Hot on the Campaign Trail

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people," as one Connally watcher put it, is that he was born so poor. Not that he tries to hide his hardscrabble heritage; indeed, he revels in recalling his barefoot days behind a plow and reading by a kerosene lamp. He was the fourth of eight children born to John Bowden Connally and Lela Wright.

The senior Connally, a tall and lean man with strongly etched features that he passed on to his son, was a tenant farmer, a butcher, a barber, a bus driver. He finally realized his dream of owning the land he worked by buying, when the younger Connally was in high school, a 1,000-acre ranch outside Floresville, a tiny crossroads town 30 miles southeast of San Antonio.

Connally's father was a strong influence on him. "It was best not to cross him, especially when he was drinking," recalls the son, who stays away from hard liquor, "but he had a great sense of fairness." He once took a horsewhip to a group of boys who had made a practice of beating up his eldest son. "You go home and let your fathers know who did this to you," he said, "because if it happens again, I'll do the same to them." Young Johnnie's goals back then were to be a cowboy, a lawyer and a preacher; one Christmas he asked for a gun, a rope and a Bible.

At the University of Texas he became involved in the Curtain Club, a drama organization. One of the program notes describes the young actor: "His ambition is to be critic-at-large of things-as-they-are." For a production of Ferenc Molnar's Liliom, in which he played opposite Eli Wallach, the prompter was Idanell Brill, who was to become Bluebonnet Belle, Queen of the Texas Relays, University of Texas Sweetheart and later Connally's wife Nellie.

He was becoming more and more interested in politics. The student body was divided between the Greek social fraternity members and the poorer students, who were known as barbs (for barbarians). Connally managed a tough and successful battle to become one of the first barb presidents of the student assembly. He was also a campus salesman for Beech-Nut chewing gum.

He stuffed envelopes for a young politician making his first bid for Congress —Lyndon Johnson. He followed to Washington as one of Johnson's congressional aides. His marriage to Nellie in 1940 was a double bonding, for by asking Johnson to serve as his best man, Connally sealed a Faulknerian love-hate link between the two proud Texas politicians—Johnson the admiring but often jealous mentor, Connally the headstrong protegé. Connally would end up working on most of Johnson's subsequent campaigns. But the tempestuous quality of that relationship appeared as early as 1941, when Connally, after arguing over whether to make Johnson's kidney stone problem public, was banished from L.B.J.'s ranch like Absalom from the House of David.

During World War II, Connally served in the South Pacific as group combat information officer with the Navy on the aircraft carriers Essex and Bennington, rising to the rank of Lt. Commander. Retired Admiral David McDonald, former Chief of Naval Operations, was serving with Connally when the Essex was attacked by a kamikaze pilot. Recalls McDonald: "When you see a man operate under the pressure we had, night and day, sometimes 72 hours straight, you get an idea of his character and stamina. That guy had