L.B.J.: HURTING GOOD

ON the surface, nothing had changed.

The big microwave antenna still towered above the banks of the Pedernales. The house trailers still stood ready for the aides and auxiliaries who attend the Commander in Chief. Secret Service agents were as protective as ever of the man they were assigned to guard. Yet everything, of course, had changed, and the L.B.J. ranch--the seat of power for perhaps a fifth of Lyndon Johnson's 1,887 days as President--was the home of a private citizen.

If the transformation bothered Johnson, he concealed it gracefully. "I'm sure that anyone who's been as active in public affairs as I have will notice it when they call the roll," the former President admitted to newsmen. "But I want to miss it. It hurts good."

One of the good hurts was the absence of the President's awesome responsibilities, particularly the responsibility for war or peace. "It feels good," said Johnson, "not to have that sergeant with the little black bag a few feet behind me." The sergeant with the black bag is, of course, the man who is never far from the President of the U.S. --carrying the codes that can unleash the nation's nuclear striking force.

Unwinding. Still, it was not an easy thing being an ex-President--at least for the first week--and it was clear that Johnson was having some difficulty unwinding. "He's not basically constituted to assume this new posture," observed Jake Jacobsen, a former aide. In a two-hour press conference at the ranch, Johnson was by turns shy and brave, moody and fitful, wistful and uncertain. He said he was convinced that he had done the right thing in renouncing reelection last March. Only Lady Bird seemed altogether certain that she would rather be in Blanco County, Texas, than Washington. Her main problem was that all the closets seemed to have shrunk.

"I thought they were big when I built them," she fretted.

Actually, Johnson's farewell to power has been better cushioned than that of any President preceding him. A small Huey turbo helicopter and an Air Force crew are at his disposal. His teak-paneled office in Austin is the same one he used as President, with phones wherever convenient and a button marked "Galley" to summon a Fresca or a milk shake. A special allowance of $375,000 will cover the cost of transition, including the hiring of clerks to answer the hundreds of letters that continue to pour in. As a former President, Johnson has a pension of $25,000 a year, an $80,000 office allowance, free medical care, free postage, plus lifetime protection by the Secret Service. Agents will be on duty as long as he wants or needs them. No one was much surprised to see at the ranch the two Air Force sergeants who had served as Johnson's valets; no one knows how long they will remain.

The Lyndon Johnson Library at the University of Texas in Austin is already under construction, and when it is completed in early 1970, the former President will have yet another office, with a helipad on the roof. The library office is designed to look as much as possible like the Oval Office in the White House. When the library is finished, about 31 million pages of manuscripts, the most any President has accumulated, will be transferred from storage for cataloguing. Johnson plans to lecture at the university and visit other schools as well, but he will not have a regular course schedule. He confessed: "I didn't want to make any 8 o'clock classes."

Open Options. With his memoirs, lectures and public appearances, Johnson should be busy enough. But few think that he will be satisfied with the role of elder statesman. At 60, he is more than two years younger than Dwight Eisenhower was when he took the oath of office for the first time. Business is a possibility, though the role of hard-driving entrepreneur, according to friends, does not fit in with Johnson's image of an ex-President. L.B.J. has already turned down several offers to join the boards of corporations or foundations. In any case, he has a personal fortune estimated at $20 million, his landholdings total 15,000 acres (including six ranch houses and some Austin real estate), and TV station KTBC, a CBS affiliate which he owns a major share of, nets a profit of $100,000 to $200,000 a year. His other investments, notably in Texas banks, are secret, but probably equally impressive.

Politics will undoubtedly continue to dominate his life, even if he contents himself with the role of a behind-the-scenes power. Will Johnson try for elective office again? John Quincy Adams left the White House and became a Congressman, after all, and Andrew Johnson was elected Senator. No one can be certain, but as Johnson himself said just before leaving Washington: "I don't want to withdraw any of my options. I try always to keep them open." Some things, at least, had changed not at all.

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