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A large plaque in front of the house tells us the following:
Lyndon B. Johnson spent most of ten years living in this home – a decade that profoundly affected the future president’s view of the world. Today’s neat landscape around this house bears little resemblance to the backyard Lyndon Johnson knew. In Johnson’s youth, this yard included almost everything needed to sustain a family: an orchard, vegetable garden, woodpile, windmill, barn smokehouse. Hog wire fences kept in chickens and livestock. Laundry – scrubbed by hand – swayed under the intense hill country sun. Though Lyndon Johnson always thought fondly of Johnson City, he spent much of his political career trying to lessen for all Americans the hard realities he knew as a youth: no electricity, poor medical care, inadequate education and prejudice.
If a boy growing up in a place like this can rise to become president – that should tell us something about America!
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