Life sketches, p.23
Life Sketches, page 23
I asked him if he had eaten breakfast.
“Not a bite yet,” he said. “I’ll go walking, then go to the gym and sweat off a pound or two, then take a swim. After that, I’ll eat half the breakfast I want and then go hungry all day long.”
“What will half the breakfast you want be?”
“A strip of bacon, a scrambled egg, a piece of toast, and a glass of milk.”
“No coffee?”
“I don’t crave coffee. It hurts the peculiar talent I have for lying down and dropping right off to sleep in two minutes. Doc Graham [Brigadier General Wallace Graham, the President’s physician] won’t let me eat the way I’d like to. If it weren’t for the Doc, I could eat a whole side of beef for breakfast. I think I could.”
The limousine stopped for a red light. We had been going past rows of boxlike government buildings, some of them of the sort that has been called “temporary” for more than thirty years. The day was coming on fast. A few blocks ahead, at the end of the street we were on, we could make out one of the capital’s many monuments to heroes of the past. The President called my attention to it. The lights changed, and we started up again.
Having heard that during the earliest morning hours the President takes a surprisingly thorough gallop through the New York Times and Herald Tribune, the Washington Post and Star, the Baltimore Sun, and occasionally a day-old Missouri paper as well, and having taken a hurried preparatory look at the morning’s Post myself, only to be rewarded with the gloomy news that the Chinese had the United Nations armies in full rout, I remarked stupidly, “The news was pretty bad again this morning.”
Truman turned his head, looked at me rather pityingly, and said, “People who don’t know military affairs expect everything to go well all the time. They don’t understand. A general can’t be a winner every day of the week. The greatest of generals have had to take reverses. I advise you to study the lives of Alexander the Great, Tamerlane, Gustavus Adolphus, Hunyadi—and Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. You’ll find they all won most of the time, but they all had their troubles, too. I’m not upset, like most people, about these reverses MacArthur is taking.”
The President went on to make other observations about that morning’s news—about a speech by Acheson, and about some new attacks on the Secretary of State by Republican senators. Then suddenly he broke off and asked Nicholson, “How’s your family, Nick?”
Nicholson turned around in the front seat and said, “They’re all fine, sir. Nick Junior saved my life this morning. My alarm didn’t go off, I guess I forgot to pull the button. He came running in and alerted me. ‘You better get up, Pop,’ he says. ‘It’s five minutes to six!’ ”
“Well, good for him!” Truman said. “He’s going to be as smart as his old man. I can see that now.”
“He’s a fine boy,” Nicholson said.
“Oh, he’s smart,” the President said emphatically.
Now the road swung out beside a body of water and followed its curving shore. The limousine moved at an easy pace. The air was quiet. Below the lightening sky, out over the edges of the city, a low night mist still hovered. The water near us looked like monel metal. On it, not far from us, a cluster of sitting waterfowl black-dotted the slick gray surface.
“Look at those ducks!” the President exclaimed. “Wouldn’t you think they’d get cold feet sitting out there? B-r-r-r!”
The limousine began to meet traffic hurrying into the city from the suburbs. Not far beyond the place where we had seen the ducks, a District of Columbia police car pulled out into our path and drove along in front of us. Truman sat forward in his seat and looked rather pleased at having acquired a police escort. “They told me he was going to pick us up along about here,” he said. “The regular road is blocked by repairs up ahead. He’s going to lead us around a detour.”
The President’s caravan drove to its destination deviously, as he had predicted. At one point, near some water again, the ground was littered with driftwood and broken branches, which had been washed up there during a windstorm a few days before. As we drove along, the President spoke of that storm and the clutter it had caused. In the distance, while he talked, the roar of a takeoff from one of the city’s airports began to build up, like the roll of a huge kettledrum. In the motionless air the noise was insistent and ominous, and all of us in the limousine looked toward its source, hidden in a sullen bank of mist, out of the top of which hangars humped up into the clear air above. Suddenly, startlingly close, there emerged from the low-lying vapor, headed straight our way and slowly rising, a Constellation.
