After touring LBJ’s boyhood home, we spent a few minutes in the visitor center looking at artifacts. We saw Lyndon’s suit and rocking chair. We also saw Lady Bird’s dress and the 
LBJ branding irons Lyndon used on his ranch. The animals on the ranch now have US branded on them, in case you ever have to answer a trivia question or something.
I decided to wander around Johnson City for a bit. There were a few b
uildings loosely connected to LBJ, but mostly I wanted to experience a small Texas town. In fact, this town with the background of dry hills covered in grass, for the first time on the trip made me feel like I was really in Texas. There weren’t many people or cars around, undoubtedly because it was Sunday and all the Texans were in church. I walked down the middle of main street whistling the theme from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. If there was anybody around, they might have thought I was a tourist …
We walked through Johnson City Park, given to the city by Life Magazine on LBJ’s 57th birthday in honor of his and Lady Bird’s efforts at beautification. In line with the whole beautification theme, the park was decked out with some of the ugliest, most pathetic Halloween decorations I’ve ever seen. The National Park Service has restored the General Merchants store. The towers next to it are now a restaurant.
The Blanco County Jail was built in 1894 and is still in use as the county jail, which cracked me up for some reason. The brochure I picked up in town says, “The old rock building stands not only as a sentinel of past jail history, but still stands ready for the present, and hopefully for some time in the future for those who cannot live within the law.” You can’t make this stuff up.
The Blanco County Courthouse across the street was completed in 1916. “Stone for the new courthouse was rough-hewn rock brought in by wagon and mule from the Will Harmon place on Deer Creek, about two miles south of town.” Yup. The brochure goes on to say, “The building has not changed, and it is likely that if Mr. Waterston could see it today he would recognize it as the same building which he constructed more than three-quarters of a century ago.”
The area electric company (which LBJ somehow is responsible for) is across the road from his boyhood home. There were six (6!) cranes on the grounds and a bevy of workers wrapping all the trees with an impressive number of white lights. In the shot above, you can see one (1!) of the cranes in the background. I deliberately darkened the shot to make the lights stand out at 1:00 on a bright Texas afternoon.
We considered eating at the place with the armadillo statue on the roof but opted instead for more authentic Texan cuisine — a bacon burger, onion rings and a chocolate milkshake at Dairy Queen. Halfway through the meal, my cell phone rang. It was my younger daughter informing me that the Bears were beating the Vikings 48-32!
Stay tuned. My Texas adventures have just begun.