MY ROAD TRIPS: The National WWI Museum (part three)

To catch up, I am in the National WWI Museum in Kansas City...

The largest set piece of the museum follows shortly after in the Horizon Theater. From a crosswalk, Matt and I looked down at more soldier mannequins trudging through muck and rubble on a set at least 80 x 30 feet. By this point we had come to understand that hell is not made of fire, but rather made of mud. After three years, millions of soldiers had died and millions more remained stretched across a 475 mile front line, from the English Channel to the Swiss Alps. The background of the set was a projector screen that ran a 15-minute movie presenting the question, “Should America enter the war?” By 1917, not only had the Germans sunk the Lusitania and other vessels carrying Americans but President Wilson had won reelection on the somber campaign slogan, “He Kept Us Out of the War.”

10 million German immigrants lived in the US. One of them, Eric Muenter, tried to blow up Congress—in mixed act of insanity and necessity. For the previous hour in the museum, we had been so stuck in European misery that I only barely realized the museum held back the spoilers in history. How would this war end? Who would win? What could America do? More questions are asked and more pictures are faded into one another and more Terminator-inspired music plays. The suspense was killing me, or maybe it was just the chemical warfare the museum patron next to me unleashed during the film.

Through another doorway we learned of the Zimmerman Telegram and German’s plea for Mexico to join the war by attacking the United States. Unfortunately for Germany, Mexico and the U.S. may have had, and still have, our own problems, but we don’t fight each other. Well…except for that whole Mexican War thing. And the drug and gun trafficking. And college kids getting trashed in Tijuana. Anyway…

A whole new round of propaganda posters line the walls as if bearing the load of the ceiling. My personal favorites were the ones telling Americans that it was time to repay France for their help during the Revolutionary War. It takes a historical surgeon to make that kind of argument, a careful avoidance of intentions and facts. Beyond that, American-French relations have been slow to grow back from our 2003 low-point. Maybe we need to send them more study abroad students. Maybe we need to send them less. Maybe they need to quit being jerks; they got a Woody Allen movie, isn’t that enough?

With America’s introduction to the war, Matt and I saw how radically out-of-touch America had been with the rest of the world in the years before the first shots. As mentioned earlier, the European countries (and Japan) had begun a military build-up in the event of war, which turned out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy as everybody’s military build-up scared everybody else into building-up their own militaries. America, though, was absolutely nowhere; and the American didn’t realize it until the day after Congress declared war. To get four million American soldiers in Europe by 1918, we needed 2.5 million rifles and 72 million pairs of underpants. I don’t know, I think the soldiers would have needed so many changes of underpants had they just been given more rifles, but, hey, I’m no military genius (surprise!). Embarrassing to anybody more enlightened than Strom Thurman, America’s first bunch of soldiers sent to the front lines were entirely African-American and outfitted in (sigh…) former uniforms from the Civil War.

Continuing the regrets of the past, before America could send much of an army overseas, President Wilson signed into law the Espionage Act of 1917 and jailed several women suffragists and former presidential candidate Eugene Debs—where he remained until receiving a commuted sentence from President Harding in 1921. Of course if there’s one thing America does better than imprisoning people, it’s building bad ass weapons and you better believe this museum has those by the armful.

The best “weapon” is a criminally easy to miss wooden cane, as it is seemingly lumped in with assorted WWI airplane memorabilia. The cane was carved from a wooden propeller off of the crashed airplane flown by Quentin Roosevelt, the youngest and most Theodore-like son of former president Theodore Roosevelt. Quentin Roosevelt was a daredevil—which his father loved—and always pushed himself past the limits of normal people—including his three older brothers who ALL served on the front lines in WWI. Because the only thing that can kill a Roosevelt is himself, it seems with almost certainty that Quentin’s gun on the plane was disabled during a dogfight and so he whittled his own propeller into a wooden cane, beat a German pilot over the head with it and then crashed the plane into the ground—which also would have created the Grand Canyon on the other side of the world. The museum makes no such claim, but I think we all know that I’m right.

-Look at this, said Matt. Our allies called American soldiers “witty” and “stubborn.”

-Yeah, I think we’re okay with that description.

-Yeah.

Not far after this, Matt continued reading the lengthy chronology of events and quotes still on the interior wall while I looked at motorcycles, wagons, cannons, maps and a tank that got an artillery shell shoved up its tailpipe. A museum can’t just all be about learning, it requires a little bit of imagination, too. When you look at a handwritten letter, really look at it. See how deep the pencil marking go into the paper. Look at the stains on the paper. That letter isn’t just a movie prop, it was really somewhere else at one point. It was important to somebody and the fun is in imagining when that importance was new. People like books because it can take them to another world inside their heads and people like movies because there is something visceral to experience and I think the best museums capture the essence of both.

At the end of the museum I was struck by how much of World War I, the Great War as once called, felt untouched. The museum felt less like an immersion and more like an introduction. Modern estimates say over 9 million combatants were killed. Over 21 million seriously wounded. This doesn’t count the uncountable amount who suffered the loss of their homes, means of support or even their complete sanity. 9 million killed. That’s like wiping out all of New York City when the world’s population was a fourth what it is now. How can a two or three hour tour encompass all that? Simply, it can’t.

