Visiting the LBJ Ranch in the Texas hill country this weekend, our ad hoc tour group included a gaggle of high-school students from??"south of Houston." They generally seemed pleasant, self-conscious, goofy and teenager-ish. They also seemed entirely ignorant of the 1960's,?? even??the basic timeline of 20th Century U.S. history. At least one??couldn't quite remember the name of the 36th President whose ranch this was. Standing in front of the Western White House (a lovely spot on the banks of the Pedernales, by the way, shaded by 400-year-old live oaks), this lad asked the National Park Service ranger, "When did he die? Was it??1993?" The ranger looked slightly puzzled, perhaps because he had already mentioned 1973 as the year of Johnson's death and because all the biographical material in the park conveyed that key fact. So the kid decided to clarify the??subject of his query: "The guy," he said, evidently either unable to call LBJ's name to mind or truly unaware of where he was and why he and his pals were taking this tour in the first place.
That was the first of a grand total of two questions posed by these dozen youngsters. The second came while we were inside the President's office (the only room one can currently tour, considering that this building was Lady Bird's weekend residence until her own death barely 18 months ago and the Park Service is planning gradually to open more of it to visitors.)??"Was he saved?" inquired a girl. That was it. We were standing in a place in which were made any number of momentous decisions involving any number of key figures in U.S. history from 1964 through 1968. (The ranger had mentioned "Martin," for example, as the epochal civil rights act was being planned.) But the only topic of evident interest to these kids was LBJ's relationship to God.
