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Andrew HeiskellAndrew Heiskell
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hundred yards from the house. And the door opens, steps go down and there standing at the foot of the steps is the President of the United States in his ten gállon hat, in a light linen jacket and pants, very erect and full of Texas hospitality. Before you can even think of going to the house to wash, or anything, you're put in two matched white Lincolns; one driven by the president and one driven by Lady Bird. And they begin to give you the tour of the land, not on the roads, but across the land. And they're talking to each other on mikes the whole time. “Bird, now Bird we're gonna go this way. Bird--” [laughter] It's always Bird. And she'd say, “Yes, yes.” “Alright Bird, now we're going to go up and see the deer.” And here you are, bumping across the land. The bottom of the Lincoln hitting rocks and stones. And I was saying, “God! These cars can't last very long down here,” And we got up there and there in a fenced in area is a lot of red deer. He says, “I brought them in here. They're terrific. They're red deer. See them.” We talked about the red deer for a while. He says, “They love tabacco. Anybody got any cigarettes? Heiskell, you smoke cigars, don't you?” I said, “Yes Sir.” He said, “Give 'em to me.” Well, there went went all my cigars. The deer ate them all. He just took them all, fed them to the deer.” [laughter] And then finally we got back and he's talking the entire time.

You get back to the ranch and there's some peacocks on one of the roofs, and they're all squalking like this. And he squalks back at them just as loud as they do, using practically the same intonation, which was rather amusing because we were then due to go to Johnson City to actually innaugurate this little park ceremony.





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