“Look at that thing lift up!” the President said, speaking loudly to be heard above the plane’s rumbling. “I don’t believe it yet. It’s one of the miracles of our age how a big, heavy thing like that will lift up off the ground. I estimate that the machine weighs thirty tons. Think of what it takes to lift thirty tons of machinery off the ground! I can hardly believe my eyes when I see it.”
For a moment the plane throbbed directly above our heads, and then very quickly it was gone, and unheard. We looked out from the leisurely moving limousine over the now silent landscape. The bank of mist and the brightening sky above it were reflected in shifting patterns on the nacreous water near us.
I said it was a pretty sight.
The President said, in a voice that seemed very soft after his speech in competition with the plane’s noise, “Out here’s one place where there’s peace.” Then, briskly again, he said, “This is a nice morning for walking, isn’t it, Nick?”
“Looks fine. Yes, sir,” Nicholson said.
After we had driven a little farther the car slowed down and stopped, and the President said, “Well, here’s where we get onto shanks’ mares.”
We stepped out of the limousine and began at once to walk along a concrete pathway that ran more or less parallel to the road. Nicholson and the driver walked close behind us. The other agents took up various more distant convoy duties. I walked on the President’s left. The President carried his cane, swinging it high, in the near—his left—hand.
HARRY TRUMAN ON A MORNING WALK
“Most people don’t know when the best part of the day is; it’s the early morning.”
I remarked on the fact that his pace was lively.
“This is just the regular Army marching speed,” he said. “One hundred and twenty paces to the minute, two miles in half an hour. I’ve always walked at this speed—ever since I was in the Army. Timing is just a knack. I can tell how fast a train is going by counting the telephone poles as they go by.”
I asked how long he had been taking morning walks.
“I’ve been taking these walks for thirty years now,” he said. “I got in the habit of getting up and moving around smart in the early mornings on the farm, and then when I got into politics, I couldn’t stop. I began to take these walks when I was Judge of the Eastern District of Jackson County, out home, knocking around Independence and Kansas City mornings before breakfast. Then I walked all over Washington when I was in the Senate. You can’t think clearly if you don’t exercise.”
“Apparently you like to keep moving,” I said.
“I like being on the road,” Truman said. “Fact is, I like roads. My father and I had the road overseer’s job in Grandview, where our family is. He had it first and I had it after he died, when I took over the farm. That was before the first war. Back in those times, every man in Missouri had to give either two days’ work or six dollars a year toward the roads; some of the overseers took the six dollars and put them in their pockets and let the roads go to pot. We took the work, my father and I did, and we had the best roads in Missouri, in and around Grandview. We didn’t get any richer, but we had good roads. My father worked so hard on the roads it killed him.
“When I got to be Presiding Judge, out home [of the Jackson County Court, an archaically misnamed office, which is not judicial at all but executive, corresponding to the county commissioner’s office in most places, and having charge of the county’s business affairs; Truman was Presiding Judge from 1926 to 1934], I found out that there were some overseers claiming they were putting in thirty-four culverts under the roads at so much per culvert—nearly two thousand dollars apiece, as I remember. I found out they had no idea of installing the culverts; they were just going to pocket the money. It was going to be worth sixty thousand-odd dollars to them in one year to not build culverts. I fired all but fourteen overseers in the county and hired four supervisors, and I began to make them work. I was about as popular as a skunk in the parlor.
“In ‘28, I went out to build the county some new roads. I had two engineers, Colonel Edward M. Stayton—he’s a retired general now—and N. T. Veach—he was and is a Republican. I could then, and I still can, get along with a decent Republican, though Mother never would let one, decent or otherwise, land on the front porch if she could help it—she was such a rabid Democrat. Anyway, I took these two engineers, and we drove over every inch of the three hundred and fifty miles of surfaced roads in Jackson County—only you couldn’t call them surfaced roads, really; they were just roads with piecrust on them, water-bound macadam that would scale off in no time. The people voted me ten million dollars to build roads—the first bond issue was six and a half million, then in ‘31 they voted me three and a half more—and I gave them two hundred and eighteen miles of roads that they’re still driving on, as good as the day they were built. They were as fine as the system in Westchester County, New York State.”
