Time has rehabbed Harry Truman like no other U.S. president. He left office in 1953 as popular as chicken pox, cruelly snubbed by incoming President Eisenhower, who of all people should have respected a chain of command.
The long view of history has recast Hapless Harry as True Man, belying the 22 percent approval rating of his final days.
Or maybe the pollsters were quizzing the wrong people.
Shortly after leaving office, Truman and his beloved Bess voted for a “road trip,” Missouri to Manhattan and back. Except for the pioneering Pennsylvania Turnpike, back roads were all there were.
Naively, he anticipated minimal recognition. Wrong. He’d stop at some Anderson’s-style custard stand and suddenly half the village got hungry for a cone. Almost universally, the citizenry loved him, even those who opposed him.
“Give my pal hell. He’s a Republican,” a Maryland mechanic playfully urged.
“Too hot to give anybody hell today,” Harry replied.
“Harry Truman’s Excellent Adventure” is excellently recalled by Matthew Algeo, who not only researched the escapade but did his darnedest to replicate it.
That was the hard part.
Writes Algeo: “For Harry Truman, Decatur (Ill.) was right out of Norman Rockwell. For me, it was Norman Bates. Which brings me around to our motel ... ”
Truman was afforded no Secret Service protection. Try to imagine the blacksuits’ reaction today were a Pennsylvania State Trooper to apprehend an ex-president for driving too slowly in a passing lane. Actually, Harry ran “afoul of the law” three times in three weeks, not counting municipal officials who insisted on escorting him safely through their jurisdiction, or the New York cabbie who illegally turned in hopes of getting a ticket for a keepsake.
Algeo projects Truman’s one-car motorcade against a backdrop of the times, notably the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg on charges of passing nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union. Venturing off-road, Algeo seemed interested in retrying this case, and there was a recurring thread on Communist-hunter Sen. Joe McCarthy.
Alego’s time-travel Garmin scrolls the national landscape in 3D, noting the general decline of “mom-and-pop” hospitality and merchandising in the face of big-box stores and interstates. He and Frank Budwey, I suspect, would have been best buds.
As Truman clogs the Pennsylvania Turnpike at a penny a mile, New Yorkers strapped by I-90 will look ruefully at 1953’s strong sentiment against “permanent” tolls.
While skepticism properly touches the text, Algeo clearly admires Truman’s energy, integrity and vision. Truman’s mother, he reports, was still fighting the Civil War. When visiting, she refused to sleep in the Lincoln bedroom.
Both in his heart and on the highway, Harry Truman came a long way. “Excellent Adventure” tracks every turn of the tire.
Doug Smith’s favorite “road trip” traced all 2,328 miles of U.S. Route 62 from Niagara Falls to El Paso, Texas. Contact him at pollyndoug@hotmail.com.
IF YOU READ
• WHAT: “Harry Truman’s Excellent Adventure”
• BY: Matthew Algeo
• DETAILS: Published by Chicago Review Press, 262 pages
• GRADE: B+
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