Listing Through Life

Until very recently, the only way to see Johnson’s ranch was on a bus tour. But his wife, Lady Bird, died in July, 2007 and the National Park Service is working on opening up the site to visitors. We were allowed to cross the Pedernales River and drive about. We were provided with a DVD that was supposed to guide us to the site, but it was short and sparse and we didn’t pay it much attention.

It doesn’t take long to realize that LBJ was an egoist. The reason so much of the area is preserved is because he saw to it that his “legacy” would endure. Take his birthplace, for example. The original house is long gone, but LBJ had it reconstructed on the original foundation and with the original floorplan. He used it as a guest house for visitors on the ranch. The small cabin is a dog trot. We couldn’t go inside, but we were able to look in through the doors. It was fixed up cozy-like with, apparently, wallpaper on the floor.

Across the road and down a-ways was the Johnson Family Cemetery. Lyndon’s grave is marked by the largest stone visible through the gate. The flowers next to it mark Lady Bird’s grave.

Beyond the cemetery is the home where Sam Ealy Johnson (Lyndon’s grandfather) lived sometime before or after he lived in the dogtrot in the Johnson Settlement. We couldn’t go inside this building.

You probably noticed the cow. We were a bit startled to discover that they wandered about the ranch at large. This one stopped for a bit and stared at us, but soon continued on its merry way. More on cattle in a future post. One other thing we couldn’t help but notice was the ball moss that coated every tree in south Texas. It’s an air plant related to Spanish moss. It gets all it’s nutrients from air and rain and does not damage to trees except when it gets real thick and then it rains. The moss soaks up the moisture and sometimes branches break from the weight.

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 buildings 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.

After finishing our tour of the Johnson Settlement, we wandered over to the boyhood home, across the street from the visitor center. A sign on the door said tours were every 30 minutes. My sister relaxed in the porch swing while I wandered about the yard taking photos.

When the ranger showed up, we had our own personal tour. The house was originally built in 1901. Johnson’s family moved there in 1913, when Lyndon was five years old. It was the family home for the next 24 years. The house was white with green trim, but the ceiling on the porches was a bright light blue. Apparently, wasps and other creatures mistake the blue for open sky and don’t build their mud nests there. Later in the day, we saw another porch on the ranch that was painted green, and there were nests everywhere.

The house was lived in by other people after the Johnsons moved out, and was altered. The Park Service has restored it as close as possible to its 1920’s appearance. Most of the furniture isn’t original, but what is there looks very much like what the Johnsons had. The ranger told us that Lyndon visited after it had been restored and almost cried, it looked so much like it once had. For a while when we were inside, my flash wasn’t working. Sorry about the quality of some of these photos.

It’s larger inside than it looks from the outside. There are seven major rooms plus a smaller room containing a bathtub (but no toilet). There are also four porches including a screened-in sleeping porch. The frill along the peak of the roof is just decoration. The ranger knew his stuff and was willing to answer our questions.