LBJ's Place

"What a difference a day makes," said Andy, when we pulled out of the motel parking lot and drove back to Amistad Reservoir. "Was it Governors Landing where we took pictures yesterday? Let's try it again," he suggested. Instead of sheets of grey where sky met water, we saw only blue--pale baby blue above, bright azure below and a strip of aqua painted along the bridge of friendship between the United States and Mexico. Only a Border Patrol van parked by the bridge and the popping sounds of guns spoiled the serenity of the idyllic morning.

"It's probably a gun club," said Andy. "This is Texas. You have nothing to worry about here." We walked to the check point at the center of the bridge. It was gated and closed until 10:00 a.m. Another hour. Pops sounded again. I wasn't so trusting.

The Border Patrol Immigration stop on Route #277 definitely checked us for drugs. One agent walked the dog slowly around Little Red while the other one asked the questions: Where are you coming from? Are you American citizens? Where are you headed? I thought you were driving to Connecticut.

"Real funny. It's a good thing we aren't in Las Vegas," I told Andy after we pulled away.
We left the Chihuahuan Desert behind us soon after turning onto Route #377. Juniper, cedar and western oak dominated the landscape as we drove north into a heavy bank of grey clouds. Two mule deer dashed across the road; later, a nervous road runner zipped in front of us. At 2,030 feet we passed a goat farm. Andy tooted Little Red, and the goats that weren't already running dashed into the trees. I guess they don't get much little red vehicular traffic on Sunday morning.

"This is what they call the Texas Hill Country," said Andy some miles north. A flock of turkeys pecked seeds by the roadside. On both sides of us the sheep and cattle ranches looked sadly overgrazed. At some, animals had stripped every blade of grass from between evergreen trees, leaving the rocky soil bare except for an occasional sotol or prickly pear.
By the time we reached Route #41, the layers of grey stratus clouds drizzled lightly, and fog draped the scrub trees. "I swear I saw an ostrich," I told Andy, as we passed a ranch labeled exotics. Later I did see five camels near a ranch gate.

Farther north on Route #41 the Brenda J ranch advertised day hunting, buffalo jerky and exotics. "Lots of these are for sale," said Andy pulling over so two pickups could pass. "Guess I wasn't driving fast enough for them," he added, as they tore around us at 70 m.p.h. on the two-lane country road.

From Route #10 we turned east onto Route #16. "This Hill Country is advertised as retirement location," said Andy. "It seems to have lots of hunting ranches though. It's probably really pretty in the summer when all the trees are out." Misty rain sprinkled the windshield. "But today's weather is worse than yesterday's now."
We turned onto Route #87/290. The sign said Texas Hill Country Trail, and the high school welcomed the Billies back to school. "I'm guessing it has a connection to the goat farms outside of Fredericksburg. It's a nice little town," I told Andy, as we drove down Main Street. Lots of people window shopped as the drizzle lightened.

"It's a tourist town," he answered and kept driving.

"I guess we're not shopping," I said.

At Lyndon B. Johnson National Historical Park we registered at the Visitor Center and browsed in the gift shop. The tour, offered on CD, followed a drive around the Presidential ranch. I explained that we had no CD player. "We'll just read the info," I told the young ranger. He seemed surprised.
Junction School, a one-room school house near the ranch, introduced LBJ to formal education. Later this affected him profoundly, because he saw the weaknesses of American education. As President he signed more than 60 bills, including the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, and he created Head Start. Upon his retirement to the Hill Country, LBJ visited the Head Start Program across the Pedernales River, where the children called him "Mr. Jelly Bean" because he brought them treats of candy and apples.

The driving tour took us past the LBJ birthplace (1908) where LBJ lived for four years as first son of Sam and Rebekah Johnson; the Johnson Family Cemetery, where both LBJ (1973) and Lady Bird (2007) were laid to rest; and the home of his grandparents, Sam Ealy Sr. and Eliza Johnson. The road continued past the airstrip, Hereford grazing pasture, Johnson show barn and goat pasture to the Texas White House with its Lincoln automobiles and Air Force One jet.

Here, at the ranch house that LBJ purchased from his aunt in 1951, Ranger Larry invited us to join four other adults for the guided tour. Effective with his knowledge and stories about LBJ, he showed us the telephone, attached to the dining room table of this driven workhorse ("He worked 18 to 20 hours a day," said Larry.) and the refrigerator ("He looked at the frig in his own kitchen and thought, 'A child could play Hide and Seek and get locked in,' so he demanded safety legislation that all refrigerators would open from the inside," said Larry.).

The house, comfortable and not ostentatious, reflected the spirit of the 36th President. The man who demanded the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Fair Housing Act of 1968, and the American Indian Civil Rights Act of 1968, was inspired by the spirit of the land and people of Hill Country, Texas. That spirit motivated LBJ's and Lady Bird's lives and acts of public service. In our half-hour tour Ranger Larry helped us understand the complexities of this modern President with his old American frontier values, who carried the weight of Viet Nam and other skirmishes on his shoulders. As LBJ's friend Reverend Billly Graham said at his funeral in 1973, "No one could ever understand Lyndon Johnson unless they understood the land and the people from which he came."

"Do you really want to stop here?" asked Andy, as we returned to the Sauer-Beckmann Living History Farm at the entrance to the LBJ State Park and Historic Site.

"Sure," I said, hopping out of Little Red.

The working farm represented rural life on a Texas-German cotton farm at the turn of the century from 1900-1918. It was restored to the way it looked in 1918.

Two Jersey cows mooed in discontent as we walked by. "They aren't happy," I said to Andy.

"Well, they don't have anything to eat in the pen," he answered. We peeked in the barn at the tack room and the old wooden carriage. It didn't take long to find out what upset the cows. Behind the barn, four men gutted a steer. The beheaded animal, half skinned, was being hoisted by hand into a tree from a cart attached to a truck. We watched open-mouthed.

Interpretive Guide JoAnna explained later, "We butcher a steer and a pig each year. This is a working farm from 1918. We'll make beef sausage in a few days." She gave us a private tour of the Johann and Christine Sauer original rock and log cabin of 1869. "One of their ten children was midwife at the birth of LBJ," she explained. We learned that after Emil and Emma Beckmann acquired the property in 1900, they eventually added to the old rock structure and built porches connecting to a Victorian house of pressed tin, with bedrooms for their three children.

In the kitchen JoAnna showed us fresh milk, curds and whey, yogurt and cheese from the cows and chocolate pecan pie she and others had prepared in the old wood stove. "We make a big noon meal every day for the workers here, just as the farmer's wife would have done in 1918," she said.
For an hour, time stood still as we listened and explored. Chickens and turkeys picked for seeds not far outside the door, and the disgruntled dairy cows were led out to pasture once the men had finished their butchering tasks. A fascinating look at life in general and LBJ's heritage in particular, the Texas farm reminded me of a quote by First Lady, Lady Bird Johnson. "The nature we are concerned with ultimately is human nature."

The farm showed us a glimpse of our roots as Americans.