The Path to Power (144 page)

“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.

Real-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.

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.

“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 teen-agers 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 road 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.”