 I flew down the ranch and Johnson gave me the whole routine. We went around and saw all of it. But there was that one night where, again, one of his treatments, so to speak, was after dinner we went up to see Cousin Oriel. And from the ranch house, his cousin Oriel, I forget her last name, but Oriel lived up in this one room, little house. And Johnson's got his cowboy hat on, these boots, and we kind of scuff up there. Beautiful night. We stopped. And the big full moon coming up over the pertenalus there, and you can hear the water running. Johnson tells me, oh, Huey says, the most beautiful sound to a rancher's ear is the sound of running water, the trickle of running water. You know, he tells me about all the wonders, and he's not going to stop and see my cousin here. So he goes in and hears this wonderfully, wonderfully weather ward old lady barefooted in this one room, placed the beds in the middle, the kitchen over here, and the hair pulled back just like you'd expect somebody like that to be. And Johnson jumps up on the bed. His back puts the hat over his face, cousin Oriel, how are you? Well, I think those people down there all call him Lytton, Lytton. Well, Lytton, I'd be a lot better if you'd help me, you know. Oh, cousin Oriel, here we go again, you know. Well, he said, I got that tractor, I'm trying to say. Oh, that old bunch of junk, I'm not going to buy that truck. They have this conversation about the old tractor and how he should do more for it. And he talks about how, what do you mean you got your house here down the road? You know, we see all the time and that sort of thing. And it goes back and forth. That's the cousin Oriel routine, which became quite famous, and it was fascinating. I mean, there's just no question, it's a paradox. Here she is, living in this one room shack, and I think, to be honest with you, she wanted to. I mean, that was just her life, and I don't know what else you'd do with it. I'm quite sure they kept her going on that. But anyway, on the way back, I can't remember whether we went out to it or not, but there's the family graveyard, and we stopped at the family graveyard, and Johnson points out that various people, his daddy, his mama, and all of that, and then he points out that he and Lady Bird are going to be buried there, and then we start to walk away, and he unzipped and peed. It was just, you know, one of those things that just comes out of nowhere, and you wonder, I'm kind of half admiring of him because I'm kind of a skeptic about burial routines and that. You know, it's over. You get out of there. I must say, though, that when he died and went down to his funeral, I couldn't get that out of my mind as I watched the solemn ceremonies going up. Now, I, mine wasn't as bad as Carole Kirkpatrick, one of my colleagues, a Washington Post reporter, and there Johnson actually peed on the ground, on the hallowed ground there, where he and Lady Bird were going to be buried. Anyway, you know, that was just Johnson. He just kind of took that in stride. And we went on then to the convention and all of that. Lenin kind of got ticked off at me. The magazine, oh, I tell you, there's another wonderful story. Otto Furbringer, who was the managing editor of time, loved Johnson, colorful and made good copy and all that. So every now and then he'd asked, well, the first time he asked to see Johnson, his majority leader, as we were coming up. So okay, I went in and whoever was out there said, go and ask the leader he's in there. And then I said, Otto Furbringer, the managing editor, would like to come around if he got some time from Otto Furbringer. Oh, Otto, my old friend Otto, I'd love to see him. Love to see him. Sure, we set a time. And it was about two weeks ahead when he could come. So kind of lay fallow there for a while and forgot about it. And about the day before he was due, for the appointment I was walking up by the office there. Johnson comes out of the back door and says, hey, hey, hey, come here. He said, what day? I got this damn thing on my appointment. Who is this thing banger, Foofinger, Farfinger? Who is this guy? I said, come on, that's your old friend Otto, remember? Well, he didn't like that. I said, no, he's the managing editor. All right, all right, but I'll vary as well. I've never told Otto that, you know, thing banger or whatever. He says another story. You know, we'll be here all night because these things came up. My type of reporting was to report the man. And these little things came up and they were rooted in the past. This one spans the difference between, or spans the time he was a majority leader and then also when he was in the White House. He used to mispronounce the names of people. And that was the first example I had, Otto Fingbanger. No, and I didn't think anything about it, but we got, then he became president. I was in there once and Johnson was denouncing somebody by the name of Shulac, that son of a bitch, Shulac. Where did he get that stuff? How does he come out? This went on about two minutes and George really was there and I leaned over and I said, George, who is Shulac? And he said, that's Ted Schultz of the New York Times. And then one time I was in there and he had a big tirade against Wintob. Wintob, that guy, you know. Well, it was Teddy Wintol that he was talking about. And then he had said, Davis, I didn't think much about that till I thought back again when he was