World War I was the collapse of empires. Even the Allied nations were too defeated to maintain the stranglehold on natural resources they had just five years prior. Worse off, Russia and Germany were not allowed at the negotiating table, which raises the question: who was negotiating about what? Russia went under the knife and cut out its old self-identity with the Bolshevik Revolution. Germany fared no better and the Allied nations—in an act rivaling grade school children—refused to let Germany join the League of Nations for six years after the creation of the world’s largest tree house club. My guess is that even then, Germany still had to eat a worm to hang out with the other neighborhood kids. That kind of stuff hurts people’s feelings…and their economies.

From the conception, through the build-up and execution and finale and aftermath, WWI remains an unrivaled low point for far too many people. It was a war like no other and properly remembered as an absolute disaster. And that’s okay. What continues the misfortune is when the war is disregarded, misunderstood or forgotten. Forgive, but don’t forget. So how did the war end?

On the one hand, nobody won. Everyone loses in war and the last country to know it’s losing claims victory. In this case, Germany saw the writing on the wall before Britain, France and the U.S. And for seeing the destruction for what it was and what it would become, Germany asked for peace—at the sacrifice of it’s own pride and people. For pleading for peace, U.S. ran away in disgust and France and Britain shoved mountains of self-righteous debt onto Germany. For ending the war, Germany was branded The Loser. And for losing over 116,000 men in a little over one year and having a President who didn’t mind a sea voyage, America was found to be the biggest winner.

And twenty years later, the world went back to war.

MY ROAD TRIPS: The National WWI Museum (part two)

Continuing in the National WWI Museum...

I can’t guess what percentage of people consider the cause of WWI to be the assassination of Franz Ferdinand (the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary) on June 28, 1914. But that explanation, with all of its obvious political nuances, isn’t good enough. A much broader, and more accurate, explanation would be simply that almost all the major players in the world wanted to go to war. Ferdinand didn’t need to die, anybody could have died and the European countries would still have lost their tops. There had been a decade of patriotic pumping, empire expanding and over-terrified military build-ups. Like Charlie and Dee from “Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” these countries (Britain, France, Germany, Russia, Austria-Hungry, Japan, etc.) were taking handfuls of steroids and washing them down with barrels of alcohol. By mid-1914, testosterone (metaphor continued: an unhealthy mix of nationalism and fear) had been loaded into a cannon three times over. Countries were flexing and crying at the same time; talking in barely contained, quivering whispers because letting out a normal voice would let out a roaring string of profanities that would embarrass Christian Bale.

The assassination of Franz Ferdinand was no more the cause of the First World War than the starting gun is the reason Usain Bolt can run 200 meters in the time it takes you to pick out a box of Pop-Tarts.

Charles Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species” was published some fifty years prior, giving politicos just enough time to skim the work and corrupt Darwin’s point as a theory on human society, not just biology. It has since become the default argument for capitalism: survival of the fittest. Competition breeds excellence, etc. On an international scale, this meant that it became time for the most efficient nations to devour the weaker ones. War, as a concept, was not a crime anymore, but rather a solution. The real crime, it was said, was to not unite all humanity under one, true, banner of righteousness. To the British, Germans and others, the world had become too small, the resources too few and so war became a cleansing.

Serbian nationalists assassinate attacked Ferdinand and that was wrong. Austria-Hungry made impossible demands for peace on the Kingdom of Serbia and that was wrong. Russia moved to protect its cultural brethren, even though the conflict was still considered domestic…and Russia was in the wrong. Germany should not have declared war on Russia and so on. Basically, only the trigger man Gavrilo Princip can be blamed for his actions; everybody else should be blamed for their reactions.

Over the coarse of the conflict, 34 countries officially declared war (often against multiple enemies) and almost all within a six-week period—which was about how long that Geico Caveman show was on the air. The museum, which various graphs and charts chronicles the major declarations but regrettably leaves out the smaller players, such as Greece declaring war on Bulgaria and Turkey declaring war on Romania.

The layout of the museum is a giant circle, so the walk is organized but area is also wide. While Matt and myself both started in 1914, we were drawn to different displays. I didn’t know what he saw at first but I took good note of the swords and guns. The size of the rifles made me wonder if the armies expected to be fighting a battalion of T-Rexes. Seriously bad ass guns.

I then found Matt at the propaganda posters and was thankful he wasn’t so convinced by them that he planned on going to war. WWI was definitely the first major conflict to make use of the media and the posters (from several countries) show a level of government intimidation unique not for its efforts but for the lack of subtlety. “What’s your excuse?” demands one poster, willing to publicly de-pant any able-bodied man.

Beyond the posters, Matt and I found a life-size recreation of a trench, complete with a couple of dummy soldiers (no offense?) playing cards. The trench had wood siding and planks put down for a makeshift floor.

-Kind of looks like a tree house, I said.

-A tree house?

-Well, underground, of course. Like a snow fort, made of dirt.

Down the way, Matt and I found more sections of the trench as it evolved and discovered by description was unfortunately accurate. Snow forts rarely lost more than an hour, and nearly same with the trenches. At least with snow though, one can climb out, be a little cold and go drink hot cocoa. WWI took a more elongated and darker turn. At any point, walls could give in and bury men in mud while they slept. If the walls stayed strong, the mud crept up from underneath and just remained at men’s knees for months on end. Weapons jammed, food tasted like mud and blankets hardened. And this was when the enemy wasn’t throwing grenades, launching shells, shooting machine guns, attacking with weaponized gases and bayonets otherwise attacking like a bunch of jerks.

