5. The Son
SOURCES
See Sources for Chapter 3.
NOTES
His mother wanted: RJB, SHJ. The naming: “Rough Draft,” pp. 4, 5. Besides other, minor, differences, the sentence “He thought of his three lawyer friends” has been edited out of the published Family Album. “Dark eyes”: Album, p. 22. “Professed”: “Rough Draft,” p. 2. “The Bunton eye”: Cox.
“Raised his hand”: Rebekah Johnson’s notes on first page of photographs following p. 32 in the Album. Ordered fifty: Kowert, “Lyndon B. Johnson.” Telling him stories: Album, p. 19. The Stonewall picnic: “Rough Draft,” p. 5. Neighbors remembered: Gliddon.
“A highly inquisitive”: “Rough Draft,” p. 5. Her fright: Cox, Gliddon; Mrs. Lucia Johnson Alexander to Bruce, April 14, 1971, quoted in Bearss, p. 72. Relatives: Cox; Hatcher OH, p. 11; RJB. The bell: Mrs. Alexander to Bruce. Hiding in haystack: Lambert. In cornfield: Mrs. Alexander to Bruce. “He wanted attention”: Lambert.
Running away to school: Loney, “Miss Kate and the President,” p. 2; Saunders OH, p. 13; Album, p. 19; Cox; Hatcher OH p. 12. “My mother used to lead me”: Johnson, in “The Hill Country: Lyndon Johnson’s Texas,” quoted in NYT, May 8, 1966. Ava picking him up: Cox. Unless she held him on lap: Deadrich, quoted in Loney, “Miss Kate,” pp. 3, 6. Dressed differently: Loney, “Miss Kate,” p. 3; Cox. Writing his name big: Kowert, “Lyndon B. Johnson.” China clown: Bearss, p. 71; Cox.
On the donkey: Cox. “The head of the ring”: Hatcher OH, p. 12. Hugo’s pie: Cox.
“Lyndon took a liking”; a “five-pointer”; “a natural born leader”: Crider OH, pp. 2, 17, 13. “Take his ball and go home”: Edwards. Among others who knew this: SHJ.
In Maddox’s barbershop: Emmette Redford, Cox, Gliddon, SHJ; Crofts OH. Father made him stop: SHJ. “Competition”; populism: Cox. Debates: Gliddon. They are also described by Cox, RJB. “There was no”: Redford. Dropping out of games: Pool, p. 58; Cox; see also Nichols, p. 439, who says, “His father told me that Lyndon … would listen to [his father’s] conversations with neighbors and friends instead of indulging in play as would the usual child.” Craning his neck: RJB; Steinberg, Sam Johnson’s Boy, p. 21. Hobby visit: Kowert, “Lyndon B. Johnson.”
“I loved”: Kearns, Lyndon Johnson, pp. 36–37; Cox, Gliddon. “Tell him”: Steinberg, p. 26. “If you can’t”: Dallas Herald, Nov. 24, 1963. “Someone who really knew”: McFarlane. Benner’s claims of fraud: San Angelo Standard-Times, March 31, 1968. Celebration in San Antonio: RJB. Sitting in the swing: Cox, Fawcett. Liked to dress like his father: Cox. “He was right”: Hatcher OH, p. 21. Carrying the Congressional Record: Stribling. Imitating his father: Patman, in Steinberg, pp. 28, 3, and OH. In the NBC broadcast, his first teacher, Kate Deadrich, said that when he came to school, “He would wear his father’s cowboy hat and then would have his father’s boots. A little bit difficult for him to have them, but he had them over his little shoes.” Sam’s ambitions limited: Patman, in Steinberg, p. 28. The difference: Fawcett, Gliddon, Redford.
Ear-popping: Barnwell; Rountree OH, p. 14. “Let me tell you”: Gliddon. “He was a Bunton!”: Cox.
6. “The Best Man I Ever Knew”
SOURCES
See Sources for Chapter 3.
NOTES
“Warm applause”: SAE, Feb. 27, 1918. Sam’s description: Joseph, McFarlane; Patman OH. “The cowboy type”: Patman, quoted in Steinberg, Sam Johnson’s Boy, p. 3. “Caught in the tentacles”: JCR-C, Oct. 28, 1937. Here the phrase is used without quotation marks, but numerous Johnson City residents say that it is exactly the phrase Sam used. Sulphur tax: McFarlane.
