If you’re an American of a certain age, you’ll probably remember where you were on this day 47 years ago.

It was on that Friday afternoon, Nov. 22, 1963, that President Kennedy was assassinated, and the life of the nation changed.

Mural of LBJ at the Library

We lost a president that afternoon, but we gained one too. After serving a little more than a thousand days in the job of vice president (described by a predecessor and fellow Texan John Nance Garner as a job “not worth a bucket of warm piss”), Lyndon Baines Johnson became the 36th president of the United States.

I recently spent a day at Johnson’s presidential library in Austin, Texas, and at his ranch in Stonewall, Texas. The LBJ Library is the first presidential library I ever visited, more than 20 years ago. I’m a history geek, and politics and the presidency are special interests of mine, so I love the fact that there are whole museums devoted to the subject.

Presidential libraries are managed by the National Archives and were created as a repository for a president’s papers. But they have a traditional museum function as well, with exhibits and artifacts that tell the story of the president’s life. A fascinating way to spend the day.

There’s no admission charge to visit the LBJ Library, which is on the campus of the University of Texas. (The plaza in front of the library has a great view of  UT’s Memorial Stadium.) All other presidential libraries charge an admission fee; when the library opened in 1971, Johnson decreed that no one wold be charged to visit his library. As a young teacher, he worked with poor children and he believed that education was the way out of poverty, on principle, he opposed admission fees to any library.

Pillow in LBJ's ranch office

I started my tour on the top floor of the library, where there’s a replica of the Oval Office. Except for its 7/8ths scale, it’s an exact copy of Johnson’s White House office. Interesting touches: three TVs built into a cabinet next to the president’s desk, with a wire service machine next to it. Johnson was a news junkie. Every night, he watched the three network news shows (Huntley-Brinkley on NBC, Cronkite on CBS, Frank Reynolds – and many others – on ABC) and aides grabbed copy off the wire machine constantly.)

Not only was Johnson was a news fiend, he was famous for working the phones. In the seating area of his office, there was a round, marble-topped coffee table with a drawer in it; inside the drawer was a specially created multi-line phone. Johnson had phones everywhere – in his cars, in his bathrooms, attached to the leg of his dining room table. That doesn’t seem so amazing today, but in the 1960s, car phones were the purview of James Bond and Batman.

Johnson was a true politician. He was a wheeler-dealer, a crude and cruel man, a bully. He craved power. He was competitive and ruthless.  At the same time, he could be kind and compassionate. There are so many great Johnson stories, and I’ll pass a few along here.

When Johnson was Senate Majority Leader, he had a car phone. The Senate Minority Leader, Everett Dirksen, was envious, and after some wrangling, he had a car phone installed.  His first call was to Johnson, on his car phone, for a bit of gloating. When he got Johnson on the line, he said, “Lyndon, I’m calling from my car.” Johnson came back quickly with, “Hi Ev, can you hold on a minute? My other line is ringing.”

Another wonderful example of Johnson’s ego: One day, he walked onto the tarmac at an Air Force Base. A young officer who was with him pointed to a plane and said, “Mr. President, that’s your plane.” Johnson threw his arm around the officer’s shoulder and said, “Son, they’re ALL my planes.”

Back to the museum. Also on the top floor, a tribute to Lady Bird Johnson. The couple’s whirlwind courtship is recounted through letters read by actors Kirk Douglas and Helen Hayes. Lady Bird’s role as political helpmate is documented; for all of her husband’s crude and crass behavior, Lady Bird was all Southern gentility and Texas grace. She was a steel magnolia through and through.

Downstairs, exhibits move from Johnson’s childhood in the Texas Hill Country through his college days and time as a young teacher, then his entry into politics.

For me, the heart of the library is 1963-1969, the years of the Johnson administration. So much groundbreaking legislation was passed in those years: the Voting Rights Act, Medicare, Medicaid, Head Start, the War on Poverty, National Endowment for the Arts, National Public Radio, PBS, Civil Rights legislation. The Vietnam War raged. Civil unrest was tearing the country apart.  

Johnson, who had suffered a nearly fatal coronary in 1955, was president during some of the most turbulent days in modern times. He won the largest mandate in history in the 1964 election, but by 1968, his popularity had plummeted. Rather than face a convention battle with Eugene McCarthy or Bobby Kennedy, he took himself out of the race and moved through 1968 as a lame duck leader.

Johnson is the first president I vividly remember. I can still see his face on the nightly news, hear his Texas drawl beginning a speech with “My fellow Amuricans …” I think that’s why I enjoy his library so much. It’s history I lived through. It’s personal to me. And it’s such a pivotal time in our history. His programs have shaped American life, for better or worse, for more than 40 years.

Johnson’s legacy is mixed; his decisions escalated an unpopular war, but his domestic policies changed the lives of millions of Americans.

After I left the Library, I headed west, toward the LBJ Ranch in Stonewall. To really understand this complex man, I think it’s important to visit the Hill Country he loved so much. His final resting place, overlooking the Pedernales, is peaceful and lovely, shaded by ancient oaks. The ranch is huge. The house is large, but ordinary in furnishing and decoration. Except for its 73 phone lines, it could be your house or mine.

The Texas White House

LBJ loved mind games and power plays. Some of the most powerful men on Earth visited him on the ranch. One of his favorite things to do was to give visitors a tour around his 2,700 acres. He had one of the few amphibious vehicles ever sold to civilians. He would drive first-time visitors to the ranch around in it and as they approached the Pedernales, he would say, “Good God! The brakes don’t work,” and plunge the car into the river, everyone screaming. And then he would roar with laughter as they started to float. 

Johnson lived out his days on the ranch. He died there four years and three days after he left office. Has only 64.

Johnson's grave. His marker is the tallest one.

When Lyndon Johnson became president, on that Friday before Thanksgiving 1963, I was in Miss Cartner’s second grade class. Where were you?