majority leader. And he was telling me how admiring he was of Huey Long. And Huey Long was senator when Johnson was in Congress. And Johnson told me the story that he knew the doorkeepers over in the Senate. And he told them that any time Huey Long spoke or gave a speech or was in a debate on the Senate floor, he wanted to know about it. And he had privileges on the Senate floor as a congressman. He could sneak in there and sit in the back. And he said, I'll tell you, that man was just unbelievable. Nobody could keep up with him in debate. And he said, I remember when there one time, when he was with old Joe Robinson, who was I guess majority leader at that time, he said, oh, Huey, just throw those darts at him. He said he didn't have a chance. He said, you, blood was splattered all over the walls of that place before the debate was always the smartest man I ever knew. Well, after that, I was reading the book about Huey Long, King Fasier, whatever it is, the book. And Huey Long used to do that. I'm convinced that's where he picked that up. It said this was kind of one of the hallmarks of Huey Long's debating stuff. He mispronounced the guy's name, or he'd get some mix-up of the guy's correct. He'd be thrown off his stride by it. And I think Johnson had adopted this, and he carried it out clear up through the presidency. But anyway, the time came around, and Johnson was, they shifted me to Kennedy, so I wasn't around. And Johnson called up and said, I know you're second-rating me because you got Sidi off the beat there, and he complained to me about it too. And I said, no, I just, one of those things that I think you got to take your odds on this, I, by that time, had pretty well decided that Kennedy was going to get it, that Johnson didn't have the horsepower and didn't have the delegates. Kennedy's had changed everything, changed really the power equation in politics. They'd used the pollsters, and they'd used the handlers, and they had all the money and that, so it worked out that way. But then I tried to keep track of Johnson during his vice presidency. It was hard. But he'd call up every now and then, kind of wistfully and say, come on over you, let's talk. And I remember they sent him over to meet the convoy that went across East Germany into Berlin during that Berlin crisis, exactly when that would have been summer of 61, 2, something like that. And Johnson came back, and it wasn't a moving moment. He'd flown into Berlin, he was with Attenauer. The troops that were in this convoy that had gone across Soviet-occupied part of East Germany into, we didn't know what would happen. And Johnson had gone there. It was Johnson's only chance, you know, he'd been in the shadow of those Kennedy people. I remember I went over there, and I came out of there with about six inscribed pictures. Here I am with Attenauer. Here I am with General Söder. Here I am with the troops. I was burdened down with it. But he was just, I felt kind of sorry. He was a lonely man. Here's this man who had been his majority leader. Let me tell you, on many days, he was the most powerful political figure in America. So recognized, so honored. I mean, when Ike was off playing golf up in Gettysburg, Johnson was the man you went to, kind of orchestrate politics in the national agenda. He was a spokesman in that. So here's this poor guy relegated to this job of being the vice president. And we go down to Dallas on that day, and I remember he was uptight about it, no question. I remember standing on the motorcade. This was Fort Worth in front of the hotel where they'd stayed that night. There was John Connolly, of course, and Johnson. And it was kind of an uneasy situation. Number one, I think Johnson didn't know what was going to happen. I thought he probably thought there'd be some booze or some of those extreme right-wingers that would be unpleasant. And then he had trouble with Ralph Yarborough. Ralph wanted a little more prominence in the motorcade. Johnson talked about names again. Johnson always called him Raf. Oh, old Raf Yarborough. They had to switch cars, and Raf was sore about it. Well, we flew over to Dallas then from that. And that afternoon, well, I've described that many times, and others have too. But I did, since I knew Johnson so well and had been around him so long, I did have terrible heartache for him in this situation, which I knew the Kennedys had really treated him badly in many ways. The family, I think Bobby, the others. Not John Kennedy. I think John Kennedy went out of his way while he was vice president to make him feel important and in on things. But back in those days, that wasn't much. And Kennedy kind of had not scorned for him, but even the president kind of looked down at him a little bit, you know, laughed at him a little bit. Although I have to say I've told this many times, and that's the idea of why Lin and Johnson took the vice presidency. And part of the story was that, you know, that John Kennedy, they were all against it. It was just this accident of history. Well, I flew out to Los Angeles with John Kennedy and Jackie. I went up to Long Island, stayed overnight with him. I saw John Kennedy alone with Jackie up there. We were talking about it. I said, have you chosen your vice president? He said, yes. He said, I'll tell you, but you can't use it. I said, don't do that, Mr. President. He said, I think I know who it is, but I don't want to be