The interior wall, from floor to ceiling, catalogues major events and quotes in chronological order and provides most of the reading material. Personally, I just like reading about displays that catch my eye rather than reading long passages on a wall. If I wanted to read about WWI, I get a book about WWI. However, the wall does contain several gem jokes—usefully highlighted in bright red—that are definitely worth a glance. By the first Christmas of the war, gas masks had become pretty standard and had the unfortunate effect of dehumanizing the wearer. A German soldier recounts being attacked by “creatures” in gas masks while a British soldier lamented in his journal about how life on the battlefield “is not worth a damn.”

Within minutes of walking around the museum, the chaos can become over-whelming. Food riots in Germany, fifty thousand British soldiers killed in a couple of hours, failing crops and the intentional bombing of cultural treasures in a ridiculously ignorant attempt to “break the will of the people.” I can not over-emphasis how many times in the history of mankind—and the marginally shorter history of war—an army has tried to “break the will” of a civilian population and failed. A hundred times over, even a thousand times over, attacking a civilian does more harm to the effort than good. A political leader or a general can be broke and surrender, a people never do.

5 million civilians died from the war. That’s more than Dallas, Indianapolis, San Francisco, Detroit, Boston and Denver…put together. Damn.

In the interior of the circle, there were Cultural Reflections Booths and interactive table displays. The giant table touch-screen displays immediately impressed me as some space-age/everyday cell phone technology; until I tried to use one. They weren’t so much “touch-screens” as they were displays that were supposed to move with the click of an attached laser pointer. Alas, the screen rarely reacted properly and I struggled like some lab monkey for a while until I decided to go pout in what looked like a photo booth. Unlike the baffling no-touch touch-screen table from moments prior, the Cultural Reflections Booths had real touch screens and let me scroll through music, literature and sound bites from WWI and the years shortly after.

A lot of beauty came from WWI, in that the war affected, inspired or at least mentally damaged artisans of every medium. Who knows what Fitzgerald and Hemmingway would have written in their post-WWI years if not “The Great Gatsby” and “A Farewell to Arms.” This is not an appreciation for the war, though, as I can’t say I’d save any piece of art or literature at the cost of one life. The grandest achievement for any of the literature at the time was the ability to summarize the impossibly huge concepts.

To be continued in a third, and final, segment....

MY ROAD TRIPS: The National WWI Museum

Matt and I went to the National WWI Museum in Kansas City.

The Liberty Memorial in Kansas City is a limestone structure that thrusts itself into the Kansas City skyline with the grace, determination and raging pride long since forgotten by its brother-in-spirit, the Washington Monument. Indeed, the Washington Monument is so engrain in pop culture, via dirty humor, that reiteration would be redundant if not wholly confusing. The Washington Monument is just an example of the obelisk architectural genre and by the same revelation, Chuck Norris jokes have very little to do with Chuck Norris. 


Regardless, in an attack on originality, many lifeless jokes surround the Liberty Memorial. Hilariously, the Liberty Memorial is not even technically an obelisk, but rather more cylinder—and I suppose such details are not so much “hilarious” as they are “tedious.”

-When you’re ready to come back down, press the button by the lift, said the elevator operator as we reached the top.

-Don’t worry, I said back, I brought my parachute today.

-Oh don’t do that, he said before going back down—immediately unwilling to talk me down from such dare devil antics.

It wasn’t until some time later that I was able to reflect on the Liberty Memorial at all, as I spent most of my time at the viewing balcony crushing Kansas City skyscrapers with my fingers. I roared and watched a five-legged, spider-like monster crush the Sprint Center and climb the Power and Light Building. Other observers left me alone and a small child started crying. Even in my fantasy, those people were safe so I can’t imagine what the problem was.

The 360-degree view was nice, but not entirely for why I was expecting.

There’s an old joke that goes, “In Kansas, you can watch your dog run away from home for two days. If you stand on top of a phone book, you can watch for three days.” Basically, an expansive view is nothing new. Every town east of Abilene has a suitable hill to stand-in as a “make-out point,” drug rendezvous or the occasional combination of the two. 


What was unique about the Liberty Memorial view was that there was something to look at. My imaginary hand monster had something to crush. Also, the Liberty Memorial was more unique than your average mound of dirt because underneath it sat the National World War I Museum and a more fun two hours spent than any of the last handful of movies I have braved my way through.

Above the entrance, two large stone sphinxes cower and cover their eyes from one another. A short investigation led to the museum’s explanation that the one facing East shrouds its face from the horrors of the past; while the mirroring sphinx, facing West, shields its face to symbolize the unseen future. 


My friend on this excursion, Matt, seemed impressed by the answer but I felt a nagging blip on my bullshit detector. Yeah, okay, I said, I’ll accept the museum’s explanation; art and obscurity are common bedfellows. Still, why would two identical statues supposedly convey two nearly opposite sentiments? Just as easily, there are mysteries in our past and horrors in our future.

