FREDERICKSBURG, Texas -- To know the man, you must know the place. LBJ's "place" is deep in the heart of Texas.
Some U.S. presidents were far-ranging, establishing roots in several locations during their lifetimes.Lincoln, for example, started in Kentucky and spent time in Illinois and Indiana before ending up in Washington, D.C.
But LBJ had a shorter rein. He was born, grew up and died in a 20-mile corridor of what has come to be called Texas Hill Country. He studied in nearby San Marcos at Southwest Texas State Teachers College, where he received at best a mediocre education, and married fellow Texan Claudia Alta Taylor in St. Marks Episcopal Church in San Antonio.
He acquired the Johnson family ranch near Stonewall where he was born and turned it into a showplace that served as the Texas White House where political luminaries visited during his presidency.
Like a horse heading home to the barn, he returned to his ranch after he left Washington. He died there in 1973.
It's no surprise that the Lyndon B. Johnson National Historical Park is among the area's major tourist attractions.
Political pilgrims from all over the country come to set foot on the soil that nurtured our 36th president.
The LBJ ranch house, a familiar site on news broadcasts and the front pages of newspapers during the Johnson presidency, is included on a National Park Service bus tour. The bus stops in the parking lot as the guide explains the layout. The circle of white plastic chairs on the lawn under the canopy of towering live oak is where the president held discussions with his aides. They cooled off by taking a dip in the swimming pool on the front lawn.
A first-floor window nearly obscured by ivy was the president's office away from Washington. He died in the bedroom on the far side of the house where, the guide points out, there are three symmetrical windows.
Lady Bird, who lives in Austin, still visits the ranch on weekends and attends church in Fredericksburg.
Until her death, the ranch house will remain under the watchful eye of the Secret Service and will be closed to the public.
The Hill Country
Texas Hill Country is west of Austin and north of San Antonio, a patchwork of inclines and declines where limestone occasionally pokes through the thin layer of soil. Live oaks (so called because they never drop their leaves) extend broad canopies over a rocky landscape that's better suited to raising goats or sheep than wheat or cotton.
These goliaths of central Texas have overcome the odds in the blazingly hot climate to grow tall and strong. Their limbs cast giant shadows.
Big trees for a big state.
Prickly pear and yucca also thrive in the hill country.
Many of the families that settled there didn't fare as well as the prickly pear and yucca. LBJ's grandparents were among them.
The Johnson Settlement
In 1867, Sam Ealy Johnson Sr. and Eliza Bunton Johnson set up housekeeping in a log cabin in what is now called Johnson Settlement.
The next year Sam started a cattle operation with his brother to drive the animals north along the Chisholm Trail to a railhead in Kansas.
According to the acclaimed biography, "The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Path To Power," by Robert A. Caro, they rounded up unattended cattle on the Texas range and purchased animals on credit from individual ranchers. The price of a Texas steer was $6 to $10, which they sold in Abilene for $30 to $40.
For a time they were the largest cattle driving operation in the area, a big herd in a little corral. They purchased large tracts of land in several counties with their profits.
They operated on credit, paying their Texas bills when they returned home, their pockets bulging with Kansas money.
But in 1871, their tiny empire collapsed when they sold their cattle for rock bottom prices and were unable to pay their bills.
The Johnson brothers had bet the ranch on their cattle operation and they lost.
Sam and his family moved to a farm near Buda.
In 1905, they purchased a ranch near the Pedernales. Their son Sam Ealy Jr., and his wife lived in a humble home nearby. The property was the embryo of what would one day be the LBJ Ranch.
LBJ's grandparents' log cabin at the Johnson Settlement, two square rooms with a breezeway between them, remains much the way it was when Eliza and Sam lived there. Interpreters dressed in period costumes present living history demonstrations.
The property also has a stone barn and a cooler cabin built by Sam's nephew James Polk Johnson, the founder of Johnson City to whom they sold the property when they went under, and a barn built by a German immigrant named John Bruckner in 1884.
Reconstructed birthplace
LBJ was born in a small home on the Johnson Ranch near the Pedernales. It was a typical "dog run" structure -- two squares separated by a breezeway or "dog run." LBJ's grandparents' place was a half mile down the dirt road in one direction. The Junction School was a mile down the road in the other. At the age of 4, little Lyndon ran away to school every day to play with other children during recess. His parents couldn't keep him home. The teacher finally agreed to let him attend even though he was a year too young.