bound by that. It'll probably leak by the time our deadline comes around. And then we got to talking about it. He said, well, if I could choose the one I wanted, I would choose Lin and Johnson. He said, without question, he's the most talented. He could help me in Texas. He can help with the legislation. This man is amazing as a legislator. And then he said, I take him, but he said he won't take it. Well, one of the reasons he'd asked to see me was he knew I'd spent two or three hours with Johnson just a couple of days ago before that. And that's, of course, Johnson spent all that time telling me why he wouldn't be vice president. And I was convinced that he wouldn't take it. And Kennedy was too. So I said, well, I think you're right. That's what, essentially, he told me, and I think that's probably correct. But in any event, what, out of that story came, and that's always been in my mind, that Kennedy said, no, I'll take him if I could. And then Kennedy went on when we were talking to say, he said, I'll have to offer it to him. He said, that's polite and that, I'll offer him to him, but he'll turn it down and then I'll take my choice. Well, basically, he had great admiration for Johnson as I did in his own way. Anyway came that day at Dallas, and I was just appalled. I can't get my mind around that yet. I mean, a friend was killed. The president was murdered. The new frontier was over. I knew enough about the presidency by that time to know that you'd bring in new people and all, and despite your best intentions, it wouldn't be the same. It would be quite different. And particularly with Lyndon Johnson, a strong leader, as it should be. It should be takeover. And the motorcade went on, and they were in Parkland Hospital. I ultimately ended up there and was roaming around. The first time I saw Johnson, I was standing at the back of Parkland Hospital, a loading ramp there, and he came out to go to the airport. And I often wonder, because there was a report that he'd had a heart attack, and I remember he came out and he was holding his arm. I don't know why. Just a Johnson habit, I think. I don't know what it was. But I noticed as he went to the car and he kind of orchestrated who was going to go. I wasn't on the pool, so I didn't go out to the airport with him. But he drove away. And even in that time, I mean, he'd just been in the hospital. This was a man. This was a leader. This was the guy who knew how to take hold. Nobody had ever been in this situation, at least in our generation. Really, in the history of the country, had been in a situation like this. Your president shot right in front of your eyes. You're the president, but you're with the family. What do you do? You have to fly back. A whole kind of equation of trying to solve that. Well, he was just magnificent. And I again thought to myself, well, I knew that, because I knew him. I knew how he knew government, how he knew cabinet officers, how he knew where people were and what they were apt to do and what they were apt to say and how they would do it. And the record shows that how he talked to Earl Warren on the commission. But he knew, he had in his mind, I think, every step of the way. First off, comfort Jackie. Second off, you've got to be president. That goes on. You talk to Bobby. You talk to Rose. You stay out of sight. You back up. There was some criticism of him. It was just absolutely invalid. He was restrained. He understood. He stayed behind. But a president in the United States can't. He can't just fade away. And he didn't. He was there. And there was great strength. And then he called the leaders. He called the cabinet. He heard people about the possibility of other such attacks, perhaps, globally. And then he moved in. And he wouldn't move into the White House until after Jackie was gone. I think those 48 hours are one of the remarkable events of that half-century done by Johnson. Just his sensitivity, his understanding, how he rallied the people, brought the leaders together, got the commission started to examine that assured people, the country would go on. As I watched Johnson go to his car with his hand on there, I just had that sense this guy, thank goodness he's there. Thank goodness this is the man for this moment at this time. And then, of course, I saw him around the White House but we were so preoccupied with the ceremonies. The burial of Kennedy and Johnson stayed kind of to the side and that. But instantly when that was all done and he moved into the White House, why then? He began to assert his leadership in his own way. And he'd asked, as we all know, he'd asked the Kennedy people to stay on. He'd done it in Johnson's way, saying, I need you, I need you and that, but we knew that it didn't change and it did. As time went on, it did change. And well, he was just every bit as colorful in the White House as he was outside it. And at first, at least, we used to write about it as things got tougher Vietnam and all that sort of thing. It changed, he withdrew. Every president has. Critics grow louder and louder and he withdrew. But in those early years, this was kind of the raw Lyndon Johnson in the Oval Office. Again, the gadget man was there. He just loved those helicopters and I remember when they came out with the felt-tip pan when he festooned his body with those, he just loved to write little notes. We were walking around the back. That was another thing he did. He'd