Posted on 08/26/2010 4:14:16 PM PDT by Ready4Freddy
(AP) STONEWALL, Texas (AP) - Luci Baines Johnson remembers as a teenager riding in a shiny mirror-finished jet trimmed with sky blue and white paint and emblazoned with black letters proclaiming "United States of America," then landing on a narrow Texas airstrip behind what Americans would come to know as the Western White House.
"A country runway," she said this week of the roughly mile-long airstrip behind President Lyndon Johnson's ranch, her childhood home and now part of the Lyndon B. Johnson National Historical Park.
The National Park Service, which manages the park, will formally acquire the JetStar aircraft Johnson used as vice president - then during his five-plus years as the nation's 36th president - on Friday, LBJ's 102nd birthday.
Rescued from a scrap yard in the Arizona desert where it had been mothballed and cannibalized for parts, the four-engine Lockheed C-140 JetStar has been refurbished on the outside to look as good as new.
Five trucks brought pieces of the plane earlier this month to the LBJ Ranch about 70 miles west of Austin, where it was reassembled as a permanent exhibit for visitors, who should number about 100,000 this year. It's displayed under an open-air hangar on the same spot where it was parked in the 1960s.
"I am one of those just thrilled to death to have it coming home," Johnson's younger daughter said. "And I think my daddy would be just tickled beyond words."
Acquiring the plane was the idea of James U. Cross, a retired Air Force brigadier general who served as Johnson's pilot and top military assistant. Cross spotted one on display about four or five years ago at Robins Air Force Base in Georgia.
(Excerpt) Read more at cbsnews.com ...
“N329J served as Clarence (Kelly) Johnson’s personal transport for some time.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_JetStar
I can’t understand why we have to pay to memorialize this turd.
I wonder if LBJ’s seat is there might be a tempting Latrine.
That looks like the same kind of plane Pussy Galore flew in “Goldfinger”.
If you want to talk about white trash start with Lyndon Johnson! He had the moral standards of a hog.
LOL! I thought Hey, that’s Goldfinger’s plane!;)
I wish I was speaker of the house I would defund that garbage pit day one.
I agree about LBJ, however, it is nice airplane porn...
Four turbojet engines. Great for the next time jet fuel is $0.09/gal.
This has been a few years ago and I do not have the source so you can take it for what it’s worth, but there was a piece on the former Presidents and people that worked for them and around them were being interviewed about the POTUS’ personal habits and mannerisms. Someone who was on the flight home with Johnson after his term said if it wasn’t nailed down in the plane, he took it. Whatever was loose; glasses, towels, dinnerware etc. Lovely huh? That always stuck out in my mind as I had heard he was a crude b*sta*d for years. I’m sure this being on display would have suited him just fine.
Johnson’s sleazy history runs way back to the great depression days, he was running with some pure evil.
thank you LBJ for bankrupting our nation, devaluing our currency, and destroying the character of our nation.
One of the three most destructive men to occupy the white house.
“We are not about to send American boys nine or ten thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves,” Johnson famously declared.
WTF??
oh I would argue Wilson and FDR did FAR more damage to the nation than Carter or Clinton.
Obama’s made a good start but it’s too early to tell if he will have as long lasting destructive effect as LBJ and those other two.
That’s the one that made him un-electable in ‘68. By then he and McNamara were sticking pins into maps in the White House to order up bombing missions. If I wrote what I think about that I’d be banned.
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