Anti-German hysteria: Gould, p. 225; Pool, pp. 36–38; Fehrenbach, p. 644. Fredericksburg Square; “maelstrom”; Sam’s speech: Fredericksburg Standard, March 23, April 6, 1918; State Observer, June 10, 1940. Remembered with admiration: Phinney. Privately buttonholing: SAE, March 6, 1918. “At a time”: W.A. Trenckmann, editor of Austin’s Das Wochenblatt, in a letter dated Aug. 17, 1920, published in Fredericksburger Wochenblatt, Oct. 14, 1920.
Sam Johnson was also a leader in the fight against the Ku Klux Klan, although, contrary to the opinion of some Lyndon Johnson biographers that this fight required political courage, it did not. Sam’s son, Sam Houston Johnson, has written (My Brother, pp. 29–31) that the Klan “threatened to kill him on numerous occasions,” and that once Sam Ealy and his two brothers, Tom and George, dared them to “come on ahead,” and spent the night waiting on the porch with shotguns, while the women cowered in the cellar below (the Klan never showed up). But both accounts are at least slightly exaggerated. Sam Johnson, with his sympathy for the underdog, detested the Klan’s persecution of Mexican-Americans—he used the phrase “Kukluxsonofabitch” so often that, Sam Houston says, “I never realized that ‘son of a bitch’ was a separate word, standing all by itself, until I got to high school”—and, in the Legislature, he did speak and vote against measures it backed; one plea, for racial tolerance, won statewide notice; Carl L. Phinney, chief clerk of the House at the time, remembers “very vividly” the “powerful statement.” But the House was split about evenly on the Klan, and in Johnson’s own district, it was not really a force at all.
Optometrists: Kemp, “Representative Sam Johnson.” “High time”: McFarlane. This was a characteristic phrase. In one of his campaign speeches against Benner, he said, as Cox recalled it for Pool (p. 45), “It is high time that a person stands up and lets the world know how he stands.” “He was not”: Patman OH, pp. 2, 3.
Concerted effort: BCR, April 22, 1921. A “leading good-roads” man: Johnson’s work on the highway is detailed in House Journal, Regular Session, 36th Legislature, 1919, pp. 308–9; 1920, pp. 196–97. 503.
“We’ve got”: McFarlane. Drought: BCR, Oct. 15, 1920. “Because of”: BCR, Oct. 28, 1937; Pool, p. 39. State aid: BCR, Oct. 15, 1920. “A great victory”: BCR, March 11, 1921. “Truly wanted”: McFarlane. “The best man”: Patman OH.
“He had”: Redford. Sam’s work in obtaining pensions: Dollahite, Koeniger, Gliddon, Buckner.
Blue Sky Law: House Journal, Regular Session, 38th Legislature, pp. 34–35, 827; Shirley, p. 100. “The Governor’s speech”; “I want to leave”: Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Jan. 11, 1923. “No measure”: SAE, Jan. 14, 1923. Money: McFarlane, RJB. “Whenever”: Wilma Fawcett. “Ambitious”: Deason.
“Several big land deals”: BCR, Aug. 6, 1920. Kept going down: Cox, Gliddon, Stribling. “If you want”: Cox.
Buying the family place: Fredericksburg Standard, Feb. 7, 1920; Bearss, p. 81. Offering $19,500: Gillespie County Deed Book 27, pp. 420–21, in Bearss, p. 170. Persuading Tom: SHJ, Cox. “Gradual enough”: Graves, Heartland, p. 29. Cotton prices: Gould, passim. Other expenses: RJB, SHJ, Cox. Selling hotel and store: BCR, Jan. 23, 1920. Sam received about $5,000 for the store. Mortgage, bank loans: Gillespie County Deed Book 27, pp. 420–21, in Bearss, p. 171; RJB, SHJ say the $15,000 mortgage, from the Loan and Abstract Co. of Fredericksburg, at 7% interest, was to pay for the improvements to the farm. Gully: Cox, SHJ, Gliddon. Cotton prices falling: Literary Digest, Nov. 6, 1920. Selling to Striegler: Fredericksburg Standard, Sept. 23, 1922; Bearss, p. 88. All went to Loan and Abstract: Gillespie County Deed Book 34, pp. 624–26, quoted in Bearss, p. 171. Still owed banks, etc.; his brothers co-signing: RJB, SHJ, Cox, Fawcett, Gliddon; Bearss, p. 136, says a $2,000 mortgage, when originally taken, was to mature on Dec. 1, 1918, but RJB, SHJ, Cox say a mortgage for this amount was still in effect in 1923.
Sam’s illness: RJB, SHJ, Cox. Going to Legislature: Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Jan. 19, 23, 1923. “Among prominent visitors”: BCR, March 26, 1920. “Big land deals”: BCR, Aug. 6, 1920. Benner’s mot: Koeniger. Johnson City’s opinion of Sam Johnson: Dollahite, Gliddon, Fawcett, and all interviews with residents noted in Sources for Chapter 3. “Playing cowboy”: Brigham OH. “For business reasons”: Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Jan. 11, 1923. Not invited to speak: Fredericksburg Standard, Aug. 30, 1924.
R
eal-estate and insurance; game warden: BCR, May 9, 1924; RJB, Cox. “Please!”: Fawcett. Buntons lent him: SHJ, Cox. Foreman: Gliddon.
“Some children”: Among the many residents who quoted this is Wilma Fawcett. “Never tells a lie”: Cox. Rebekah herself records this exchange in Album, p. 19, and also says, “He had a passion for truthfulness and could be depended on to admit a failure in duty or obedience.” Laundry: Wilma Fawcett. “Sausage”: Ohlen Cox. “Bread and bacon”: Stribling. “A little dab”; Christmas food; “She just,” etc.: Cox. “He did”: Dollahite.
7. “The Bottom of the Heap”
SOURCES
See Sources for Chapter 3.
Also, Marjie Mugno, “Just a Guy,” Highway (published by the Austin Employees, Texas Highway Department), March, 1964; Carol Nation, “A Rendezvous With Destiny,” Texas Highways, March, 1964; Wendell O’Neal, “Motor Buses in Texas, 1912–1930,” Texas Bus Owners Association, Inc., 1931.
And interview with John Gorflnkle.
NOTES
“Humorous to watch”: Patman, quoted in Steinberg, Sam Johnson’s Boy, p. 28, and he expanded on this: “They sort of looked alike, they walked the same, had the same nervous mannerisms, and Lyndon clutched you like his Daddy did when he talked to you.” Patman shared a two-man desk on the House floor with Sam Johnson. “Whenever”; “there wasn’t”: McFarlane. Also, Coffee, Holden, Joseph, Morgan, Phinney. There was no legislative session in 1922, but some of these men saw Lyndon and Sam together in Austin on legislative business.
“Just long enough”: Lyndon Johnson quoted in Waugh, “The Boyhood Days.” “Bossy”: Wilma Fawcett. Woodbox, etc.: The description of Lyndon’s behavior at home comes from RJB, SHJ, Casparis.
At Albert School: RJB; Cox. Donkey: Johnson, quoted in Steinberg, p. 699. See also Time, May 21, 1965. Photograph: Album, p. 38; RJB. “Someday”: Itz, quoted in USN&WR, Dec. 23, 1963, “This is LBJ’s Country.”
“Couldn’t handle”; might not pass; scraping up tuition: Cox, SHJ, RJB. Spending allowance: SHJ; BCR, July 28, 1922. “Cut off”: SHJ. “Lyndon is very young”: Rebekah Johnson to Flora Eckert, July 11, 1922, “Family Correspondence” (Mother) Johnson, Sam E. (Rebekah), Box 1, General Correspondence. At Johnson City High: Schoolmates Leonard, Cecil Redford, Edwards, Dollahite, Cox; Crofts OH.
“Many times”: Rebekah Johnson, quoted in DMN, June 30, 1941. Father’s anger, kicking off shoes: RJB, SHJ.
“Bend over”: SHJ, pp. 11–13. Tension between Sam and Lyndon: SHJ, pp. 13, 10. Suit: Barnwell. “All afraid”: Edwards. Beau refusing: RJB. “Ugly things”: Casparis.
