I’m now listening to the first volume of Robert Caro’s Lyndon Johnson biography. He writes that “Lyndon was an unusually restless baby.” As soon as he could walk,
He would be playing in the yard and if his mother turned away for a minute, Lyndon would toddle down the road to see ‘Grandpa.’
As he grew older, his trips grew longer. Relatives who lived a half-mile — or more — away would suddenly notice that tiny figure toddling along with grim determination — a picture of Lyndon Johnson at eighteen months is striking not only for his huge ears but for the utter maturity of his expression — across the open country or up one of the long dirt tracks that branch off to the various farms from the main “roads.” They would take him back to Rebekah—and the very next day, or, if Rebekah wasn’t careful, the same day, the tiny figure would appear again.
Lyndon was running away so frequently that his father had hung a big bell on the front porch so Rebekah could more easily call for help in finding him.
School started at five in his town, but when he was four he started running away to school everyday (a mile away from their house) so he could play with older children while they were at recess.
When Miss Kate excused one of her students to use the privy out back, the student had to write his name on one of the two blackboards that flanked the back door. The other students wrote their names small; whenever Lyndon left the room, he would reach up as high as he could and scrawl his name in capital letters so huge that they took up not one but both blackboards. His schoolmates can remember today—seventy years later—that huge LYNDON B. on the left blackboard and JOHNSON on the right.
Later on, when he’s a teenager, he becomes all bad, especially after he graduates from high school. Every night after his father goes to sleep, he takes their car out and races with it, and one night he crashes it. He decides that he just can’t face his father, so he runs away and hitchhikes to Robstown, Texas, 160 miles away near Corpus Christi. He spends the summer working in a cotton gin, keeping the boiler running.
And it was explained to him that if he ever let the water run out (or if the pop-off valve for some reason failed to work, and too much steam was kept pent up inside), the boiler would explode. Several had exploded in Robstown gins that summer; he was terrified.
Lyndon decides to have a friend call his dad and tell him how Lyndon is doing such dangerous work, and his dad immediately tries to get him back:
Then Sam went home and telephoned Robstown, telling Lyndon to come home. But Lyndon wouldn’t let his father know he wanted to. Pretending that he was having a good time where he was, he said he would come home only if Sam promised never to punish him for the car wreck—or even to mention it. And when his father finally agreed, Lyndon insisted that his mother come to the phone and say she had heard the promise, so that in the future he would have a witness. And thereafter, whenever Sam, angry at Lyndon, would start to bring up the car wreck, Lyndon would say, “Mama, you remember, he said he wouldn’t do it”—and Rebekah would say, “Now, that’s out, Sam. You promised.” And Lyndon’s father would always drop the subject.