Getting Over the Tourist Feeling

THE WHITE HOUSE

As Lady Bird Johnson would put it, she has been "busier than a man with one hoe and two rattlesnakes."

As First Lady, she gets 600 letters a day, answers some 300, and insists on signing each reply herself. She has taken over some of Jackie Kennedy's commitments, such as visiting hospital children's wards or arranging a White House ballet performance for 150 underprivileged kids. Making endless lists and dozens of phone calls, she supervised White House Christmas preparations, helped arrange a score of working suppers so Lyndon could meet quietly with Congressmen or Administration officials. She completed the complex transaction of divesting her control over nearly $5,000,000 in real estate and broadcast properties. And in full stride she moved from The Elms, the Johnsons' 13-room home in northwest Washington, to the White House.

On the day of the move, Lady Bird carried a color picture of the late House Speaker Sam Rayburn in her limousine, while Daughter Lucy Baines, 16, brought the two Johnson beagles, Him and Her, in a white convertible. The Elms is up for sale (asking price: over $250,000), and Lady Bird visits her old home regularly, often spies knickknacks that she suddenly decides she must have at the White House.

An Expert at Spoon Bread. Several days after she moved into the White House, Lady Bird said: "I'm just now beginning to get over feeling like a tourist." To get over that feeling, she hung her favorite paintings of Texas landscapes by Artist Porfirio Salinas in a second-floor drawing room, distributed her collection of porcelain birds all around the premises. One of her first changes was to install a desk in a little room off her bedroom. Jackie had used it as a dressing room, but Lady Bird, a shrewd businesswoman who has always paid the family bills and managed her own finances, wanted an office instead.

She will have a budget of $670,000 a year to run the White House and grounds, with a domestic and maintenance staff that normally stands at 77.* Jackie Kennedy's French chef, Rene Verdon, will stay on--but mostly to perform for fancy official affairs. For everyday eating, Lady Bird brought along Mrs. Zephyr Wright, the Johnsons' cook for 21 years. Zephyr is an expert at spoon bread, homemade ice cream and monumental Sunday breakfasts of deer sausage, home-cured bacon, popovers, grits, scrambled eggs, homemade peach preserves and coffee.

From Casals to Geezinslaw. Because the mourning period for President Kennedy did not end until this week, Lady Bird has done no official entertaining. Like Jackie, she favors small tables and fairly informal dinner parties. But where Jackie scored a coup by calling Cellist Pablo Casals in to play at the White House, Lady Bird once had a wonderful time employing a country music group called the Geezinslaw Brothers to sing at a party. She also likes to issue invitations by telephone, sometimes winds up by telling the prospective guest, "I'll see you Sunday if the Lord be willing and the creeks don't rise."

Whether Lady Bird will set new fashions for U.S. women remains a question. She is a perfect size ten (5 ft. 4 in., 114 Ibs.), wears various shades of orange, yellow, coral and melon because Lyndon likes bright hues. When she appears in something more subdued, he is apt to growl, "Don't wear those old 'muley' colors."

Pickled Okra & Oil Lamps. In some ways, Lady Bird's tastes are militantly homespun. Her favorite recipes are for turkey dressing, spinach souffle, double divinity and pickled okra. She likes to watch television, talk on the telephone, hunt deer, shoot doves, take home movies. She recalls with pride her childhood on an isolated Texas farm: "I used an oil lamp until I was nine years old, and I can remember what a big day it was when we finally got indoor plumbing."

Lady Bird, who turned 51 this week, views her role as First Lady of the U.S. with a homemaker's eye: "I will try to be balm, sustainer and sometimes critic for my husband. I will try to have my children look at this job with all the reverence it is due, to get from it the knowledge that their unique vantage point gives them, and to retain the lightheartedness to which every teen-ager is entitled. For my own self, my role must emerge in deeds, not words."

* A maitre d'hotel, two housekeepers, four butlers, six cooks, a valet, five doormen, five housemen, a head laundress, a pantry woman, eight maids, eight engineers, four carpenters, four electricians, three plumbers, two storekeepers, a painter, ten laborers and eleven gardeners.

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