Dave Wood

When I was a kid growing up in Whitehall, Wis. in the late 1940s, I didn’t hear much about Harry S. Truman, the President of the United States. I was a big fan, but I only knew a few co-fans in town —Donald Warner, the town’s postmaster; Hartvig Iverson, Whitehall’s baker, and attorney Floren Hegge.  Most folks in town hated Harry and made constant jokes about his wife Bess, and his daughter Margaret who failed at her operatic debut — even my father, who hadn’t voted for anyone since the demise of the Progressive Republican LaFollette clan.

But one evening to humor me, he told me to skip school the next day, and he would take a day off work and drive me in our ’36 Chevy to Winona, so I could actually see my idol on his whistlestop tour. Sure enough, on the following day he dropped me off at the Winona train station where a sizeable audience had gathered. The train came to a stop, Harry S. Truman, topped with his iconic Stetson hat, appeared on the platform of the caboose and began to drone on in that distinctive nasality. Then some Winonan shouted “Give ‘em hell, Hell, Harry!” Harry smiled, tossed his prepared speech aside and gave the crowd – Hell. I was thrilled.

When the train pulled out, my father was there to pick me up after spending an hour at a saloon on Second Street, smelling of Grain Belt Beer (which was “diamond clear” because it was “a long time a-brewing”). He told me he was fairly certain that Thomas E. Dewey, the fabled “groom on the wedding cake,” would emerge the victor come November. My father was rarely wrong, but fortunately, he was this time, and I became a Truman groupie for the rest of my life, chafing under the crude gossip of my neighbors, who spread rumors about Harry’s Veep Albin Barkley’s alleged sexual powers (something about monkey glands), Bess’s anti Semitism and bemoaning Harry’s dismissal of Douglas Macarthur. A week later Thomas Dewey went down to ignominious defeat, spoiling the assessment of the nation’s journalistic pundits, like H.V. Kaltenborn who prematurely announced Truman’s defeat on national radio.

Of course, I never again saw Harry in person, but one of my treasured moments came when interviewing Harry’s son-in-law, the dapper newsman Clifton Daniels. One wag opined that Daniels owned more suits than ever had hung on the racks at Harry’s failed haberdashery.

So I settled on the media’s coverage of Harry’s subsequent accomplishments, like integrating the military, among a mile long list of his other accomplishments…it was a fascinating conversation.

You may be wondering why I’m dredging up this forgotten President. Well, here’s why:

This year, my Beautiful Wife informed me that her family was staging a family reunion in Branson, Mo. in July. I’m no fan of the Branson circus since the stars that made it are either dead or gone, replaced with Elvis impersonators et. al. But B.W. reminded me that Harry’s hometown, Independence, Mo., was on the way to Branson “and we could spend two days there before arriving at the site of Dolly Parton’s Stampede, a Branson rodeo with finger food that presumably required no silverware. And the ever-popular Shepherd of the Hills passion play. B.W.’s powers of persuasion are considerable as you might expect, and I agreed to make the perilously long trip. She made reservations for two days in Harry’s natal place where I would find a town in which my boyhood hero has left a myriad of reminders about the background of a President who has more recently been considered one of the five best presidents this nation has ever been blessed with.

NEXT WEEK: our trip to bountiful Independence where B.W. and I will partake of a generous helping of the life and times of the most loved and hated President in our national history. I hope you will stick with us.