Even at the tender age of 4 he was manipulative. In Caro's biography, LBJ's cousin Ava recalls that Lyndon loved lemon meringue pie. One day, another student, Hugo Klein, said he had a piece in his lunchbox. During recess when Hugo was outside, Lyndon helped himself to the pie. He walked out to play with pie all over his face. When Hugo started crying and Ava asked Lyndon what he'd been up to, he replied, "Ah was just hungry, sister. And ah got me some pie."
The home was torn down in the 1930s but was reconstructed in 1964 and used as a guest house.
Now it's part of the historical park.
Boyhood home
In 1913 when Lyndon was 5, the family moved from the ranch on the Pedernales River into a Victorian clapboard complete with gingerbread trim in Johnson City.
He lived there until he was 26.
The structure has been restored and refurbished much the way it was during LBJ's childhood. It has period furniture and four Johnson family items remain in the house.
It was built in 1901 by the county sheriff and was one of the finest homes in Johnson City. It has a parlor, an entryway that doubled as an office, a dining room, three bedrooms, a bathtub room (a privy was out back) and a kitchen. There is also a sleeping porch.
LBJ's father, Sam Ealy Johnson Jr., was a jack of many trades. He was elected to the state Legislature, was a barber, a self-taught lawyer, a teacher and a dabbler in real estate.
He was also a cotton farmer, and cotton was to him what cattle had been to his grandfather. Sam Ealy Jr. lost his financial shirt when cotton prices plummeted.
After that, the family's finances were never the same. They were at times impoverished. It was the beginning of a downhill slide during which Sam took to drinking and piling up debt.
LBJ's mother, Rebekah Baines Johnson, was a jewel among uncut stones. She had a college education and loved to recite poetry. She taught elocution to neighbor children in the parlor and was a correspondent for newspapers in Austin and Fredericksburg. She cut a distinctive profile in her crinolines and lace and broad-brimmed hats trimmed with ribbon.
The gentile Rebekah was not cut out for life in an isolated Hill Country town. She hated routine housework and sometimes stopped doing it. Sam hired neighbor girls to do the cleaning and Rebekah's mother stayed there for weeks on end to help out. One neighbor washed the laundry, hauling it off in a bed sheet. Another did the ironing.
There were reports of dirty dishes stacked high in the sink.
There were also reports of not enough food in the house.
LBJ did little to help. He defied his father's orders to do chores. Instead, he made his sisters and brother do them.
Even at an early age he manipulated his parents, and his grandmother Baines once said he would end up in the penitentiary.
According to the Caro biography, Lyndon exploited his family.
"Once, Lyndon, learning that Sam Houston (his younger brother) had, by months of diligent saving, managed to accumulate $11, suggested that his little brother 'go partners" with him and buy a second-hand bicycle 'together,' " writes Caro.
But the bicycle Lyndon chose was the right size for Lyndon and too big for Sam Houston, who was six years younger. Sam Houston's feet couldn't even reach the pedals.
And when Lyndon was 14 years old, his father, who was serving in the Legislature at the time, asked him to come to Austin so he could buy him a new suit. Lyndon knew that his father had in mind a cheap seersucker suit. Lyndon went to Austin a day ahead and selected a cream-colored Palm Beach suit that cost $25 and fit him perfectly. Lyndon then told the salesman that when he and his father came in the next day, he should pretend like he hadn't seen Lyndon before. He also told the salesman what to say.
The next day, the salesman told Lyndon's father that he had a suit that might look nice on the young man. He brought out the one Lyndon had selected the day before and Lyndon tried it on. It fit perfectly.
It was not in Sam's nature to ask to see a less expensive suit, wrote Caro. Lyndon knew that his father would have been embarrassed not to buy it for him.
But Lyndon didn't pull the wool over everyone's eyes.
According to friends and family members interviewed by Caro, Lyndon had to have his way, he had to win arguments.
And classmates at San Marcos State Teachers College gave him the nickname of Bull---- Johnson, because he didn't tell the truth.
He was ambitious early on. Caro reports that one ninth-grade classmate recalled hearing him say that he would someday be president of the United States.
The Johnson family lived in the Johnson City home until 1937, when Lyndon's father died, leaving a mountain of debt, and his mother moved away.
LBJ paid off his father's debts and acquired what had been the Johnson family ranch near Stonewall. He built it into an empire and amassed enough money along the way to make him the richest man to occupy the White House. Life magazine reported that he was worth $14 million when he settled into the Oval Office.
Unlike his parents and grandparents, LBJ thrived in the Hill Country.
Like the prickly pear and the yucca.