LBJ, Telephones, Televisions and the Texas Whitehouse

Saturday, January 30, 2010

  It got down around 0 degrees Celsius last night.  A thin layer of ice had formed on some of the water in the ditches but was already melting where the sun hit it.  The wind made it feel a bit uncomfortable but the sun was shining and warmer weather is coming in a couple of days.  We have decided to visit the Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ) Library and Museum, which is located on the grounds of the University of Texas.  It was opened in 1971, two years before his death and contains several floors of documents from the public and personal life of LBJ and some of his contemporaries.  You enter the building from a large plaza into the third floor foyer.  As you meander through the museum you are struck by the energy of the man.  He would rise at 4:00 AM and work till midnight.  He watched three television news networks – remotely adjusting the volume for the particular one he wanted to listen to. He would read Senate proceedings while talking on the telephone…of which there were many throughout the Whitehouse.  As you enter the staircase to go up to the fourth floor you are met by a massive wall of red.  These are the sleeves of all the documents held in the library.  The red sleeves are each emblazoned with a gold presidential sea.  The wall rises for four floors and contains over 45 million pages and 650,000 photographs.

 

As a Canadian teenager I knew little of LBJ, other than the fact that he became the President after the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963 and he was the president responsible for the escalation of the Vietnam war.  I suppose these two facts overshadowed ALL of the good work that he had done on the domestic front.  And the good legislation that he shepherded through the Congress was substantial.  Apparently 1,000 bills were enacted by him.  One interpreter stated, “I don’t think that 1,000 bills have been passed in all the time since.”  He brought in civil rights legislation, equality housing rights, consumer protection legislation; equal education legislation; Medicare for senior citizens and environmental protection. All this legislation came under the umbrella of his Great Society program.

 

Sunday, January 31, 2010

It was quite cool again this morning and there was a thin fog hanging in the air as we headed up US290 to Johnson City and the location of the LBJ Texas Whitehouse. This area of Texas is at the eastern edge of what is commonly referred to as “Hill Country”.

Johnson City was LBJ’s boyhood home, but he had been born very close to his grandfather’s homestead on the banks of the Pedernales River.  In 1951, as a young senator he and his wife Lady Bird purchased a ranch about 1/4 mile southwest of his grandfather’s home also on the banks of the Pedernales River.  LBJ would spend about 20% of his time here carrying on the business of the Presidency earning it the name of the Texas Whitehouse.  Although Air Force One could not land here, there was an airstrip that could accommodate smaller commuter jets that ferried him and guests back to Austin. 

Every room in the house had a telephone.  There was even one mounted to the underside of the dining room table.  (He would have loved today’s technology.)  He had a fleet of cars (mostly white Lincolns), that he would drive around the ranch checking on his cattle and looking at the deer grazing in the fields.  He was also very fond of crossing the Pedernales River by way of a low water dam/road crossing.  (Rather than bridging mostly dry, river and creek beds, a concrete pad is laid and then a flood gauge is posted at both sides.  During a flash flood these concrete pads are inundated but you can judge the depth and decide if you want to try it.)  The yard is filled with huge Live Oak trees which provide a beautiful canopy even during the cold winter months.

  Lyndon Johnson died here on January 22, 1973 of a massive heart attack, at the age of 64.  He had taken his usual morning drive around the ranch to check on the livestock and came home and retired to his room for a nap. He was holding a telephone when he was found by Secret Service agents.  His body Lay in State, at the LBJ Library and he was buried in the family cemetery along the banks of the Pedernales River, less than 200 yards from the home in which he was born, in 1908.  His monument is a simple block of pink Texas granite, inscribed with his name and bearing the Seal of the presidency, and simply saying “36th President of the United States of America.”   (Lady Bird Johnson was buried next to her  husband when she died of natural causes in 2007 at the age of 94.)