Entering the museum was like entering a cave as we were forced to surrender all natural light. We purchased tickets for the museum in the gift shop, which seemed oddly inefficient at first. Generally, gift shops are set up to be a last destination for the patron—a place to solidify family memories in the only way our society knows how to do anything with any kind of confidence or energy anymore: by buying things. I suppose unlike presidential museums or Six Flags, this WWI museum is a bit more somber and so useless knick-knacks and T-shirts don’t lose or gain value after the forthcoming stroll.

On a small financial note, I’d recommend going to the museum on a Wednesday to take advantage of a two-for-one ticket special (one ticket normally running around $12). Also, there is a student discount but the following harassment from Missourian museum volunteers might not make it worth whipping out an old KU student ID. Literally, three museum workers, through various friendly/prying conversations, vocally disapproved of my educational history and historical education. Before long, the Mizzou fans had provided extra motivation for me to run into the dark halls in a desperate escape and join the WWI war effort.

Near the entrance, Matt and I crossed a glass bridge spanning a poppy flower garden beneath the last skylight for the self-guided tour. The garden was massive. Thousands of flowers. 9,000 flowers, we learned. Each flower represented 1,000 combat deaths during WWI. Wow, I thought out loud, war is kind of dark.

As expected, though perhaps necessary, the first section of the museum was a short video setting up the origins of a very underrated war. To me, World War II is just a younger brother who benefited from an absurd twenty-year technological boom. WWII is flashy, big and (relatively) simple—not unlike the highly popular “Star Wars” films. Even Bart Simpson once said, “There are no good wars…with the following exceptions: The Revolutionary War, World War Two and the Star Wars Trilogy.” And he was referring to the original trilogy for all you kids under the age of 13, who have never known the concept of ‘only’ three “Star Wars” films. A necessary digression.

The thought has also occurred to me that I’m just a history elitist; I am so unable to develop uniquely obscure music tastes that I have found and latched onto my favorite stories, characters and musings. Still, when the lights dimmed, I was excited.

The film was edited with a smooth grasp, exceeding the capabilities—or at least the confidence—of the History Channel. The modern intangibles were there, a nearly subconscious remainder that the museum is only six years old. Despite no real evidence to support my hope, I can only pray that the museum directors will create at least a new intro video every ten years so as to not cheapened the experience with dated film reels (ala the Dwight Eisenhower museum). History has to fight the stigma of dusty, impotent, nonsense. If that means adding a little MTV-style pepper to the production, then so be it--nothing will be lost. A secret handshake is worthless if it’s so complicated that only one person knows it. As is, the WWI video was more than competent.

At times, the video may have even been over-written. Nearly every line was dropped like a stone tablet, carved by modern day philosophers. “Peace is war at check,” the audience is told with a careful sigh. Is war the default relationship for humanity? The War on Poverty was interrupted by the Vietnam War, which exhausted itself and left room in the political landscape for a War on Drugs, Communism, Christmas, Terror, Libya, Women and the Upper Class.

To be continued...

MY ROAD TRIPS: The Dwight D. Eisenhower Museum (part four)

The last chapter on the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Museum:

Taking in the flood of praise, banners, photos and editorial cartoons, I realized a crippling aspect of the museum was its narrative incongruity. That is, the tourists going through time are asked to cognitively jump from one time frame to another with no chronological, social, emotional or thematic overlap. We went from Maime to Eisenhower’s WWII leadership to a WWII overview to Eisenhower’s accolades to his return home to his rise in American politics. The museum should have funneled the audiences’ interests to more specifics as the walk-through progresses. For instance, starting with WWII then narrowing into Eisenhower, then his honors, then his return home/his rise as a celebrity, then Maime’s popularity and then Eisenhower’s rise in politics.

We had stood at a statue and a pavilion, visited the reconstructed boyhood home, saw a Kansas library display and walked through half of a museum over the last two hours and still hadn’t gotten to the first inauguration for America’s 34th President until this point.

Eisenhower’s rise from being a celebrity-general to a sought after political leader was nothing too new—as the same can be said for Washington, Jackson, W.H. Harrison, Taylor and Grant—but it’s hard to imagine it happening in this age of politics, especially with such vigor. The 1952 election was well demonstrated as a media frenzy in the museum, with no less than six videos playing on constant loops around various corners. The effect was confusing and even a little annoying, but it was the most immersive section of the museum. WWII was promptly forgotten as television boomed in popularity and society became so much more hyper-invasive and recognizable to modern day, 4G voyeurs.

The Cold War exhibit was once again mostly a book stapled to the walls, but it did pick up the argument that the Cold War was, in fact, a series of violent engagements, government overthrows and espionage. The only real reason we know the war as being “cold” is because both the USSR and the USA claimed it was. Well, that or because the Russians always have to wear jackets.

Some attention was given to the communists hearings and how Eisenhower “despised” Wisconsin Senator Joe McCarthy for badgering federal officials. The museum notes that McCarthy’s demagogic, reckless, and unsubstantiated accusations really went too far when Eisenhower’s old friends George S. Marshall and Walter Smith came under attack. However, even the museum could not make the case that Eisenhower actually did anything to protect this friends, innocent Americans or even curb the influence of the verbose head(line) hunter. The hearings came a public climax when Joseph Welch famously cried out to McCarthy, “Have you no sense of decency?” To which McCarthy shot back, “Damn, I knew I left something at your mom’s house.”

Oh, snap!

Okay, that story may only be half true, but the Eisenhower museum also appropriately credited news anchor Ed Murrow for denouncing fear-mongering and revealing McCarthy to the public for what he really was: a windbag cloaked in a soiled American flag.

On a small wall nearby, the museum softly noted the escalating Civil Rights crisis in America, which—unlike space travel, public education and even environmentalism—could not be acted upon by the federal government under the flimsy and unnecessary pretense of battling communism. A former history teacher of mine once said that traditionally Congress gets a lot more eager to spend when something can be connected to national defense. And if that’s what it takes to fund the construction of the interstate, reverse the Scopes Trial or put a man on the moon, I have no qualms. But even domestic instability, international embarrassment and basic morality were not good enough reasons for Eisenhower to get behind social equality. In fact, Eisenhower went out of his way to say appointing the liberal-leaning Chief Justice Earl Warren was his biggest mistake in office and that black leaders wanted too much too soon—as, you know, the Civil War had ended only some 80 years earlier. With only arguable self-awareness, the museum capped off the section, admitting that the battle over segregation and Civil Rights throughout the 1950s was one of Eisenhower’s “limitations as president.”

The next exhibits detailed Eisenhower’s general leadership style, with appropriately little regard to the specifics. Eisenhower delegated duties and so the museum delegated one’s education off to some other museum, book or History Channel documentary. Anecdotes were employed, though were as distressing as they were entertaining. For instance, that President Eisenhower grew weary from signing his name so often that he began just putting “DDE,” and later still just put down, “E.” Then three years into office, E had a heart attack and—wait, I can’t call him that; it sounds like the best episode of “Entourage” ever. Anyway, Eisenhower had a heart attack in 1955, ran for reelection in 1956, had a stroke in 1957 and inadvertently hurt the Nixon campaign in 1960 when the President failed to remember anything VP Nixon had done in the last 8 years. To the historically astute, that Eisenhower survived his own administration and then tripped trying to hand over the White House keys may been his last world-saving accomplishment. Had anything gone slightly differently, the volatile and vehemently anticommunist R.M. Nixon would have been President in 1962 and been the man in charge during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Staying in the pattern of staying in no real pattern, the next exhibit was the “Splendors of State”—an expected display of gifts from around the world given to the former President. The whole room was filled with priceless artifacts; ‘priceless’ in that they are one of a kind but, frankly, just gibberish decorations. If something is priceless, a dollar amount can’t be figured and the item essentially becomes worthless. At no point is this more suspicious then when I noticed an ancient Corinthian helmet given to the President from Greece. Having never been at the Eisenhower museum before, I was struck by my own familiarity with the helmet. I had seen that exact kind of helmet before at the Harry S. Truman Presidential Museum. Back in the Eisenhower tomb of riches, I was livid that the Greeks would just give at least two American presidents the exact same gift under the guise of it being the least bit special or unique.

-What, are they just giving out ancient Greek war helmets at the airport, I asked out loud.

-No, said Matt, but in Greece it’s pretty common to just trip over ancient artifacts.

-Lousy cheap Greeks…

I left Eisenhower’s walk-in treasure chest and found a large board nearby that posed the question, “1956: Run again?” in an assumed effort to ready me for Eisenhower’s second term. Then, literally two steps later, another board read: “Passing the Torch in 1960.” Like so many old people, I looked back behind me, wondering where had the last four years gone. I spent some time looking for a hidden lever or trap door but found nothing and moved into Eisenhower’s post-presidency.

I think the key to cracking the code of Eisenhower’s legacy can be found in the last quote from the man that the museum offers, “Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.” We can’t say Eisenhower was an inefficient leader because things happened under this hand. Critics say Eisenhower was puppet in issues involving domestic policies; but even then, Eisenhower’s goal was to appear like a duck on a pond, floating along. Were his feet kicking? Having no evidence that he personally strained himself in office is the proof that he succeded in crafting a perception he wanted. Like many presidents, the man was a paradox. And so are other people, whether they live in Abilene, Lawrence or anywhere else.

Lastly, as we drove back east, the sun came out and then it started raining on us and I realized that Eisenhower was in his element dealing with varied difficulties, perplexing characters and seemingly impossible situations. After all, Dwight D. Eisenhower had spent his whole life putting up with the weather in Kansas

MY ROAD TRIPS: The Dwight D. Eisenhower Museum (part three)

In the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Museum...:

The first display, a 1914 Rauch and Lange electric car, was a stand-alone piece and so unconnected to any theme or relevance that it would have just been the parking space for one of the more nostalgic construction workers had there not been a picture of Eisenhower off to the side. The electric got up to 13 mph and could go 100 miles, which I guess was enough to keep Dwight Eisenhower impressed. As reported, he liked driving it even though, or especially because, it was not his, but rather belonged to his father-in-law. This really small tidbit had to stand on its own to transition our perplexed, self-guided, group of two into the next area.

If the first two rooms (and that car) were a wash, then the first real exhibit, bafflingly, was all about Mamie Eisenhower—a.k.a. Kitty Forman from a theoretical "That 50s Show." Displays of Mamie’s hats and wardrobe were donned by terrifying mannequins that had faces but no eyes. Toward the back, one could then watch a short documentary about Mamie that combined all the worst parts of cheesy, 1960s documentaries you thought were left behind at grade school. Blunt font, scratchy audio recording; I didn’t finish it. “I like Mamie” political buttons (playing off the “I like Ike” slogan) were displayed but book-ended by chapter-amounts of reading. With my interest plummeting like a bald eagle suffering a heart attack, I turned a corner and found what I initially understood to be Mamie Eisenhower’s collection of M3A1 submachine guns.

