Read Online Harry Truman's Excellent Adventure: The True Story of a Great American Road Trip by Matthew Algeo - Free Book Online

project close to Truman’s heart. Both his grandmothers had made the arduous trek from Kentucky to western Missouri in the 1840s. Said Truman of the female pioneers, “They were just as brave or braver than their men because, in many cases, they went with sad hearts and trembling bodies. They went, however, and endured every hardship that befalls a pioneer.” Known as the “Madonna of the Trail,” each statue stood ten feet tall and weighed five tons. It depicted a bonneted woman holding a baby in her left arm and a rifle in her right hand, a child clinging to her skirt. Truman traveled the country scouting out locations for the statues. “This is almost like campaigning for President,” he wrote Bess from Kansas, “except that the people are making promises to me instead of the other way around.” The twelve statues were dedicated in 1928 and 1929. Truman attended several of the dedication ceremonies. Even after he became president of the United States, Truman’s name was still listed as president of the National Old Trails Road Association on the group’s letterhead.
    A few months after he left the White House, Harry spotted a crew working on a road near his home in Independence one day. He went down to take a look.
    “A shovel (automatic) and a drag line were working as well as some laboring men digging in the old fashioned way,” he wrote in his diary. “The boss or the contractor was looking on and I asked him if he didn’t need a good straw boss. He took a look at me and then watched the work a while and then took another look and broke out in a broad smile and said, ‘Oh yes! You
are
out of a job, aren’t you.'”
    When he woke up on Friday, June 19, 1953, Sylvester “Bud” Toben had no idea he would meet a former president of the United States that day. He only knew that it was going to be hot out—very hot—which meant business would be brisk at Bud’s Golden Cream, his soft-serve ice-cream stand at the junction of Highways 36 and 61 on the western edge of Hannibal. Bud served five-cent cones in three flavors: vanilla, chocolate, and the flavor of the day (usually strawberry). His specialty was a giant banana split called the Pig’s Dinner, which he sold for sixty-nine cents. If you finished it, Bud gave you a little yellow and red button that said, “I made a pig of myself at Bud’s.” It was, quite literally, a nickel-and-dime operation, but Toben excelled at it. The stand opened every year on March 19—St. Joseph’s Day; Bud was a good Catholic—and closed on Christmas Eve. After Thanksgiving Toben sold Christmas trees, too.
    To help him out at the stand that hot June day, Toben enlisted the aid of his daughter, Toni. Toni spent much of her summers “waiting on trade” at one of the stand’s two windows, watching cars pull in and out of the tiny parking lot all day. As a result, she knew more about automobiles than the average twelve-year-old girl. So she was suitably impressed when, a little after noon, a shiny black car with chrome-wire wheels pulled up to the stand. “That Chrysler was beautiful,” Toni remembered. “That’s what impressed me when it pulled in, because there were very few people who had a Chrysler like that.”
    When the driver emerged from the car, Toni immediately recognized him as Harry Truman.
    Harry went around to the other side of the car and opened the door for Bess. The couple then began walking to Osborne’s Café, a diner next door to Bud’s. Toni knew her father didn’t like Osborne’s customers using his lot.
    “Dad,” the twelve-year-old shouted, “Harry Truman’s out in front. Do you want me to have him move his car?”
    He thought she was mistaken, of course, but when Bud looked for himself, he saw that it was indeed Harry Truman.
    Bud told Toni to call her sister, nineteen-year-old Mary—and to tell her to bring a camera.
    Bud went outside and introduced himself to the Trumans. The two men talked for a few minutes about the weather,