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, René 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."