“I gather you’ve traveled on roads quite a bit, too,” I said.
“Roads are meant to be used,” Truman said. “When I was fixing to give Jackson County a new courthouse, I wanted to see some big public buildings with my own eyes before I spent all the money the people voted me for it—nearly four and a half million—so I drove twenty-four thousand miles through Oklahoma and Arkansas, into Texas, to Shreveport, Louisiana, up around to Minnesota and St. Paul, to Denver, Milwaukee, Racine, Chicago, and Brooklyn, looking at the best courthouses and capitols and city halls. I even went and looked at a life-insurance building in Montreal. The man who drove me on that trip was a fellow named Fred Canfil.”
I said I had met Canfil on a visit to Kansas City and had found him quite a character.
“Fred’s two characters!” Truman said. “Fred’s a little rough, but Fred’s all right; he’s as loyal as a bulldog. You know, I took him along to Potsdam with me, as a pro-tem member of the President’s Secret Service detail. He was the most vigilant bodyguard a President ever had. While the conferences were going on, he would stand by a window with his arms folded and scowl out the window at everybody who passed in the street, as if he would eat them alive if they bothered the President of the United States. Fred’s a federal marshal out home, so one day after a meeting I took him up to Stalin and I said, ‘Marshal Stalin, I want you to meet Marshal Canfil.’ Well, after that, the Russians treated Fred with some respect, I tell you. As I say, Fred and I drove around the country in ‘34 looking at buildings, and we drove far enough to have gone plumb around the world.”
The kind of debris we had seen from the car on the way out occasionally cluttered the path on which we were walking. Here and there we came to a piece of driftwood, or a ridge of tangled marsh grass and twigs, or, as at a point we now reached in our course, a cluster of branches from one of the tremendous willow trees that lined the walk. Crossing this barrier the President lifted his knees sharply, like a drum major, and surefootedly made his way through without breaking his pace for an instant. I dropped behind.
When I had caught up Truman went on, “Then, after the second war began in Europe, I drove another thirty thousand miles across this country, looking at the construction of Army camps and seeing all the waste they were building into them. Then I came back and set up the Truman Committee. If I hadn’t taken that drive, I’d still be just Senator Truman instead of being in all this fix.”
I told the President I had heard that he used to have a reputation for being a very fast driver.
“I like to move,” he said, “but in all my driving I’ve never been arrested for speeding. I try to observe the laws of this country. Once, when I was in the Senate, I was driving my family from Independence to Washington, and as I was about to get into Hagerstown, Maryland, I went through a stop sign that I couldn’t see because some damn fool had parked his car in front of it. The Madam was in the front with me, and Margaret was in the back with a lot of books we were bringing back East with us. All of a sudden a fellow came along, wasn’t looking where he was going, and he swiped me as I came out of the intersection. He hit the left rear fender. It knocked the car cater-cornered. The side where the Madam was sitting hit a lamppost, and part of the post fell down on the roof of the car and gave her an awful jolt; her neck has never been quite right since then. The car was just able to limp under its own power to a repair place, but it was a total wreck; there wasn’t enough left of it to save it. We just took our books and things out and put them in a brand-new Pontiac I bought, and went on our way when we were ready. Thank heavens, the insurance company stood in back of the bill. Well, the other driver that hit me had been a local fellow—the authorities knew him—so they’d taken me to the police station and all of that, until they figured out I was a U.S. senator. I wasn’t going to get out of it by telling them myself, but they found out, and then they fell all over themselves. They ended up with a formal ceremony giving me the keys to the city. Besides, they had learned that I wasn’t at fault. The truth comes out about an innocent man sooner or later, but sometimes it’s too late, especially if they’ve already hanged him.”
