Thread by @BeschlossDC

LBJ having a great time at picnic with friends as LBJ Library opens fifty years ago tomorrow, Austin, Texas:

Harry Middleton, the Joe DiMaggio of Presidential Library directors (he served the Johnson Library from 1970 to 2002), leading Lady Bird, LBJ and friends outside the newly-opened institution, August 1971: #LBJL

Villa Capri Motor Hotel, Austin, Texas, across street from LBJ Library, home away from home to a generation of historians (including myself) and other researchers. Excellent fried chicken and glamorous swimming pool. Demolished 1988:

LBJ enjoyed the food at Matt’s El Rancho in Austin (still thriving after almost seventy years) and often entered through the back door and kitchen:

Outdoors in Austin, LBJ ate German food and drank beer at Scholz Garten, established 1866, which state legislature called a “gathering place for Texans of discernment, taste, culture, erudition”:

Harry Middleton, towering longtime LBJ Library director, once told me that when he and ex-President Johnson disagreed, LBJ would say, “Well, one of us is full of s—t, and we’re going to have to figure which one of us it is!"

For entertainments at the LBJ Ranch, Johnson’s favorite caterer was Fort Worth’s famous Walter Jetton, “King of Barbecue”:

LBJ in office at his ranch (now open for visits and restored, minus the brown shag carpeting).
Would anyone like to have a replica of the cowhide chair with stirrups?

President Nixon had this desk brought from LBJ’s ranch office to his Oval Office, had microphones implanted in it to make secret tapes, and used it in 1974 while telling Gerald Ford that he was quitting the Presidency. Nixon did not ask LBJ for his cowhide chair with stirrups: