A Chance to Roam

With the high spirits of a pack of campfire girls, the ladies from Washington headed south through the green hills of Virginia last week. "Y'all have a good time," ordered Lyndon B. Johnson as his spouse and nine Cabinet wives left the White House on the First Lady's two-day "Landscapes and Landmarks" tour of the Old Dominion. A late arrival was Muriel Humphrey, wife of the Vice President, who managed to join the silver Trailways bus 40 minutes down the road.

The twofold object of the trip was to publicize the Administration's see-America-first campaign--part of the drive to stem the outflow of tourist dollars--and to boost its new highway-beautification program. Taken along as tour guides were Interior Secretary Stewart L. Udall. Federal Highway Administrator Rex M. Whitton and Laurance Rockefeller, chairman of a White House conference on natural beauty.

The Blight. First stop, an hour out of Washington, was "Dumfries wayside shelter," an undistinguished oasis on Interstate 95 with two picnic tables and a red-brick colonial toilet. "Virginia highways are the cleanest and least cluttered in the nation," boasted Virginia's Governor Albertis Harrison Jr. as Lady Bird dedicated the site, first roadside rest area to be financed under the interstate expressway program.

A bit later, the bus swung briefly onto old U.S. 1 for a glimpse of roadside blight--junkyards, billboards and used-car lots. Whitton commended owners of automobile junkyards, which he called "disassembling yards," who have tried to screen the rusting hulks from passing motorists; the Department of Commerce counts 17,760 auto graveyards and scrap heaps lining the country's main roads.

At Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's stately home near Charlottesville, Lady Bird presented a seedling from a White House white horse chestnut and received a slight blow to the ego when William S. Hildreth, president of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation, didn't recognize her as she started down the reception line. When his wife later chided him, he lamely explained: "Well, I didn't know. She wasn't wearing a name tag."

The Barter. At Abingdon, the tourists attended the Barter Theater's performance of Julius Caesar, and the First Lady presented the theater's annual award to Presidential Arts Adviser Roger Stevens for his contributions as a Broadway producer. In keeping with the little theater's name, the group bargained its way past the box office: Lady Bird unwrapped another White House seedling, and Mrs. Humphrey brought a bucket of vegetables--"not to be thrown."

Next morning, as Lady Bird slept in, Udall led his wife and Mrs. Robert S. McNamara, wife of the Secretary of Defense, along with reporters and photographers to the top of Sharp Top Mountain (elevation 3,875 ft.) to show off the Blue Ridge Mountains and make a pitch for conservation. With an investment of $150 in camping equipment, his department points out, a family of four can spend a weekend outdoors for only $36.

Mixing a little homespun verse with the great outdoors, Lady Bird quoted the lines of an anonymous staff member: "The heart that travels far is doubly blessed, first by a chance to roam and then to rest."

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