Larry wanted to give me a tour of his ranch, so we talked in his pickup, lurching down rutted dirt roads. "No one used to talk about politics around here," he said, steering past Black Angus cattle that lay napping in the shade. "Family feuds have started over all this. You used to be just a neighbor. Now you're a Republican neighbor or a Democratic neighbor. It's taken away the closeness of the community." He pondered this for a moment as he drove, and sighed. "I'll make some people mad for saying this, but I'll tell you what really ticks me off. Bush portrays this as his hometown, and it ain't, He just barreled in here." We kept driving, past cedar thickets and a pasture studded with blooming prickly pear cactus. As we made our way down meandering cow paths, Larry expressed his hope that Bush will take more of an interest in conservation and using natural energy now that he has shown an affinity for the land. "God owns all this," Larry said. "We're just caretakers who are here on this earth for a little while." We had reached his favorite spot, along the banks of Bluff Creek, a peaceful place shaded by hackberries and horse apple trees. The dry creek bed ran past a white limestone bluff, where the ground was littered with the old arrowheads of Tonkawa Indians who had once camped there.