JOHNSON CITY, LBJ LAND

We spent the night in Luckenbach buffeted by heavy winds and rain. Lightening flashed, the thunder exploded around us til' we wondered if we would be a burned cinder sitting in the middle of a lake in the morning.
Headed for Austin, we pass through the hill country where L.B.J was born, raised and buried on the homestead his grandfather settled in the 1800's . The LBJ ranch is now the Lyndon B. Johnson National Historical Park which sits across the Pedernales River from his grandfather's homestead and the Johnson family home where Ladybird and Lyndon lived and raised their two girls.

This is one of the bridges we tourists cross over. It was just at flood stage and bitterly cold when we arrived at the Visitors Center which had been struck by lightening and had no usable restrooms when we arrived.

But this is the way the Johnson family crossed the river from the ranch to their house, on the underwater road above. Johnson loved taking newsmen and visitors for a ride without warning them they'd be traveling underwater for a short distance.
The woman in his Lincoln appears to be holding on for dear life.
Johnson and Lady Bird in their 1934 Ford Phaeton. The road was actually pretty dry at certain times of year. He also owned a German made Amphicar that you could drive into the water. It had little propellers on it. It is on display along with other Johnson owned cars.

This homely old rocker along with several others for guests, sits on the porch of the Johnson home. Its a modest house, lovingly used and faithfully kept as the Johnson's lived in it. No pictures were allowed inside, but the house exudes warmth, and family, with a lot of snapshots of the kids and grandkids in a big montage, just like you or I might have on our kitchen wall.
The visitor centers shows a film of Johnson giving a tour and history of his beloved ranch for a CBS Documentary. The cane in the case below was made of matchsticks by an inmate in a Tennessee prison. But, the best display had me howling with laughter as I read letters written to the President. Abbreviated samples:

Dear President Johnson-
My husband's roofing busines has gone to pot, the car blew up, the baby's teething, the sitter didn't show, I've got no money for a writing course. I'm sorry to ditch you, but maybe the Republicans might be better when all you do is worry about Fulbright and that measly war...

...Now I ask you Mr. President couldn't you be more considerate? Were all those fireworks for King Faisal necessary when I have 293 kids on a field trip staying at a hotel. How would you like it if 293 kids woke you up?...

Letter writers complained about him interrupting their favorite shows, his misuse of English, his airplane holding up air traffic. But the worst was a beleaugered man who was held up in road traffic because Lady Bird was planting a tree. What a fun visit.

Also on the LBJ homestead is the Western Whitehouse and another old homestead that is being maintained by the park service as a working homestead with docents in period costumes.

Smoking sausage and feeding the kitchen range.

The tour costs a dollar, by the way.

PACIFIC WAR MUSEUM

You don't have to be in a war to know its grisly. Yesterday, we returned to the Pacific War Museum and spent 4 1/2 hours fighting our country's war with Japan, the most vivid history lesson I've ever experienced.
I don't remember reading who designed and built this superior facility next to the Nimitz building. It is incomparable.
The building holds three full sized planes, a submarine, jeeps, tanks, a Japanese mini-sub, and Japanese weapons as well as our own huge howitzers. It interprets and portrays every battle fought in the pacific from the smallest atoll to the Japanese Mainland. The well prepared Japanese were a formidable enemy fought with troops from all over the world on numerous fronts.

The seeds of war were determined by events in Japan and China and Korea before America ever got involved.
The historical background of China, her failure to move away from old empirical ways, prompted the Japanese to see China as weak-an opportunity for expansion. They took Manchuria, then pushed deep into China. Then Korea, Burma, Thailand, Guam, the Philippines and every Pacific Island within their reach. Weak Americans sitting in Pearl Harbor were in the way of Japanese plans and could not be ignored.

First, the museum educates you with the history of Asian conflicts in three exhibits before you ever enter Pearl Harbor. The names, Corregidor, Bataan, Coral Sea, Midway, Guadalcanal, Aleutian Islands, New Guinea, the Solomons, Marianas, Leyte, Tarawa, Peleliu, Iwo Jima, Okinawa..mostly boys lost their lives on Islands they, nor their parents had ever heard of before. The 33 war rooms are chillingly real.


