"The author describes Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn as "seldom at ease without a gavel in his hand. - Robert A. Caro

But then one evening in November, 1939, the Smiths were returning from Johnson City, where they had been attending a declamation contest, and as they neared their farmhouse, something was different. “Oh my God,” her mother said. “The house is on fire!” But as they got closer, they saw the light wasn’t fire. “No, Mama,” Evelyn said. “The lights are on.” They were on all over the Hill Country. “And all over the Hill Country,” Stella Gliddon says, “people began to name their kids for Lyndon Johnson.

I have been unable to save much money in my life. I have been in politics, and in politics an honest man does not get rich.

-Sam Rayburn (whose savings at his death totaled $15,000)

I swore then and there,” Lyndon Johnson was to say, “that if I ever had a chance to help those underprivileged kids I was going to do it.” It was at Cotulla, Lyndon Johnson was to say, “that my dream began of an America … where race, religion, language and color didn’t count against you.