Me and Lyndon and Norman

Pardon me, please, while I name-drop a bit. I’ve met few famous people and one of them just died.

The other one was Lyndon Johnson and I made him angry once after a presidential press conference.

I was working part-time for Long News Service in Austin and I suppose its owner, Stuart Long, had something better to do that Saturday morning in 1964 or 1965 when he put me on a press bus and sent me to find out what LBJ was going to do with a retired fire truck donated to the Johnson Ranch by a nearby Texas town, Brady.

The nationally-televised event was held on the lawn in front of the ranch house and dealt with issues of somewhat greater substance. Afterward, I waited and watched as Johnson walked around shaking hands with every potential voter there. When he got to me I screwed up my courage and asked him two questions about the old red fire truck.

With my right hand in a firm grip, he smiled down at me during the entire minute or so of our conversation, but he told me nothing useful and after my second question his eyes went cold and he said in a tone I’ll never forget, “The press conference is over.”

Already intimidated, I showed, I suppose, intense contrition. The chill left the face of the President of the United States as quickly as it had come and he said, “Go ask George Reedy.”

From Reedy, his press secretary, I got this quote: “I have no idea.” That was as close as I got to a story that day.

But it’s Norman Mailer who just died and when I met him, strangely enough, he wanted information from me.

Mailer’s short play called “Why Are We in Vietnam?” was staged for the first time in a theater on Cape Cod in Massachusetts, an hour or two from where I was living in the late 60s, and an actor friend of mine named Bob Teague invited me to attend.

Bob had a part in the play. One of Mailer’s former wives, Beverly Bentley, acted the lead role, and there was another actor whose name I don’t recall portraying a Texan and attempting to sound like LBJ.

Mailer was in the audience, sitting in the back with an attractive woman, and they stayed for a discussion led by a member of the Provincetown Theater Company right after the final curtain of the not-so-great drama. Most of the questions and comments from the audience members seemed to me to be aimed at flattering the famous author and his work.

I raised my hand and said I’d never heard anyone in my home state talk like the “Texan.” Truly, I hadn’t.

When the discussion ended, I’d hardly had time to stand up from my seat when Mailer, famous for his temper, was in front of me wanting to know exactly what I’d meant by that. He wasn’t confrontational though. He really wanted to know.

Curiosity and willingness to learn. Norman Mailer had some strange characteristics, but those two probably helped make him the superior writer that he was.

I suppose he also angered LBJ, and for more important reasons. He was asking the right questions in those days. — Bob