The rooms hold life sized artifacts with life sized and bigger than life sized pictures on every wall.
The history of each event is pictured and written. The battles are explained by the men who lived to tell them. The tank above has taken a fatal hit. The Austrailian soldier on the screen above explains his escape and that of his buddies. He lost a leg to that strike.
Besides the pictorial explanation, each war room is filled with the sounds of battle from a table sized screen that depicts the strategy of each battle, the movement of ships, the assault on beach heads, the bombers deployed. The various decisions and movements of men from the Japanese Generals and Admirals, sometimes in their own voices, as well as the counter moves and attacks by American Generals and Admirals.
Then when you read the step by step maneuvers on the walls, it is clear and easily understood.

In the ocean room you are warned the doors will not reopen for 9 minutes as they close behind you. You are facing a submarine with lighting that gives the affect of being underwater making me feel disoriented and unsteady on my feet. Four screens, two on either side of the sub's cone, make you part of the drama as the sub prepares to drop depth charges and sustains attacks from above. Newsreels report the progress of the war. When the lights go back on, you can read the walls. It gave me the chills.
All through the war, the other world events, the time line for Germany's Invasion of Europe, Amelia Earharts fatal flight, the importation of Bracero's to work the fields while women went to work in the factories, rationing, the amazing increase in shipbuilding, inventing better rubber, and so on were incorporated into the events. The picture above was the first published image of American dead. Previously, photos and news reels were censored.
The heart rending story of the Sullivan Brothers; the Sullivan daughter reading her mother's letter to President Roosevelt to comfirm whether the rumors of the death of her five sons was true or not. The army held off as long as possible, hoping to find one of them a survivor. It was not to be.
The changes that took place in American life as everyone hooked into the war effort. In some cases tent cities housed some of the 1/2 million people who moved from farms and small towns to cities for work in the war industry.

Women smashed lights in Seattle when businesses failed to obey a blackout; women wrapped bandages to send to our boys; black men and women got decent jobs for the first time and still, they had to tolerate getting paid less than their white counterparts. (Harry Truman integrated the armed services, a move that helped inch Civil Rights along.)

The assault on Japan's Mainland, the decision to use the atom bomb...all vividly real. The emotional moment of the Japanese signing an unconditional surrender. You step back out into the real world in awe of what you just witnessed. This is a living museum.
Don't miss it. Fredricksburg is located about 90 miles west of Austin.

FREDRICKSBURG FOR ADMIRAL NIMITZ

In war, ordinary men become heroes. To give your life for your country, to put yourself in harms way for others, is heroic.
We find ourselves in Fredricksburg, Texas where one of the best WWII Museums in the U.S. surrounds the accomplishments of Admiral Nimitz who was born here. He was a modest man, from a small community who gave up his high school education to study for entrance into Annapolis. He rose to great heights in the Navy and was admired by his peers and the enlisted men as well. He was against the bomb; he always wanted peace before killing.
He refused lucrative jobs after his retirement from the Navy and chose to serve his country in other ways. Alameda County, CA has a freeway named for him and I always wondered about this man's accomplishments. Now I know.
This unusual looking building was the Nimitz family hotel that is now part of the National WWII Museum complex. This is a thorough and excellent presentation of his career and the war. He was raised here by his mother and grandparents. His father died when he was 5 months old. It takes about 5 hours to get through the exhibits in the 33,000 square foot complex.
Early in his career, midshipmen Nimitz met Heihachiro Togo and was very impressed with the Japanese leader. In the end, he was part of the surrender group and signed the papers with the Japanese on behalf of the United States.
In the Presidents Plaza, I couldn't help but admire Dwight Eisenhower's statement about war: "I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its stupidity." It is an ugly truth that the past indicates war is a constant among tribes, communities and nations and always will be.
Nimitz instructed that all men who served under him and gave their lives for us be remembered on this memory wall. It is in reality many walls that stretch for a block. It also encloses a peace garden built by the Japanese after the war.
The town is historic and quaint with many wonderful old buildings and shops. We found people here friendly and fun. Today we expect to taste some authentic, old style German food at Lindenbaums.
They have a brewpub here where I got to sip my favorite porter while Jim tasted that weak looking little glass of "horse piss." Well, not everyone is perfect.