“You could see”: Casparis. An hour alone: SHJ, pp. 9, 10. The bicycle: SHJ, p. 16. Spanking over razor: Crofts OH. Barbershop spanking: Crofts OH; Barnwell.
Sneaking out the car: Cox, Fawcett. “I’ve seen him”: Fawcett. Fawcetts knew: Fawcett. Spankings: Fawcett, Cox, Edwards, Emmette Redford, RJB, SHJ. The telephone operator; hiding in a tree: SHJ. “He always”: Emmette Redford.
“Such a production”: Barnwell. The two boys in the café: Ohlen Cox, SHJ. His sisters mistreating him: Cox. “I regarded”: Emmette Redford. Spanking at school: SHJ.
Hugging: Cynthia Crider. “Miz Stella”: Gliddon. “Put me to shame”: Redford, Edwards, Fawcett. “The more”: Stribling, Wilma Fawcett. “We had great ups and downs”: Lyndon Johnson, quoted in Harwood and Johnson, Lyndon, p. 23. “I felt sorry for him”: Gliddon, for example. “Too much”: Fawcett.
Lyndon and Kitty Clyde Ross: Kitty Clyde Ross Leonard, Casparis, Cox, Edwards. “Believed to be”: BCR, May 9, 1924. Air Force One: A picture of this trip is in the LBJ Library.
Carrying the eggs: Crider. “You strap on”: Humphrey, p. 55. “Half the town”: Milton Barnwell.
“Immediacy”; “by the middle”: “flickering screen”: Shannon, in Mowry, pp. 43, 59, 60. “Rather drab”: RJB. “About all”: “so what was left”: Emmette Redford. Lyndon’s dream: He is quoted in Kearns, Lyndon Johnson, p. 40.
“You couldn’t get anywhere”: Crider OH, p. 6. She never: Despite Lyndon Johnson’s statements to Kearns—that she daily took him to task with “a terrible knifelike voice,” or else, in Kearns’ words, “closed him out completely.” He also told Kearns (p. 40): “We’d been such close companions, and, boom, she’d abandoned me.” Among those who never heard a “terrible knifelike voice,” or remember Rebekah even losing her patience with Lyndon: RJB, SHJ, Cox, Casparis—and a score of other persons the author interviewed who spent time in the Johnson household. “Hope”: Casparis. Father’s anger: RJB, SHJ.
“Always talking big”: Koeniger. “He didn’t”: Clemens.
Gravel-topping the road: The description of the work is from a number of Johnson City teenagers who worked on the job, including Cox. “Can’t even hold”: Casparis. “There’s got to be,” etc.: Cox.
“C’mon, Lyndon, get up”: NBC Broadcast; Kornitzer, “President Johnson”; SHJ. Wrecking the car and running away: Koeniger. Working in Robstown: SHJ, Roeder, Clemens, Koeniger, Fawcett; Keach OH II, p. 30; Robstown Record, Dec. 16, 1936; CCC, Dec. 16, 1936.
Visiting the Buntons; refusing to register: The visit, and the fact that he spent two days in San Marcos immediately thereafter, are mentioned in the BCR, Sept. 19, 26, Oct. 10, 1924. Also SHJ.
“Weeelll”: SHJ. “The minute,” “exploded”: SHJ, pp. 21–22. “One less mouth”: Johnson, quoted in Steinberg, p. 32. “None of us had been off the farm”; “nothing to eat,” etc.: This description by Johnson of the trip, a fair sample of the description he gave to other reporters over the years, appeared in DMN, June 30, 1941. Johnson, of course, had recently returned from a 200-mile trip to Robstown. The burying-the-money story seems to be an expansion of a practical joke that Johnson played on one of the other boys, Otho Summy. Rountree says that on one occasion “there were car lights showed up behind us and Lyndon commenced to hoorah Otho Summy. Otho, he’s a pretty scary type of guy, you know, easy to scare. … He was telling him that these guys were following us … making him think that” they were going to rob us, “so we stopped and we saw Otho way off down, and he was burying his money. We all gave our money to him, and he was burying the money down there” (p. 8). About the trip as a whole, Rountree says: “We weren’t scared” (Rountree OH, p. 11). See also Crider OH, pp. 3–4.
