At the Harry S. Truman Presidential Museum...
The 20-minute documentary chronicled Truman’s genealogy, his boyhood years, his rise through local politics and culminating with his swearing into office—not to be confused with his plain-spoken or profane nature in office. The video itself was dry, though presented enough information to work as a necessary prologue for wandering around the museum. In my notes I have written down that the video was called, “Who the Hell is Harry?” but that may have been a joke to myself.
According to the flick, as a young man, Harry Truman worked on his family’s farm even though he regularly wanted to go to Toshe Station to pick up some power converters—no wait, that’s Luke Skywalker. For real, Truman always wanted to go into Kansas City because he liked the theater performances, concerts and some girl named Bess—who, and this is as corny as it is real, was the target of Harry’s affection since they were six-years-old and in Sunday School. Defying the captivating presentation, two of the audience members walked out and presumably went to the AMC Theater to watch some mess starring Paul Bettany.
Continuing on with Harry’s life, the future president finished high school, dropped out of college, proposed to Bess—who turned him down—and went back to working on his family’s farm. Unmarried, living back at home, with no significant education, Harry found himself where I fear myself to be heading. I think Young Harry also got turned around, and possibly lost, in the streets of Kansas City. Not yet ready to be inspirational, Truman volunteered to join the Armed Forces during WWI at the ripe old age of 33. Neither the video nor the museum’s later exhibits more than glanced at the oddity of Truman’s situation, but I feel it’s pretty clearly a case of the guy just being angry at the world and wanting to fight anybody. More than enough times, just rejected by girls, friends and jobs, I’ve been thrown into ham-fisted fits of rage and wanted to destroy things.
Eventually Truman won the war for the Allies after actually gaining the attention, and saving all, of his fellow soldiers with profanity-laced diatribes when under enemy fire. Decorated, Truman came back to Kansas City, made friends with (remember this part) Tom Pendergast—who was the uncle of an Army buddy—and proposed to Bess, again. Correctly believing Harry Truman had achieved several power-ups, she accepted.
Also, the man had, like, 200 goddamn croissants stuffed in his pockets.
Now, Tom Pendergast is a character whose identity has not been clarified by history, at all. Today, as in the 1920s, Pendergast was a civic leader and businessman; or he was a Democratic party boss who had his fingers in at least the Kansas City jazz, liquor, protection and gambling industries. Inarguably, the man owned a cement company that was put to work when Truman got into local office. But, really, owning a cement company is somewhere between a waste management business and a laundry mat place on the list of cliché, “legitimate,” endeavors owned by the mob. Pendergast, apparently able to vote more than once, was/is entirely credited with getting Truman twice elected to country judge—which was not a judicial position but rather just a commissioner who handled public contracts. Truman was a fairly likable guy, but had just recently closed his men’s clothing store in K.C. and needed a job. Pendergast, meanwhile, needed somebody likable, but also controllable. With this partnership, Truman and Pendergast build roads into the future and throughout Kansas City.
In 1934, Truman asked for Pendergast’s help to run for a seat in the U.S. Senate. Peculiarly, senators have less local power than commissioners do but Pendergast seemed to at least give in to Truman’s new ambition. Perhaps Pendergast wanted a friend in D.C., but to historians, this was when Truman first started to outgrow the fishbowl Pendergast had put him in. The senate race in 1934 became unusually bloodstained as the election was cited as the cause for four murders and dozens of fistfights, beatings and gun-wielding threats. As it turned out, Truman’s senatorial colleagues were unimpressed by this third-world style democracy and often referred to Truman during the next six years as, “the Senator from Pendergast.” Criminally dangerous or not, “Boss Pendergast” was arrested in 1939—and this is just a case of history being unoriginal—for tax evasion. When will criminals learn that bribes need to be reported to the IRS?
In 1940, lawyers Lloyd Stark and Maurice Mulligan both challenged Truman in the primary race and President Franklin Roosevelt, gently, voiced support for anybody who wasn’t Truman. Odds be damned, Truman won for the first time entirely in his own right and received a standing ovation when he reentered the Senate. Perhaps this was more of a message about the power of incumbency, but whatever, the museum marks the event as a power stomp for the man, so I’ll—oh wow, I almost forgot about the museum.
After the documentary, which ended some time ago in this tale, Tyson and I went into the White House Gallery, a general overview room that seemingly warms up patrons for the forthcoming barrage of information, videos, games, pictures, tidbits and gibberish. The deified centerpiece of this introductory room was the display of the iconic “Buck Stops Here” sign. About the size of a desk nameplate, the wooden sign was protected behind a thick, possibly bulletproof, glass case that towered into one’s headspace. Indeed, the desk ornament was nearly protected like the Declaration of Independence, likely with lasers and guard dogs. More over, the museum had at least three, but upwards of twenty, patrolling guards who were old enough to have been childhood friends with Harry Truman. Watching the patrol routes, I just imagined the possibilities of an “Ocean’s 11” sequel involving stealing the, apparently priceless, paperweight.
In the same room, I was far more captivated by the display of the President’s Daily Schedule, the sample day being February Something, 1950. It was pretty staggering that the President held, and probably still holds, meetings with national security advisors, agency directors, governors and heads of state for about 15 minutes a pop. A small blurb off to the side had a Truman quote, wherein he estimated he signed his name about 600 times a day. If I had a penny for every time he signed his name over just one week, I’d have $42. That may not sound like a lot, but remember: that’s a hell of a lot of pennies.
Tyson, to his end, was more interested in a sculpture in the room, a present a Mexican artist gave to Harry Truman as part of a request for citizenship. Inexplicably, the story ends there so it has to be anybody’s guess as to if the thoughtful gesture/artistic bribery was successful, legal, hilarious, and/or tragic. Tyson commented on our own situation, at a museum on our own free will, even paying to visit, while getting pushed around from room to room by grade schoolers on a field trip. Tyson thought we had reversed ourselves from fifteen years ago, but when we would have paid money to stay home and watch TV. But I felt the exact same as I used to feel: genuinely excited to be at a new place with old friends.
Before following the main, zigzag path of the museum, we took the deviation into the lower level, and a route I would recommend for the sake of the day’s narrative. The basement—though maybe that phrasing makes it sounds like the attractions are exposed pipes and a wet-dry vac—was a series of exhibits regarding Truman, with special emphasis on interactions and games. Make a Truman Campaign Button! Write a letter! See the three huge, and bad ass, cars they seemingly built the museum around because there is no way those 1940s Chryslers squeezed down the stairwell. A few of the games made somewhat circuitous connections to Truman, such as the “Stick Your Hand in one of the Holes” to feel a representation of something from the President’s life. SPOILER: His bones aren’t in any of the holes. Yet another game was simply “dress like Harry and Bess Truman” wherein kids got to put on random jackets and shoes too raggedy for the Salvation Army. I was so frantically scribbling all this down that I nearly missed what had captured Tyson’s attention: a display about Truman’s involvement with the Freemasons.
-That’s the Eastern Star, and it sometimes represents Lucifer, Tyson pointed out.
-Uh huh, I said while noting that a sitcom about the Freemasons would be television gold.
Wanna know more? Too bad, Freemasonary ain't free.
To be continued...
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