Unfortunately, my original interpretation was incorrect, as the guns displayed were actually just the first part of the WWII section of the museum, though still a peculiar transition. The next few exhibits showcased rifles, side arms, grenades and knives and probably had enough restored to working condition to fend any forthcoming mummy-ocalypse. Large blocks of text, which made the whole experience rather slow moving, surrounded all the weaponry displays. Matt and myself took to reading different things at different times and thus dropped any potential discussion.

I imagine anybody with a child-like mind (like me) would have found this experience quiet, dull and even excruciating (again, like me). Often times, the panels of text were larger than the meager displays and begged the question, why not just read a book? At least then one gets to sit down. The WWII displays themselves were often times toy replicas of tanks, boats or, in the most interesting moments, maps of the English Channel printed upside down.

Early in the walk, Eisenhower’s team of experts were noted and given some credence. There were also original letters between the General and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, though actually reading the letters was more difficult than the educational value of what was said. One nearby photo showed FDR sitting down while presenting Eisenhower with a medal. Failing to note the specific medal, I was distracted by the content of the picture—a clearly staged photo opportunity. As commonly known nowadays, FDR suffered from polio and could not walk, and rarely even stood without assistance. The photo is an awkward reminder of one of the most elaborate ploys pulled on the, seemingly naive, American public. This thought led me to wonder what future generations are going to laugh at us about; what we never saw that is right in front of us.

The WWII walk-through then slowly shifted focus away the top commanders and instead just acted as a general overview of the expensive sequel to a niche world war (which itself had only developed a cult following amongst 1920s surrealists). The information presented, in terms of entertainment and accuracy, rested somewhere between "Saving Private Ryan" and ramblings regurgitated by a college student who pulled a B+ in his military history class. Yeah, the Germans over-stretched themselves. Russians were united by Operation Barbarossa. French/Polish resistance hampered German forces. Winston Churchill advocated for the Allied invasion of Italy, incorrectly thinking the peninsula was Europe’s “soft underbelly.”

While the WWII saga presented was rather removed and overlong (again, so much text, so few things), it had a certain dignity—which was then dropped with a half-hearted attempt at the reconstruction of an Allied landing boat reaching Normandy. The hallway forced visitors into a short, narrow, passage way, with one panoramic (maybe 270 degree) picture of soldiers storming the beach with wood, boat-like paneling and distant battle sound effects so quiet that one could almost miss the whole experience of being dropped into one of the most extraordinary battles of all-time.

The museum’s further accounts of Operation Overlord painted too clean of a picture and sell it as some historic inevitability. The museum overstated the Allied bombers’ accuracy, understated German intelligence, and otherwise treated the whole thing as unquestionably America’s proudest moment, and not the operation-level disaster that killed over 3,000 Allied soldiers and forced the Allies to stumble their way through France.

It’s actually shortly after the D-Day segment, that the whole WWII comes to a highpoint with the exhibit on the Mulberry Harbours—which is neither the bar I frequent nor a brand of cigarettes. Maybe the most impressive, movable, civil engineering marvel since the original Ferris Wheel (if not ever), the Mulberry Harbours were platforms constructed in England, deconstructed, shipped to Normandy, and reconstructed to stand against Atlantic storms. Once there, tanks, military vehicles and around 2.5 million men drove off the ships, across the roadways and into France over the proceeding months. Nearly 70 years later, I can’t help but wonder if we could have just built a bridge to the moon by now had there been anything to kill on that orbiting rock.

As if calculating my awe and not wanting to keep me impressed or even comfortable for too long, the next bend revealed life-like, life-size, completely white statutes of WWII soldiers. While I was 99.9% the soldiers weren’t actually people frozen in place and would move at any point, that .1% drove me nuts and I kept an eye on them until I cleared the area. Fortunately, the only thing that could regain my attention was actually in the next section: a 4,000-lb bomb, alongside some cannons and military vehicles. I considered getting on top of the bomb, but then became concerned that our tour of the museum might come to an abrupt end—either from getting kicked out or accidentally blowing up half of Abilene.

     -Hey Matt, I said, why don’t you get on the bomb?

-No, he said back. Why don’t you ride it?

-Fine, be a jerk. I’ll do it next time.

Nearby, we found three separate glass cases of medals, decorations, honors and awards presented to General Dwight Eisenhower—which, everything else aside, reminded us that this was actually the Dwight Eisenhower museum. The medals and ribbons were so numerous that there was literally no way Eisenhower could have worn all of his accolades had he been an inch shorter than two stories tall. Unfortunately, Wikipedia says Eisenhower was only 5 foot, 10.5 inches and so likely found himself swimming in medals and decrees of honorary citizenship. Also, he may or may not have been allowed to secretly pick up to three Academy Award winners between the years 1948-1952.

In what had to be the smoothest transition between segments of the President’s life, we walked through a “The Hero Returns” room and into the extended process of getting the incredibly popular leader, who had yet to ever vote, to run for American politics (as a Democrat or Republican).

