Listing Through Life

When the National Park Service took over the ranch, they sent teams of people inside to photograph and chart and measure every last piece of furniture so they would know exactly what it was like when Lyndon lived there. After he died, Lady Bird wanted to convert his office into a family room. Everything got packed away in storage. When Lady Bird died last year, the park service undid all her changes and restored everything to exactly the way it had been — except for the purple shag carpet. They still have that rolled up in storage because one of Lyndon’s daughters begged them not to put it out. It’s that awful.

The room was opened to the public for the first time just a few weeks before we visited. Within two or three years, the rest of the first floor will be open for tours.

We met our guide outside the hangar. (He’s the tall guy with glasses.) Without introducing himself or welcoming us, he just began walking and talking as he went. He didn’t talk very loudly, and we all had to clump together around him to hear anything. It went on this way until we got inside the house. At that point, he seemed to get interested and spent about 20 minutes explaining everything in the room and telling us a lot of anecdotes along the way. Except for the carpet, the room looks exactly as it did when LBJ ran the country and made decisions on the Viet Nam War during his many visits as president.

There are four desks in the room — LBJ’s and three for aides. The phone on the table in the photo below is a car phone. LBJ insisted all his aides carried one with them at all times.

Here’s LBJ’s desk. The money on the shelf behind the desk was printed at the U.S. Mint, but it has LBJ’s portrait on it. The painting of Johnson’s beagle was commissioned by Barbra Streisand. There’s another one of his other dog on the other side of the window.

Lyndon Johnson made something like 75 trips to his Texas house during the five years of his presidency. He often brought his cabinet or foreign dignitaries along. The house has been closed to tours because Lady Bird was still living there, but since she died in July, 2007, the Park Service has been preparing the ground floor for visitors. One room, LBJ’s office, just opened up a couple weeks before our visit. We bought tickets for our tour, but we had to wait a half hour or so.

We spent the time wandering around the house taking photos. Here’s the house from the front. Yes, that’s a swimming pool on the right. The white building on the far right is an indoor swimming pool Lady Bird had constructed after LBJ died.

Here’s the back view of the house. The three buildings under the trees on the right are (left to right) LBJ’s airplane hanger (where his cars are currently displayed), a guest cottage used by the Secret Service agents and a trailer used by the airplane pilots when they were at the ranch.

Our guide told us that LBJ built the hanger and then bought himself a plane. Only problem was that the plane was too long for the hanger. He had to have one wall torn out and a larger space built so the plane would fit.

Here’s the west side of the house. LBJ’s office was in the low section on the left. The stone portion in the center was the original house, built in 1894 by a German immigrant. LBJ held many meetings with his cabinet and visiting dignitaries in the chairs on the front lawn.

The rocking chairs in the photo below can also be seen in the panorama above. Our guide told us there’s a famous photograph of LBJ in the closest chair and Richard Nixon in the second chair. He also said that after LBJ died, Lady Bird would sit out here and wave to tourists as they went by in the bus. As she got older, her eyesight failed. She would sit in these chairs with a friend. When the bus went by, the friend would nudge her, and Lady Bird would smile and wave.

The picture on the right above shows the Pedernales River as seen from the house. LBJ used to host barbecues right here along the river for important visitors, with massive amounts of food. He’d have some of his cattle taken across to the other side of the river and have cowboys drive them along the banks to entertain his guests. Over the years, he put on more than 100 of these events.

When LBJ was president, Lincoln (the car company, not the president) gave him a new car every year. When the ranch became a National Park, Lincoln donated several of the cars, and they are now on display in the hanger. The red car was used for hunting and is fitted with rifle racks. There’s also a full bar in the back, which the rangers were quick to point out didn’t really go very well with the handling of firearms.

The blue vehicle is LBJ’s Amphicar. He used to enjoy scaring the snot out of his guests by taking them for a ride around the ranch and then suddenly careening down the hill into the river screaming “The brakes don’t work! We’re going in!”

Our tour guide at the ranch house (more on him later) said LBJ decided to raise cattle because it was a fad among members of the U.S. Senate at the time. He bought his first 10 Herefords in 1957. For a while he showed them at local fairs and livestock shows, but later he just raised them for the meat and for the fun of it. He also raised goats, sheep and chickens.

As I said in an earlier post, we were somewhat surprised to discover the cattle wandering about loose, but this definitely added to the fun of the visit. A lot of the ranch is included in the National Park, and we were able to drive across much of it.

I found the land more beautiful than I had expected to — rolling hills, yellow grass and compact trees with an immense amount of sky. The Pedernales River was just a slow-moving green stream, but even it fit in the landscape nicely. By this time, the temperature was in the 80s, and there was no question about it being hot. But a breeze kept things bearable. I can’t imagine what it must be like in mid-July.

The low building in the picture above is the show barn where the cattle were prettied-up and prepared for show. That’s it below too. There were a few animals inside, including this tired-looking creature (above, right). The weights on the horns are to make them curl down and picturesquely frame the animal’s face.

Many ranchers in Texas raise exotic animals for fun and for hunting. LBJ raised Blackbuck Antelope, and I spotted two of them in a field next to the ranch.