MAINE GOAL STILL LIES AHEAD
On October 20, newsmen recorded the latest history-making accomplishment of the head of the "oreat society." At a press con= ference, held while sunning himself near Bethesda Naval Hospital, President Johnson opened up his pyjamas and proudly displayed. the remarkable scar of the operation he underwent recently for removal of his gall bladder.
The Associated Press wirephoto, reproduced on the front page of the October 21 New York Herald Tribune, shows a slash running from the belly button of the great man clear to his right side, where it is lost to sight as it rounds his abdomen. The scar is at least the length of an ax handle, as they would say in Texas. It is bor~ dered by two rows of scars left by the stitches. Judging from the artistic way they blend in with and yet set off the main cut, they were put in by a knowledgeable craftsman in hand-tooled leatherwork,: The scar appears to be a bright red throughout its length. The hue, of course, is not to be taken as any portent of a shift in Johnson's politics, whatever it may indicate concerning the secret views of his surgeons, ;
The day after the epochal photograph was ‘featured as a new "first" for the great society, an unidentified women in Maine wrote a letter of appreciation to the Herald Tribune. The editor published the full text as follows:
Let's hope LBJ never has hemorrhoids}"
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