MY ROAD TRIPS: The Dwight D. Eisenhower Museum (part two)

About the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Museum...:

Unfortunately, the documentary's title ("Dwight Eisenhower: American") was not alluding to some forgotten controversy surrounding Eisenhower’s birth certificate; though I would like to take this time to advocate the necessity of these short documentaries that appear at several, if not all, presidential museums--no matter how bland and uncomfortably political.

That said, the rickety, 24-minute, documentary--possibly made in the 1970s--was mostly bland and uncomfortably political. The film chronicled the rise of a “compassionate” and “reliable” soldier who had so much, Abilene-inspired, “common sense” that he would never be found wanting a job, but rather any employment would find him. In line with this sentiment, the film is mostly devoid of facts, figures, testimonies or even anecdotal specifics regarding the leadership of Eisenhower, remaining instead on a stream of broad, subjective generalizations. Eisenhower was “a decent man” who garnered “respect and affection” from all people around the world. Some of the sweeping compliments provoked derisive sneers from Matt, perhaps emboldened by the otherwise empty theater.

Matt’s wordless sarcasm can’t be defended without a greater grasp of one of the inherent difficulties in discussing history—that is, that history is neither definite nor even over. Anything can be viewed with a political lens, and the resulting analysis can be contorted, stretched, squeezed, flipped around, smacked and given The Flying Dutchman. Often times it’s good to look at events and people with a different, even extreme, lens; but other times the lens conceal what other people see: gaping contradictions. Hopefully, my own lens is that of being a perpetual storyteller and so I see things not so much as political, but rather as a narrative.

And with a narrative mindset, I can say that complicated, paradoxical and even flawed protagonists are generally more interesting than impervious and infallible ones. In just one example, the conservative Eisenhower appointed the liberal Earl Warren as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. But in this documentary, the moral, cultural and political ambiguity that previously defined the Eisenhower administration in my eyes was traded in for grandiose praise and unnecessary whitewashing in a celebration of America’s Grandpa.

From the film, we stumbled back outside—still no rain—and toward Dwight Eisenhower’s boyhood home: The Bethlehem of Kansas. Maybe it didn’t have that name, but it was advertised as the origin of “greatness.” Standing on the wooden front porch of the two-floor house, I wondered what it would be like to grow up in a park dedicated to your own forth-coming greatness. Did Little Ike like the statue of himself forty years in the future? Did he and his punk teenage friends ever tee-pee or tag the Visitor’s Center?

Ignoring my questions, the tour guide gave Matt and I a detailed history on the house’s ownership. Abraham Lincoln Eisenhower (the most American name since Chilidog Freeman) sold the house to Dwight’s dad, who felt like dying and Ike and his six other brothers kept the house, with their mom still living in it. Like the homes of all old people, most of the furnishings are originals and haven’t been touched in years. Other stuffs (wallpaper, etc.) are exact replicas.

The historic house can be interesting, but for most requires a substantial re-imaging of history. For instance, the tour guide pointed out a piano in one of the rooms, saying that while the future President, along with the other boys, was taught to play, Dwight didn’t continue to play into adulthood. Learning this, I had to envision some scenario where President Eisenhower was asked to play the piano but couldn’t and thus set off a chain of events for a reporter discovering that the leader of the free world had been replaced by a look-a-like. Maybe that really happened. Maybe it didn’t.

I noticed the house also had security cameras and so asked for proof of their authenticity. Mr. Killjoy informed us that, no, the cameras were not fixtures of the house in 1915, but in fact a response to a daring midnight heist years back when somebody lifted one of the original—and this is true—sugar cups from the Eisenhower tea set. It would seem even Batman would stay plenty busy fighting crime in Abilene, Kansas.

For reasons beyond me, the tour of the Eisenhower home required additional tickets to the tickets for the Presidential Museum. Seeing the house was two bucks, but if that was too cheap for anybody, there was also a tip box in the kitchen that I doubted was authentic to the house. Matt and I were quicker to take the tour of the house when we discovered, back in the Visitor’s Center, that the museum had a $3 discount on Wednesdays. Even with going to the house, I would save a dollar—or enough to buy half of a beer at the bar down the street from my apartment, which is how I’ve begun to measure money.

Back in the Eisenhower house, Matt noted the hat rack and flippantly suggested we get a hat rack for our place back in Lawrence. Tour Guide McFunderful, immediately went silent and looked around the room, as if seeing it the first time himself. Sometimes it takes an awkward person to sense an awkward moment, and with that I realized the false assumption. I wanted to say, no, no, we’re not gay…but then I figured it didn’t matter too much as the tour seemed finished anyway. And just for kicks, I put a dollar in the tip box after writing down a hotel address and room number for Mr. Part Time Tour Guide.

Learning, having fun and alienating people in our wake, we went back outside and made the short walk to the Eisenhower Presidential Museum. The entrance lobby was classically marble and ended at the far end with a large desk and, possibly, Clint Eastwood’s dad behind the desk.

