Lyndon Baines and his Jumbo Johnson @jumbojohnson - Tumblr Blog

Ok, but I’m about two hundred pages away from finishing The Path To Power but the end of the chapter Longlea is such an aggravating ending bc Lady Bird was not fat you tall sons of bitches. 🤯 - 🍑

Oh my god I knowwww 😡 They were so mean to her and for what?? It makes them all seem like bullies who picked up on the fact that she was insecure about her weight and just delighted in it. Felt the same way about the Kennedys calling her Mrs Porkchop, they just picked on her weight because they sensed it was a sore spot. The amount of Lady Bird disrespect you have to endure in these books is infuriating.

#ask #peach anon #🍑#also I swear I'm going to get back to Caro eventually ;-;#got distracted by some John Douglas books but I'm almost done with them

Laura Evens became obsessed with the Titanic to distract herself from her best friend moving away why is she literally me 😭

#quintessential middle school girl experience #except Laura was like 40 but still #Laura Evens

Just some late 1800s brothel names that I enjoy:

The White Leaf

The House of Mirrors

The Chicken Ranch

The Sunny Rest

The Place

The Old Homestead

The Library

"Oh, honey, I was just at the library all night"

#by the time Laura built her own brothel they were euphemistically called 'hotels' so hers was just The Liberty Hotel #which is less fun tbh #Laura Evens

jumbojohnson

I'm increasingly curious about naming culture in the 1800s and the fact that there's a (female) prostitute in this story named Diamond Dick and no one found this strange or funny at all is a pretty big part of that

jumbojohnson

Okay and aside from all the "boy names" there's a little girl named Rosemary Silver Dollar Echo Honeymoon Tabor?? Tbh I kinda love that though

#in historical fiction they make it out like today where everyone has a name from like the top ~1000 baby names #but I'm really starting to think that wasn't always the case #I mean even Lyndon was the surname of some random lawyer purposely misspelled

I wanna read this on the train but sometimes there's kids on the train so this is my solution

#Laura Evens #it's the sticky part of a post it lol

Just a bit of on-the-street wisdom from My Life as a Whore for anyone looking to start a brothel in Colorado in the late 1800s:

Pale women can charge a full dollar, everyone else charged 75 cents. Staying out of the sun and painting veins on your skin are reasonable ways to look paler. Getting hooked on laudanum is not (but men do like how it makes you look).

Women with red hair can charge more.

French women can charge the most.

You age out of the business in your 40s at the latest, more often in your 30s. After that you can work out of a shack outside of town or try to start over in a new city where people don't know you used to be a prostitute.

Always keep your room clean and scrub the floors with Listerine.

Always lay a rain slicker on your bed.

Most importantly: aways make a man take off his hat so he knows he's with a lady.

#Laura Evens #there's also a lot in here about preventing STDs and to put it mildly I don't think it's good advice

I'm increasingly curious about naming culture in the 1800s and the fact that there's a (female) prostitute in this story named Diamond Dick and no one found this strange or funny at all is a pretty big part of that

#most of the prostitutes used nicknames so I'm sure Dick wasn't her given name #but just the fact that Dick was apparently a normal name for a woman and not a double entendre is wild #laura evens

jumbojohnson

I finally started reading My Life as a Whore and I just think everyone should know that when this career prostitute/madame was in her 70s she got a Chihuahua and named it Mr Pimp Powers

jumbojohnson

She also kept parrots in her brothel so the men who were shy around girls would have someone to talk to and idk if it's just because I love animals but I find that genuinely sweet

#tbh I think maybe she had so many pets because she was lonely #but also maybe she was just an animal lover #Laura Evens

I finally started reading My Life as a Whore and I just think everyone should know that when this career prostitute/madame was in her 70s she got a Chihuahua and named it Mr Pimp Powers

#she also bought him a fancy little chair to sit in while she played cards with her friends #you might think this sort of thing is strangely trivial for a biography but I consider it essential #Laura Evens #tagging it with her name bc I don't want to tag it with the book title lol

hi! i haven't been on tumblr for a while and i checked out what you've been reading (since i've been slightly ahead of you when it comes to the lbj books) and i'm so happy you're reading the power broker! i've read it before The Years... and i'm on a biography craze. do you have any specific plans of what you wanna read next? not that it's a suggestion or anything, but i'm reading g-man about hoover - really good so far! and i'm actually gonna start rise of theodore roosevelt tomorrow i think... (i promise, i read stuff beyond biographies, but again, that's the current craze for me) - 🦆

Ooh, actually someone in my book club recommended G-Man, so I definitely want to check it out! I was really intrigued by the seedy side of Washington and politics in general, and it sounds like this book is a good gateway into that world. I want to read My Life as a Whore as well, but my library doesn't have it so I'm trying to decide if I should buy it or not. I totally understand the biography craze lol, once I sort of broke the ice with The Years of LBJ I've been finding biographies way more fun than I thought??

#ask #🦆#duck anon

Alternatively, Lyndon Johnson chooses not to seek reelection because he's joining the Beatles and under his direction the group never breaks up but it does invade Vietnam

#lbj #shitpost #the beatles

Crossover rpf where Lyndon Johnson chooses not to seek another term in 1968 because he wants to follow the Beatles on tour but then they almost immediately break up

#lbj #shitpost #the beatles

"We deal in writing" is such a good, subtle burn, and I will absolutely be working it into my professional vocabulary

#it's for someone who's kinda slimy and always trying to screw you but you can't come right out and say it #though I would have guessed most politicians were like that?#but maybe that's more of a cliche or maybe they're worse now than they were back then #the power broker

Underlying Moses' strikingly strict policing for cleanliness in his parks was, Frances Perkins realized with "shock," deep distaste for the public that was using them. "He doesn't love the people," she was to say. "It used to shock me because he was doing all these things for the welfare of the people.... He'd denounce the common people terribly. To him they were lousy, dirty people, throwing bottles all over Jones Beach. 'I'll get them! I'll teach them!'...He loves the public, but not as people. The public is just the public. It's a great amorphous mass to him; it needs to be bathed, it needs to be aired, it needs recreation, but not for personal reasons -- just to make it a better public."

The Power Broker p 318

#I think this is an important part of his character #he's improving some people's quality of life in some ways but that's certainly not by design #he's building these parks more for the reason the pharaohs built the pyramids #and it's important to understand that the good things he does are not grounded in any desire to help people or improve their lives #because you'll never understand him if you act like his motivations are irrelevant #the power broker #quote #Robert Moses

"As his personal secretary, [FDR] chose Guernsey Cross, whose sole qualification was that he was big and strong enough for the Governor to lean on when he walked." (pg 297)

Will be picturing him as a literal Guernsey because why not?

#the imagery of FDR leaning on a friendly dairy cow is actually quite sweet #did they ever try that?#the power broker #shitpost

I had no idea that FDR campaigned against TR by supporting Al Smith in the 1924 gubernatorial election (and Al won!), and now I'm finding out that TR Jr endorsed Hoover over FDR?? My gentle dreams of The Roosevelt Buddy Boys are being dashed to pieces :'(

#actually for some reason I thought they were total strangers to each other??#which would make no sense if they were both active in NY politics around the same time so yeah nvm #but I thought they would have at least kinda liked each other....?#I mean look me in the eyes and tell me they don't seem like they would vibe irl #fdr #teddy Roosevelt

Robert Moses is like a gentrified version of LBJ, and like most gentrified things he's far far more evil

#lbj #the power broker #Robert Moses

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