grab the reporters, we'd walk an hour or more around the back and it was a hot day and Johnson took his coat off and a red one, the cap I think the Secret Service nearly died. They thought he'd been shot. He'd been exploded red. And he got one of the early alarm wristwatches and Stuart Udall told me it kept going off and the cap and it means Johnson hadn't he'd claw his wrist to shut it off and Udall told me it furthermore he went in there one day and there were three buttons in front of the President's Chair. He hadn't seen before red, green and blue. He said, oh my, he joked at one of the cameras, oh my goodness, things are bad in Vietnam, it's the button. It's the button. He went over and he leaned down and read Fresca root beer and coffee. They were hooked up to the galley. They had Johnson, the shower is a famous story I remember I found out about that from a doctor friend of mine who was his eye doctor and Johnson he'd been summoned one morning at five o'clock the phone rang and they said, get down there, Johnson got an eye problem in the President. He said, the Secret Service car is already almost there. Pick you up and he said, oh God, yes and the car screeched up. We were out in Potomac, Maryland, screeched up in front of the house and the car raced through the deserted streets of Washington. There was old Dr. Berkeley who was on the North Portico welcoming this Dr. Jack McTide and he said, come on, come on, come on. He went up there and Johnson was splayed out over in his private bedroom or someplace up there, splayed out over and he went and he said, I went over there and I looked and I took out my handkerchief like a boy scout rolled it up and flicked out a piece of dust and that was all it and Johnson said, thank you doctor and then he got up and he and Jack McTide was a funny man and he said, I'd never seen anything like this he said, Johnson had been in his bathroom but it was time for the shower and he said he held out his hands like that and he said his valet or whatever it was stripped his his bathrobe off and he held out a foot and he took his slipper off took off he said, here is this dude Preston this great huge man and he said, I don't know whether it will look or not look and he said he went to the shower and there was this terrible rumbling and thumping of anyway the doctor then said, Johnson went in the shower and there was this awful rumbling and thumping and so he asked Dr. Berkeley he said, what's that? he said, Dr. Berkeley said, well Johnson takes a nap every afternoon and he likes to take a cold shower and he said there wasn't enough water pressure he wasn't satisfied with the water pressure so he had the plumber come in here and rigged this shower that shot it streamed from the sides and the top and at 80 pounds per square inch of pressure and it kind of pummeled him back to consciousness he said but when he turns it on it strains the plumbing system in the White House well that's a famous story but Ed told Jack McTide said, man he said, you know, he's some kind of character but this was him he loved to try all these things that he had and I've told the story so many times about those busts of himself he had made up in three sizes small, medium and large and they were nice busts to be honest with you but it was a plastic almost resembled metal but they were plastic basically plastic busts but they were good but when we'd travel abroad he'd carry them with him and he'd give you depending on his affection or his respect for whomever he'd give him a bust, a small one and the first time we saw it was up in Korea on the DMZ I think that was 66 he gave the boys a large size plastic bust of himself and he put it on the podium there on the table kind of patted himself on the head as he was talking to the troops and I guess was so swept away in that company that's where he told the world that his great grandfather died at the Alamo that was pure fiction, of course and I mentioned in a couple of columns and of course Johnson was sore about that and finally I think it was Moyers it finally told him more after it settled down he got over being mad about what I'd written he told Moyers or somebody that he said well he said that sight he'd been there seeing those wonderful men why he'd have done he'd have said his ancestor was George Washington so that was it when he went around the world there was all of that and then there was a place where he hit an Air Force Base some remote outpost over there where they had no Dr. Pepper he loved Dr. Pepper so he made the order went out that all Air Force Base had to stock Dr. Pepper and then it was 67 where Johnson had this idea that he would go to Harold Holt's funeral poor old Harold Holt had been drowned in the surf or eaten by a shark nobody knew exactly what happened to him Johnson said and Harold Holt had been a supporter of his in Vietnam and Australians had sent up troops and that and Johnson said you know where I come from you go to your friends you go to the funeral weddings so off we went just before Christmas of 1967 and we stopped in Canberra, Australia and Johnson had a secret plan hadn't told anybody about it and he wanted to and did fly on around the world and didn't tell anybody where he was going you know but essentially we all leaked out that he was headed for Rome but ostensibly President of the United States disappeared in the skies of Asia and we landed in there were