[Much laughter]
[Ron] What year would that have been?
Probably ’67. A lot happened in ’67! It was a very busy year. We had to have a separate car for each Congressman. Actually the number one car was for the Chairman, Mr. Chairman. We were doing great until all of a sudden somebody called and said oh, by the way, those have to be air conditioned cars. Well, you know what there aren’t any air conditioned cars around here. So we had them coming in from Portland, San Francisco, etc. We had rangers for drivers from all over.
[Bill] I was glad they were air conditioned because they kept the dust out.
You know you plan all this stuff out and drive it and time it, and what you are going to do and say and all this stuff. It is kind of involved and then all of a sudden the Chairman says, “What’s up that road?”
[Bill] It all goes to hell.
Off you go, well there are twenty-one more cars going up that road, dirt, dust, oh gosh.
[Bill] I was amazed we didn’t lose somebody over the side because there was so much dust you would come to a turn and you may not see the turn you had to stay back far enough so that you could see what you were doing. The dust would just fall off the car.
Somewhere along in there, I forget just what year it was, Lady Bird Johnson came out. Was that in ’68? Any rate it was prior to the time of the legislation, I think.
That was going to be my next question, how did Lady Bird get involved in all this?
Well, I don’t know just how or what transpired in Washington, but Lady Bird came out with her group. Nash Castro was working in the White House at the time, a former Park Director, and they flew out and we had quite a party.
George Hartzog was here and we had one bus full of press people. Prior to that, this representative from Washington and I pick out the spot with Lady Bird Johnson. We had three alternatives and she liked that one.
