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LIKE "ROOTS" ONLY WHITE

In the great American TV program "Roots," author Kunta Kinte traced his ancestry back to the early times in our history.

My heart was touched by this great drama of history. That is why I intend to embark upon the same journey in this chapter. It may not be as interesting as "Roots," since it will not be filled with the rich tapestry of culture enjoyed by our blacks, and it will not feature all of the wonderfully colorful slave names which are so entertaining to listen to when the old-time blacks say them with their funny accents. But it will reveal the history of the Bush family, from the pre-historical times of my grandfather all the way to the present times.

To understand a leader, one need not necessarily look into the past to that particular leader's noble forebears to gain insight into that leader's qualities and the "stuff" that he is made of. History has no bearing on the present. One must only look at the kind of man he has grown up to be. Is he likened to the great oak, which will not waiver in the face of the winds of the opposers? Or is he like the mighty rock, which steadfastly governs his fellow man with immobile resolve and the wisdom of the stones?

In this first chapter of my autobiography, we will take a momentous ancestral journey through my life in which new facts may come to light, creating a context to understand the man who leads our nation.

But let there be no misunderstanding. I will not do any research for this book. That is not the kind of journey I am talking about. I believe that if a book is to be an accurate account of a man's life and times, it must come from the heart, and not from dusty old volumes with a lot of complicated words and pages yellowed by the eons.

What I know is this: In the beginning, the universe was a formless void. Then on the first day, God created Adam. Next there were a series of generations that came and went upon the Earth. Finally, some 100 years ago, my grandfather, Prescott Bush was born.

Prescott Bush served with distinction as a United States Senator, I am told. His son, George H. W. Bush, also heeded the call of public service and was elected President in the last century, serving one term in which a Great War was begun with a bold code name and determined theme music.

In contrast, I am now a two-term President. Will there be a third? It is a hypotheoretical question to which only the prophets can know the answer.

It is worth noting that each new generation of the Bush family achieves more accomplishments than the last.

Who knows where it all will lead? Will my brother Jeb follow my success with an accomplished administration of his own? Will my daughters serve as twin Presidents who will reign for eight years after that? Or perhaps, one of my daughters will be President, and the other will be Vice President, and then the Vice President will become the President, and vice versa, so that there will be a Bush in the White House for seven generations. Would the constitutional lawyers allow such a scenario? No one can say. The sheer number of possibilities are enough to confuse the mind.

One thing is clear. There will always be members of the Bush family ready to answer the call to serve their country and steer it off the cliff of greatness.

But that is not what this first chapter is about. This is not a chapter about future-times. It is one about the times of history. The history of the Bush name.

As I have said, Prescott Bush lived in an ancient and simpler time, a time when we were not fighting a global war against the enemies of freedom like today. It was a long-ago time of peace and tranquility, the 1930s and 40s.

My grandfather demonstrated my family's high ideals and business sense in the area of entrepreneuring. He was a successful banker and merchant who made his fortune by wisely investing in a promising foreign country. It was a country whose fortunes were changing for the better, and who had a promising future under the steady hand of an inspirational leader.

The proud troops of this country marched through the streets of the cities in gleaming uniforms and shiny black boots that would goose-step high and proud. The great leader was hailed by his people with outstretched arms of awe and wonder.

It took a savvy investor like my grandfather to see that this was an excellent business opportunity -- a country that was going places. An industrious nation that operated with military-like precision, tolerating nothing but pure perfection in all of its undertakings and citizenry.

This strong and patriotic country grew to become one of the leading economic and political powers in all of Europe, eventually surpassing all the world in its manufacture of fine automobiles and electric shavers.

Prescott Bush also was a devoted family man, passing along his talent for business and politics on to his eldest son, George H. W. Bush, who would become my father.

My father met my mother at a debutante party when she was 30. He was immediately enchanted by her horse-like beauty, her forceful nature, and her immense stature. She loved his gangly limbs, and his rugged, upper-crust Connecticut standing.

Barbara Bush, who my mother is also known as, was a good-hearted and strict woman, descended from hardy stock. She was sired and fed to an impressive girth by a wealthy family, led by her father, whose hard work had built a fortune in the doily business.

Life was not easy in Doily Country. Many families worked all day to create the fine doilies, often suffering from frillyitis of the forearms and fingers. This of course is caused by the repetitious and exacting movements required to manipulate the tiny threads into one-of-a-kind doily patterns.

My mother narrowly escaped this fate, as her stump-like fingers were unsuited for doily weaving. She found a place in the family business, not as a mill worker, sewing the lacy, ornamental napkins and coasters, but in the parlors of customers, placing the doilies on armchairs and Victorian fainting couches throughout the land.

It was a hard life, but a dainty one. My mother would survive the great trial of her doily-placing toil, inherit a great doily legacy, and live her life surrounded by doilies. She would be consumed by the lacy ornaments, wearing them around her neck and her face. During lean times, she would be forced to boil doily remnants in water to make doily soup, or put them on stale bread with doilyonnaise to make sandwiches to feed her children.

My mother wears doilies to this day, and insists they cover every surface she touches. The doily is the proud symbol of her family's history.

Yet it conflicted with her inner nature, her true heritage of eons past.

Family legend tells that Barbara Bush's genealogy goes back to the Visigoth hordes, a strong and unwavering clan of warriors who laid siege to the Lands of the Ancient Kings. With their battle-axes and lances, they would leave nothing but ruin and blood in their wake, taking donkeys as their brides.

Apart from my mother, my father, George H. W. Bush, is the finest man I ever knew. He was born in a mud hut, in Kennebunkport, Maine. His father, the modest state senator and landowner of whom I have already written a great deal (see preceding pages), taught him the value of hard work.

My father hauled bank notes and securities by hand through the New England snow, carrying buckets of money from his father's banks all the way to the family's makeshift estate in the Kennebunkport, Maine territory. His spirits refused to be daunted by the hard work, and as the sun set, you could often hear his lyrical and beautiful money-hauling song float across the countryside.

My father's humble beginnings would eventually lead him to the highest office in the land. But to get there, he would have to make the ultimate sacrifice, and give his life during the Great War.

It was a sad loss for our family, but a proud loss, for he had died fighting for America's freedom against the feared Burmese.

After the war, his death would be commemorated by a grateful nation, who proudly elected him to the House of Representatives in Texas -- the first corpse to ever attain such a high honor. He served with distinction, fighting for the rights of all undead Texans during the turbulent Civil Rights era of the 1950s and 60s.

He would be offered the Chairmanship of the Republican Party, the first-ever Zombie to hold that post, and a singular honor for a dead man in the years of the Nixon administration. He was the standard bearer of Republican virtue during this time, and looked on proudly with his dead, black eyes.

My father would hold many important posts in public life in the coming years, and in some, I would play modest parts.

We will get to such achievements in due time, but for now, we move to the next phase of my life, the part where it begins.

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