sightings of course all the way through we landed in the Karat Thailand where he watched the planes come in and then we were in Karachi Pakistan and then lo and behold on Christmas Eve 6 or 7 American helicopters that they've sent up from Naples picked Johnson up and then they materialize out of the mists over St. Peter's Square you know 20,000 people down there blessed me to terrorize those people with all this love of American airplanes and it turns out somebody hadn't calculated the weight of all of these people landing in the Vatican gardens because they're catacombed the Vatican is catacombed in the mountains and they'd fueled all these helicopters clear up to the brim so they had to circle for 45 minutes to burn the fuel off and land and we landed in the Vatican garden I can still see old Merriman Smith and some of the other reporters leaping out in these priceless box bushes you know they were there and Johnson went up into the Popes Library and gave him a plastic by himself it was one of the great moments there were only a few of us left standing because we'd only been on the only one night on the ground in a bed and a half days around the world we were all paralyzed we were just beyond and I remember Frank, the late Frank Reynolds was there with myself Frank couldn't handle it he was lying on the ground laughing so hard about this whole crazy spectacle that had taken place and I remember it was just before Christmas Christmas Eve we got back in America on Christmas Eve we followed the sun and so nothing much was written about it it kind of just the whole kind of crazy idea kind of disappeared into the midst because everybody was preoccupied with Christmas but I wrote a piece in life and I still love to think about the headline on it was Around the World with Lyndon B. Magellan and I am told that Johnson just went ballistic when he saw that was one more mark against me I thought the whole thing was crazy actually I've gone back and read the piece it wasn't that bad and he did talk with the Pope and that was a tense time in Vietnam and so it wasn't all negative but Johnson the Gadget Man he had all these things that he had had going and doing so many sessions Johnson used to see us not only on our walks around he'd take us around the grounds but wherever in those early years I remember again he wanted to talk with you it was totally impractical and it wasn't going to work and it didn't finally work there are people that told the stories and everybody snickered about them again the character the times he interviewed people while he was on the toilet and that sort of thing kept coming out and then I forget what the story was with Charlie Moore the New York Times and there was some little conflict of interest and Johnson swept up a bunch of people and took them in after an event and talked to them and then said any questions and I brought up this small question and that's when the famous writer came of Johnson which he said and here you are with the leader of the free world and you ask a chicken shit question like that and that of course ricocheted through the whole press corps and I must say I kind of loved it because it kind of described the situation as you know and naughty words but they just they came out and I have to say this though when the Nixon tapes came out Nixon was far more foul mouth than Johnson I never heard that sort of swearing when Nixon was in public Johnson swore there isn't any question about it but not like that and his his words were chosen so that almost never forgot them but I do remember again it was one of those nights everything had gone wrong and that and he had a little bunch of us in a little study or in the Oval Office and I think with Jack Sutherland the U.S. News one of those stupid questions that sometimes isn't so stupid said well what's it like being president now it was shortly after he took over and he said well I'll tell you boys it's just like being a dog in the country down in Texas he said if you run they're always snapping at your ass and if you stop they fuck you to death and like all of Johnson's stories I had to when I went out I had to clean it up when I told it but I said well there's certain truths now that I think about it it makes a point anyway Johnson Johnson in the Oval Office it was an uncomfortable fit right at first the personal Johnson because these stories begin to come out and and then of course he was hit with Vietnam I'm not sure anybody would know in what to do with that and he was overwhelmed with that as we all were at that time and we just we watched we watched the man himself as as closely as we could there were little episodes that again reflected badly Churchill died Winston Churchill Johnson didn't want to go to the funeral I don't know why he was out in the naval hospital but we all always thought that was phony he went out there for a cold or something and in the course of that stay where he talked about well well he referred to it as that funeral I don't understand why people want me to go to that funeral as if it was just another funeral Hubert Humphrey went not a not a good thing to say not perhaps an understanding of Churchill's role in the world a lot of little things like that happened along the way Johnson was not comfortable with television he tried to make up a fort with these intimate moments and there were some wonderful ones and bills were passed I'd go in and