Word: rayburnisms
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...Rancher at Home. Thousands know Sam Rayburn of Washington, the shy, hardworking, orderly minded man who has a kind word for the lowliest of Capitol employes. Very few know Sam Rayburn, the rancher, the Squire of Bonham, the North Texas cattleman...
...house with twelve rooms, four 20-ft. white columns in front, four sleeping porches, 14 rocking chairs and almost as many couches, and a Brobdingnagian butane gas stove in the kitchen. The farm has 150 acres; there are 208 more acres on a neighboring farm, and 917 on the Rayburn cattle ranch 13 miles away. Sam's brothers, Tom and Jim, run the farm and ranch; his sister Lucinda, known to all as Miss Lou, is the mistress of the house...
...living room, near the pink-tiled fireplace, Sam has a flat-topped, eight-legged desk, flanked by pictures of Robert E. Lee and Franklin Roosevelt. Upstairs is his den, lined with volumes of Texas history. The Rayburns live well: breakfasts of ham & eggs, biscuits and honey; lunches and dinners of fried chicken or steak, great slices of cold tomatoes and sliced Bermuda onions, cornbread and homemade jelly, and homemade ice cream cranked out in an old-fashioned freezer by Bobby, the colored cook. The steaks are from Rayburn cattle, straight from the frozen-food locker in Bonham...
...spot is the one-story ranch house, nestled in a grove of oak trees. Here is no telephone, no mail delivery; only a yawning fireplace, walnut beds, and electric stove for steak broiling and an old-fashioned icebox, usually filled with watermelons. Here, on the hot summer afternoons, Sam Rayburn lolls around, often in his shorts, letting the sweat roll down his bald head. Or fie inspects the solid fence-posts hewed out of bois d'arc (pronounced, in Texas, bo-dark), or sits popping huge chunks of red watermelon into his mouth from the end of a rancher...
...Rayburn needed the good wishes of all Texans-which he has 365 days a year-and then some...