It was downright thrilling to visit the Texas Hill Country this week and see where Lyndon Johnson called home. You can read the books but it takes the physical experience to understand. Wow, that was fun!
It was downright thrilling to visit the Texas Hill Country this week and see where Lyndon Johnson called home. You can read the books, and I've read many of them, but it takes the physical experience to understand. Wow, that was fun!
I can understand why LBJ's premier biographer, Robert Caro, lived in the Hill Country during the time he was writing his first volume. You gotta see it and feel it.
You see the little house where he was born, you see his paternal grandfather's house, you see the big ranch house where he died, and the family burial ground, all within walking distance of each other. His church, the Pedernales River, the woods, it's all still there. You think about the mix of people that settled and lived in the Hill Country---a microcosm of this country.
Most important to me, you see the house where he grew up in Johnson City, where he AND his siblings grew up, and you get an idea of his nurturing environment.
I disagree with one thing the National Park Service house tour guide said in Johnson City, that his mother was his greatest influence parental influence. I say Sam Early Johnson, Jr. because LBJ's personality seems to mirror that of his father.
Lyndon Baines Johnson was deeply steeped in history, which I identify with, and why I find him so fascinating, such a combination of such history changing greatness but also human flaws
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