take you down that little little office and explain what he did we had the Glassboro Summit meeting and I can recall when we flew on Air Force One back to back to the Rance that night from Glassboro New Jersey he was talking about about with Kaseigan I think it was another one but Kaseigan was kind of the principal Soviet representative in that summit meeting and Johnson talking about meeting these people saying you know here I was representing a free democratic society and he could say I could make almost any decision I wanted he said here these people were going to dictatorship but he said they had to call Moscow every time they wanted to go to the men's room they didn't have any power they had to check back with their people in the bullet bureau and then he told stories about he always sized up these people and he said you know we were he said my daddy always told me if you're in an argument with somebody so he said we got into this talk I don't know what is about Vietnam or something he said I had his eyes fixed on I had I was focused on his eyes Kaseigan I think this wasn't he said I was suddenly got thirsty and he said I there was a cup of coffee on the coffee table I didn't dare look away I felt my way on the coffee table he said took a sip of coffee and then he looked away now people will probably laugh about that but there's a little truth to that little truth to that just the dominant figure in these strange little ways like that he talked about he talked to them about chopping wood how many chords Johnson could chop and what he called chopping cotton he talked about that how he did picking cotton he bloody his fingers and that sort of thing these guys I've decided these leaders or that group of leaders around the world all swap these tall tales about how tough they had Johnson was right in there he loved he loved flying I think he liked the motion he was a telephone freak I'd never seen so many telephones in my life you know they were always we're prepared Henry loose one night we went up to dinner and again the gadget the gadget guy and there's this big tall pepper mill standing there you know automated pepper mill big thing so we sit down at dinner it's loose and myself and Johnson and I think maybe Harry McPherson there's somebody a small little dinner up there and I loose kept looking at that pepper mill before I can't imagine it but barely not and he asked he said what's that pepper mill didn't say anything more loose kind of forgot and then served the steaks and shots and picked that thing up and pepper flew all over every blur put it back down I could see loose over there loose reached out and took it he gave it a couple of shots and then and then Johnson took it away from loose he reached out and took it away but it way away from me and then in the course of that evening we were eating phone rang there wasn't a phone around it I could see well it turned out it was strapped to the leg of that hippo white where he reached underneath pulled the phone down I went to see him in his little study once down from the oval office and we were sitting there around a little coffee table phone rang he had a little secret drawer in there where he pulled the phone up I was walking over in the east room one time and he was telling me about his admiration for Franklin Roosevelt was just undimmed at any time and they had a bus to Roosevelt over there in that corridor along as you go to the east wing and he stopped at the Roosevelt bus and he took it it was almost sensually he took the chin he said this greatest man that I've ever lived look at the strength of this face he kind of caressed it there and as we moved off a phone rang well we were walking before the time of cell phones Johnson went over and there was a pillar with a drape around it and he reached around I put a phone in they knew he was having it and then my neighbor was then of what would it have been it was the original phone company but he was in Washington and he was in charge of the White House detail and that was a huge huge business all the phones for the White House and that and Johnson you know just nuts about phones and his phone bank I think had 32 buttons or something the other presidents had a half a dozen but Johnson was like a B-52 cockpit you know with all this stuff and my building home was his name good Texan from Austin I believe and but he did all that stuff one night he said oh he said you can't imagine you the problems number one they had to rig up a phone that floated on a raft for the swimming pool down at the ranch and they plugged that in and floated out to Johnson then he said but that wasn't the biggest problem he said one night he was down walking near the house which is probably about 50 60 yards or something like 100 yards maybe from the house and apparently it happened all the time they'd get a call up there and the Secret Service had run down and say Mr. President you wanted back on the phone there wasn't a phone down there and again they didn't have the mobile phones at that time so Johnson said I want I'm not going to do this anymore now you work at that so Lindholm said they advised this telephone that they put on a 100 yard cord or whatever it was that reeled up like a garden hose and he said so when the phone would run these guys would run on an unrealist road so that he could stand there and talk by the by the Pyrton Ellis river oh may I could just oh