the Commemorative Air Force (formerly the politically incorrectly named Con-
federate Air Force), this sizable museum has a large collection of planes, mostly from
WWII. It has an excellent section devoted to that war, which doesn't flinch from tough
subjects such as the atom bomb.
Most moving is the nose-art collection: the bawdy images painted on aircraft by men
far from home tasked with unspeakable duties.
MUSEUM
George W Bush Childhood Home
( 432-685-1112;
www.bushchildhoodhome.com
; 1412 W Ohio St; adult/child $5/3; 10am-5pm Tue-Sat, 2-5pm
Sun)
George and Barbara Bush moved to west Texas from patrician New England in 1948.
A growing family, the Bushes lived in this house from 1952 to 1956, when their son Ge-
orge W was aged five to nine.
What's most surprising about this modest house is that even a rising oil exec like Ge-
orge HW didn't live in the 1950s equivalent of a McMansion. There's plenty of material
on the life of W that may delight fans and irritate others, but all will find this well-curated
museum within a perfectly restored house to be a fascinating look at life in a simpler era.
The museum gift shop has pretty much every book about W by aids and acolytes you
can imagine, plus material on W's wife, Laura, who writes about growing up in Midland
in
Spoken from the Heart
. There's also an earlier Bush house in Odessa.
HISTORIC SITE
Permian Basin Petroleum Museum
MUSEUM