The President, who was evidently beginning to be warmed up by his marching, took off his gloves and put them in his overcoat pocket. “In Washington, once,” he said, “I went through a stoplight right behind another fellow who’d gone through it, too. An officer stopped both of us. He asked me for my license. He looked at it, and he said, Are you the Senator Truman I’ve been reading about in the papers—the Truman Committee fellow?’ I allowed I was. He said, ‘You’ve been doing a good job in there, Senator, you go along now. Just let me get this other fellow out of your road till I give him a ticket, then you can roll along.’ I said, ‘No, sir, Officer, I’m a citizen like anyone else. You give me a ticket.’ I made him give me a summons. But I guess he tore up his end of the thing—the stub. I sent a contribution to the Policeman’s Fund for the customary amount. Never heard anything more from it. The truth of the matter is, I had no desire to hear anything! Come to think of it, though, I did hear something. I got a nice letter from the secretary of the Policeman’s Fund, thanking me for the contribution.”
The President walked on a few steps in silence. We were in broad daylight now. The low mist was burning off, and the sky was blue above us. Finally, apparently taking off from a reminder in his previous remarks, the President said, “I’m told that the Truman Committee saved the United States government fifteen billion dollars in waste, delay, and inefficiency. We weren’t working for publicity on that job. We never gave anything to the papers until a case was closed, till everything was black-and-white and there wasn’t a chance of maligning a citizen in public. All we wanted was to do a good job for our country. I think you’ll still find a lot of politicians who feel the same way. You know, people cuss the politicians all the time, but how do you think this country would get along if it weren’t for the honest politicians? Some body’s got to get in there and do the work! Do you know my definition of a politician? ‘A politician is the ablest man in government, and after he dies they call him a statesman.’ ”
Again the President paused. Then he said, “There’s no reason why a public servant should want anything for himself. You know, I’ve noticed that wherever you find a crooked politician, you’ll find a crooked businessman behind him. Building the roads in Jackson County and putting up the county courthouse, I learned a thing or two about contracts and contractors; then in the Truman Committee I learned a lot more. Once in a while you run across a contractor that likes to cut corners, and you usually discover that he’s got a crooked, pipsqueak politician chasing errands for him. Why are some men so selfish? What do they think they get for themselves? Not happiness—not that. There was a banker out in Missouri I knew—he’s dead now—who used to lend money to businesses that were on the way up, and he’d watch the companies, and if he saw one that was sound, he’d wangle this way and that way until he had control of the thing. He wound up with fifteen million dollars in his pocket, but he’d ruined fifteen lives doing it. Now, what good was that?
“And yet sometimes,” Truman went on, “I think a liar is worse than a thief. I have in mind all the lying slander you see in public life in this country today, and in the newspapers. You remember what Shakespeare said: ‘Who steals my purse steals trash, but he that filches from me my good name makes me poor indeed.’* I think a publisher, or any newspaperman, who doesn’t have a sense of responsibility and prints a lot of lies and goes around slandering without any basis in fact—I think that sort of fellow actually can be called a traitor. Truth is one thing. A politician can stand a dig now and then if it’s the truth. But smears are something else. These fellows talk about being un-American! To my mind, there’s nothing as un-American as a lying smear on a man’s character. And some of these columnists! When you come down to it, there’s just one thing I draw the line at, and that’s any kind of attack on my family. I don’t care what they say about me. I’m human. I can make mistakes. Any man can make mistakes, even if he’s trying with all his heart and mind to do the best thing for his country. But a man’s family ought to be sacred. There was one columnist who wrote some lie about my family when I was in the Senate, and instead of writing him a letter I called him on the phone, and I said, ‘You so-and-so, if you say another word about my family, I’ll come down to your office and shoot you.’ He hasn’t printed a whisper about them since. I’m saving up four or five good, hard punches on the nose, and when I’m out of this job, I’m going to run around and deliver them personally.”
