Chapter - V

Poppy and Mommy

``Oh Mother, Mother! What have you done? Behold! the heavens do ope. The gods look
down, and this unnatural scene they laugh at. ''

Coriolanus, Shakespeare.

The Silver Spoon

George Herbert Walker Bush was born in Milton, Massachusetts, on June 12, 1924.
During the next year the family moved to Greenwich, Connecticut, and established their
permanent residency.

Prescott and Dorothy Walker Bush had had a son, Prescott, Jr., before George. Later
there was a little sister, Nancy, and another brother, Jonathan; a fourth son, William (``
Bucky ''), was born 14 years after George, in 1939.

George was named after his grandfather, George Herbert Walker. Since George's mother
called Grandfather Walker Pop, '' she began calling her son, his namesake, little Pop,
'' or `` Poppy. '' Hence, Poppy Bush is the name the President's family friends have called
him since his youth.

Prescott, Sr. joined W.A. Harriman & Co. May 1, 1926. With his family's lucrative
totalitarian projects, George Bush's childhood began in comfort and advanced
dramatically to luxury and elegance.

The Bushes had a large, dark-shingled house with `` broad verandas and a portecochere ''
(originally a roofed structure extending out to the driveway to protect the gentry who
arrived in coaches) on Grove Lane in the Deer Park section of Greenwich.

Here they were attended by four servants--three maids (one of whom cooked) and a
chauffeur.

The U.S.A. was plunged into the Great Depression beginning with the 1929-31 financial
collapses. But George Bush and his family were totally insulated from this crisis. Before
and after the crash, their lives were a frolic, sealed off from the concerns of the
population at large.