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The highways of Texas resemble a colorful patchwork quilt in the springtime, as the wildflowers burst into bloom. When I was a small child, the Highway Department would have mown them down before they ever got a chance to blossom.
As we drove down Highway 6 in south Texas this weekend, I admired those flowers, while a phrase from my childhood kept rolling through my head: “Bee YOU tee fy uh MARE uh cuh.” As teenager, my sister and I used to chant that phrase and cackle with glee as we poked fun at the First Lady of our nation.
Go ahead. Say it out loud (I know you want to do it). You’ve just said, “Beautify America” the way Lady Bird Johnson used to say it. If you don’t recall the name, she was the wife of Lyndon B. Johnson, our nation’s 36th President. Her real name was “Claudia Alta” --- I’d have gone by “Lady Bird,” too.
I freely admit that as a child I loved to mock Lady Bird. Give me a break; I was a teenager. It was my job to show disdain for my elders. More importantly, it was delightful to find someone with a more appalling Texas accent than mine.
These days, I have much more respect for Lady Bird Johnson. “Beautify America.” That was the woman’s mission. I’ve got to love her for that.
"Ugliness is so grim. A little beauty, something that is lovely, I think, can help create harmony which will lessen tensions," Lady Bird once said.
Her view was that a country that was clean and beautiful could calm people and unite them. In the turbulent 60s, that’s what the country needed. As First Lady she vigorously used her “powers” to do just that. She wanted to soothe a nation divided by war and political unrest by surrounding us with beauty. That may sound simplistic, but you know as well as I do that beautiful surroundings will indeed calm our tensions.
Though Lady Bird focused on our nation’s capital, and did wonders to make it a well-landscaped showcase, I rarely visit Washington, D.C. --- so that work isn’t what impresses me. I like the fact that she took her show “on the road,” so to speak, across the nation encouraging us to have “masses of flowers where masses pass.”
In school in the late 1960s, our teachers encouraged us to scatter wildflower seeds on the sides of the road. I can remember hanging out the window of our station wagon, as Daddy flew down the highway, holding bluebonnet seeds in my palm and letting the wind take them wherever it would. Maybe some of the wildflowers I see today are descended from the seeds I scattered back then?
Driving down our highways, you might be dismayed to see the billboards blocking the views on the side of the road. What we have today is nothing compared to what it was back in the day. My siblings and I delighted in the “Burma Shave” signs that sprouted along the road, but we were easily amused. Billboards were everywhere – and yes, it was ugly. Were it not for Lady Bird, who actively lobbied for the Highway Beautification Act, we would see many more of those eyesores today.
These days, as the sides of the highways explode with color, the Highway Department doesn’t mow those areas. The flowers can grow through their full cycles to make seeds, which will sprout, and bloom to thrill us another year. That’s thanks to the efforts of Lady Bird.
Back in the 1960s, beautifying America was a tiny step toward easing tensions. I’m thinking we need Lady Bird Johnson today. At the very least, perhaps we should try to embody her spirit.
With all of the fear over the economy, the tensions over politics, the anger that seems to brew --- perhaps we need to surround ourselves with beauty? Perhaps we could all work together to surround ourselves with loveliness to soothe our tensions? It doesn't just have to be in America; it could be a global mission to beautify our world.
We don’t have to start a “movement,” although we could. We could start very simply by each of us doing our part to make our world more beautiful. By caring for our environment, we might just ease our own stress. At
