Read Online Harry Truman's Excellent Adventure: The True Story of a Great American Road Trip by Matthew Algeo - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Matthew Algeo
Tags: United States, General, History, Biography & Autobiography, Travel, 20th Century, Essays & Travelogues, Presidents & Heads of State, Presidents, Automobile Travel
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framed copy of his favorite Twain quote on his desk in the Oval Office: “Always do right! This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.” In Twain’s books, however, Truman heard no echoes of his own youth in Missouri. Frail and bespectacled as a child, he never identified with Huck Finn or Tom Sawyer. “I wasn’t in that class,” he told an interviewer once. “I was kind of a sissy growing up.”
As he drove by Twain’s house that day, Harry probably contemplated the author’s role in another president’s life. It was Twain who helped Ulysses S. Grant, penniless and near death from cancer of the throat, complete his memoirs. It has been suggested that Twain even ghostwrote some of the memoirs, which were a critical and commercial triumph. Truman’s own memoirs—three hundred thousand words—were due to be delivered to Doubleday in two years, on June 30, 1955. Harry planned to start working on them in earnest as soon as he got back home. The task weighed heavy on his mind. By his own admission, he was no writer.
How he must have wished old Sam Clemens were still around to help him.
Shortly after they passed Twain’s boyhood home, the Trumans crossed the Mississippi
—the
river, as Harry called it—and entered Illinois. They kept cruising eastbound on Highway 36, their black Chrysler slicing through waves of green cornfields at precisely fifty-five miles per hour. It was about one o’clock now, and the heat was positively stifling. A few miles east of the town of Jacksonville, they crossed the ninetieth meridian—one-quarter of the way around the world, as a road sign notes today.
Around here, in the middle of nowhere, the car radio crackled with the news: President Eisenhower had denied Julius and Ethel Rosenberg’s appeal for clemency. “The execution of two human beings is a grave matter,” Ike announced. “But even graver is the thought of the millions of dead whose deaths may be directly attributable to what these spies have done.” The Rosenberg children, ten-year-old Michael and six-year-old Robert, were staying with friends of their parents at the time. Michael was watching his favorite baseball team, the Yankees, play the Tigers on TV when the game was interrupted by a bulletin announcing Eisenhower’s decision. “That was their last chance,” the youngster whispered.
4
Decatur, Illinois,
June 19–20, 1953
A bout two hours after leaving Hannibal, the Trumans passed through Springfield, the capital of Illinois and the home of Abraham Lincoln. Harry saw a lot of himself in Old Abe, who was one of only two Republican presidents he admired. (Teddy Roosevelt was the other.) “Lincoln,” Harry wrote, “set an example that a man who has the ability can be president of the United States no matter what his background is.”
Harry and Bess drove past the soaring, silver-domed statehouse, where statues of Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas grace the grounds. The statues were financed by the state legislature through the same appropriation in 1913 and dedicated on the same day in 1918. The Lincoln statue cost fifty thousand dollars—twice as much as the Douglas statue. Of course, Lincoln was at least a foot taller than Douglas, who was known as the “Little Giant.”
In 1858, Douglas defeated Lincoln for a seat in the U.S. Senate. Two years later, Douglas, running as the Northern Democratic candidate for president, faced Lincoln again. (Southern Democrats ran their own candidate, John C. Breckinridge.) Douglas received nearly 1.4 million votes in that contest but lost, of course. Staunchly pro-Union, he became an unlikely ally of Lincoln’s after the election. Douglas attended Lincoln’s inauguration, and stunned the audience when he took Lincoln’s hat and “held it like an attendant” while Lincoln delivered his inaugural address. (Hats have clearly played an important but underappreciated role in presidential inaugurations.)
Even if he’d won the election,
As he drove by Twain’s house that day, Harry probably contemplated the author’s role in another president’s life. It was Twain who helped Ulysses S. Grant, penniless and near death from cancer of the throat, complete his memoirs. It has been suggested that Twain even ghostwrote some of the memoirs, which were a critical and commercial triumph. Truman’s own memoirs—three hundred thousand words—were due to be delivered to Doubleday in two years, on June 30, 1955. Harry planned to start working on them in earnest as soon as he got back home. The task weighed heavy on his mind. By his own admission, he was no writer.
How he must have wished old Sam Clemens were still around to help him.
Shortly after they passed Twain’s boyhood home, the Trumans crossed the Mississippi
—the
river, as Harry called it—and entered Illinois. They kept cruising eastbound on Highway 36, their black Chrysler slicing through waves of green cornfields at precisely fifty-five miles per hour. It was about one o’clock now, and the heat was positively stifling. A few miles east of the town of Jacksonville, they crossed the ninetieth meridian—one-quarter of the way around the world, as a road sign notes today.
Around here, in the middle of nowhere, the car radio crackled with the news: President Eisenhower had denied Julius and Ethel Rosenberg’s appeal for clemency. “The execution of two human beings is a grave matter,” Ike announced. “But even graver is the thought of the millions of dead whose deaths may be directly attributable to what these spies have done.” The Rosenberg children, ten-year-old Michael and six-year-old Robert, were staying with friends of their parents at the time. Michael was watching his favorite baseball team, the Yankees, play the Tigers on TV when the game was interrupted by a bulletin announcing Eisenhower’s decision. “That was their last chance,” the youngster whispered.
4
Decatur, Illinois,
June 19–20, 1953
A bout two hours after leaving Hannibal, the Trumans passed through Springfield, the capital of Illinois and the home of Abraham Lincoln. Harry saw a lot of himself in Old Abe, who was one of only two Republican presidents he admired. (Teddy Roosevelt was the other.) “Lincoln,” Harry wrote, “set an example that a man who has the ability can be president of the United States no matter what his background is.”
Harry and Bess drove past the soaring, silver-domed statehouse, where statues of Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas grace the grounds. The statues were financed by the state legislature through the same appropriation in 1913 and dedicated on the same day in 1918. The Lincoln statue cost fifty thousand dollars—twice as much as the Douglas statue. Of course, Lincoln was at least a foot taller than Douglas, who was known as the “Little Giant.”
In 1858, Douglas defeated Lincoln for a seat in the U.S. Senate. Two years later, Douglas, running as the Northern Democratic candidate for president, faced Lincoln again. (Southern Democrats ran their own candidate, John C. Breckinridge.) Douglas received nearly 1.4 million votes in that contest but lost, of course. Staunchly pro-Union, he became an unlikely ally of Lincoln’s after the election. Douglas attended Lincoln’s inauguration, and stunned the audience when he took Lincoln’s hat and “held it like an attendant” while Lincoln delivered his inaugural address. (Hats have clearly played an important but underappreciated role in presidential inaugurations.)
Even if he’d won the election,
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