“Johnson was barely able to survive”: Kearns, p. 43. What Johnson actually did: Koeniger; RJB; Crider OH, passim; Otto Crider in Cloverdale Reveille, July 2, 1964. Says Koeniger: “I read an article that Lyndon worked at menial jobs, but I don’t know anything about that. I never heard about any jobs like that. I venture to say that his grape-picking and all that was very limited if at all. … I suspect that Lyndon may have—I hate to say—said that he did these things when he didn’t. He came up there [to Tehachapi] with Otto [Crider, one of his companions on the trip], and they hadn’t been very long when they [went] to San Bernardino.” And, Koeniger says, neither Otto nor Lyndon “ever mentioned anything about starving or grape-picking or anything like that.”
Johnson’s attempt to be a lawyer: Koeniger; Gorfinkle; Laws of Nevada, Chapter LXIX, Section 2, As Amended, 1907; Nevada Compiled Laws—1929, Vol. I, §593. The Code of Civil Procedure of the State of California, Adopted March II, 1872, and the Subsequent Official State Amendments to and Including 1925, Sec. 279. Martin’s career: BCR, May 7, 1920; JCR-C, June 20, 1929; Koeniger. Said he hitchhiked home: Time, May 21, 1965. Driven to his front door: RJB. “A changed person”: Gliddon.
Drag races, moonshine, dances, etc.: Edwards, who was one of the “wild bunch”; Truman Fawcett; Cox; SHJ; Cynthia Crider; Life, “The Man,” Aug. 14, 1964; Otto Crider in Cloverdale Reveille, July 2, 1964. Dynamite: Edwards. “I always hated cops”: Quoted in Kearns, p. 333. “Only a hairsbreadth”: RJB, SHJ.
“No matter”: Gliddon. “If you want”: RJB, SHJ; Steinberg, p. 34. Wrecking the car again: Johnson, quoted in Kearns, p. 38. Increased tension between father and son: Edwards, Cox; McKay Interview, pp. 10–11.
On the ro
ad gang: Crider OH, pp. 7, 18–20; Newlon, pp. 30–31. “Talked big”: Arrington, quoted in Nation, “A Rendezvous,” p. 6. Predicted: Among those who heard the prediction was C. S. Kinney, who is quoted in Nation, “A Rendezvous.”
Trying to stand out: Cox, Gliddon. Replacing the Ferguson men: Crider OH, p. 7. The dance: Cox, SHJ, RJB, Lady Bird Johnson. Telling his parents he would go to college: RJB; SHJ. Wouldn’t permit: SHJ.
8. “Bull” Johnson
SOURCES
Books, articles, transcripts:
Nichols, Rugged Summit; Terry, Retired Teacher on Candid Typewriter.
John M. Smith, “The History and Growth of the Southwest Texas State Teachers College” (unpublished Master’s Thesis), San Marcos, 1930.
Transcript of “John Dailey, Class of 1936, interviewing Professor David F. Votaw about the Early Days of President Lyndon B. Johnson When he Entered SWTSTC,” Feb. 6, 1965, in Exec. PP, 3-5, WHCF (referred to as Votaw Transcript).
“Text of a Discussion Concerning the College Years of Lyndon B. Johnson” (between A. H. Nolle, Oscar W. Strahan, David F. Votaw, and Elizabeth Sterry), Dec., 1963 (referred to as Nolle Transcript).
Tape-recording of an informal discussion between Johnson and several professors who had been faculty members or students during his years at college, held in the office of the President of Southwest Texas State Univ., Billy Mack Jones, April 27, 1970. (The recording was made by E. Phillip Scott, Audiovisual Archivist of the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library, and will be referred to as Scott Tape.)
“Transcript of an Exclusive Interview Granted by President Lyndon B. Johnson to Robert E. McKay on May 21, 1965” (McKay Interview).
NBC News Television program, “The Hill Country: Lyndon Johnson’s Texas” (May 9, 1966).
The College Star, 1926–1931.
The Pedagog, 1927, 1928, 1929, 1930, 1931, published by the senior class of SWTSTC, San Marcos.
Oral Histories:
Percy Brigham, Ben Crider, Willard Deason, Thomas J. Dunlap, Fenner Roth.
The Path to Power Page 120