The kindly gentleman who would make Old Ben Kenobi look like Young Ben Kenobi took our tickets and told us how to become “a Friend of the Eisenhower Foundation.” Now, I know what you’re thinking: “Friend? Eisenhower? Foundation? There’s no part of that I don’t like!” But one of the benefits was free admission for two to any NARA-operated Presidential Museum for the next year and I figured I would get rowdy at the Truman one in Independence at least four or five more times within the year. Frustratingly, I couldn’t buy the membership, refund my Eisenhower ticket and then come back to the Eisenhower museum four minutes later. So just like that, I was out 2.5 beers.

To my own continued chagrin, the first two rooms of the museum’s linear path were under massive, (authentic?) renovations. 2x4 wood planks and almost-discarded Pepsi cans gave the allusion of some temporary exhibit at least a month away from completion. Leaving the work zone, a sign hung advertising the forth-coming, temporary, exhibit: “Eisenhower: Agent of Change.” The details were murky but had a faint, unidentifiable, scent—raising my suspicions. I was not aware of any large-scale, politically motivated, re-imaging of Eisenhower’s legacy on the scale of FDR or Reagan. Then again, I was at this Presidential Center because one could fill a warehouse with what I didn’t know about Eisenhower—or, in this case, almost fill a museum.

To be continued...

MY ROAD TRIPS: The Dwight D. Eisenhower Museum

This is my real life, 4-part, journey to the second presidential museum I ever visited, the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Museum:

The billboards along I-70 intermittently advertised adult stores and decried the immorality of abortion, neither one of which directly related to our destination: the Dwight D. Eisenhower Library and Museum. My roommate (Matt Gieschen) and I flew down the interstate, blanketed by overcast skies. It had rained earlier and was predicted to rain later. But that was in Lawrence; 100 miles east ago and storms move eastward, generally. Then again, in Kansas, one needs to pack swimming trunks and a parka on the same weeklong trip. It was as likely to rain on our trip as it was to become sunny as it was to tornado or rain fire and frogs. Which is all to say TV meteorologists in the area are either grossly underpaid or grossly unnecessary. A temperament regarding the uncontrollable elements of nature can develop amongst Kansans; and a similar temperament is necessarily for anybody wading through and rising above the uncontrollable elements of war and politics. Such is the case of former President, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and I guess that’s why the man got his own museum.

Ostensibly, the United States Interstate Highway System—championed by then-President Eisenhower—was built over several years to connect the country’s major cities, but I can speculate that the President had a hand in making sure his hometown of Abilene was also placed roadside. Having a map, though never needing it, Matt and I exited the interstate and followed the main road into the downtown area of Abilene. A few summers ago, I had worked for the Kansas State University agronomy department and driven around Kansas, often driving through towns that may have been completely abandoned. Abilene, though, is one cosmopolitan step higher, advertising a “historic” downtown area, and possibly a number of other attractions that have stabilized the city’s population around 6,700 since 1960. We drove past a number of places that would have entertained us for lunch, but one stuck out for Matt—as he ferociously vouched for it, despite having never actually eaten anywhere in the town. And so we ended up at Kuntz’s Drive-In.

The Kuntz diner (pronounced with a hard ‘u,’ like “moon,” not “fun”) was a rustic drive-in that likely inspired the uber-chain Sonic--which now looks fancy and modern, what with its intercom system and all. Eating in one’s car never appealed to me, so Matt and I got lucky that there were also tables under the elongated, tin, canopy. Really, I’m not much of an outdoorsman, so this didn’t appeal to me either, but Matt was having fun living out “American Graffiti” memories. Our waitress vastly over-estimated my grasp of eatery after throwing about food descriptions like a Southern auctioneer; but I managed to catch some phrases such as “battered,” “deep-fried,” “extra bacon” and, I believe, “double-buttered.”

-Uh, I’ll have that last one, I stammered.

-And I’ll have the pulled-pork sandwich, said Matt with far more confidence.

Any sense of surviving the day without a clot of cholesterol the size of a golf ball lodged in my pulmonary artery went by the wayside when we were then told the large fountain drinks were 99 cents—a penny cheaper than the small size. About twenty minutes later, I had literally lost my straw in the 44-oz cup and Matt was trying to get his change from our second waitress.

-The total is twelve bucks, she said.

-Here’s a fifty. Keep four.

-Okay, here—

-No, I said you keep four, I get the rest.

-Wait. Okay.

-Twelve plus four—

-Wait. Let me think.

-If you give me that ten back…

-What? No. Nineteen plus twelve…

-What?

-Make sure to carry the one, I said—not helping at all at this point.

-Almost…lets start over.

-No, this one.

-Okay there.

-Thanks.

-Thank you.

When we finally got to the Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum, we learned it wasn’t so much a library and museum as it was an “Eisenhower Center”—or, equally accurate, a district of Abilene. The 22-acre site was comprised of two parks and five buildings—separating the Library, the Museum, the Visitor’s Center (gift shop/auditorium), meditation place and Ike’s boyhood home. The museum and the library were two large, complimentary, buildings facing one another as if rivals built for similar, yet mutually exclusive, visitors. In between the two structures, stood a statute of General Dwight Eisenhower with his hands on his hips, in full 1940s military garb and appropriately not facing either of the buildings but sporting a modest smile. Standing at the statue, I looked where Eisenhower was looking and saw nothing but green grass for fifty-by-seventy yards. Wow, I thought alongside the 34th President of the United States, this would be a bad ass field for ultimate Frisbee.

The epitaph, “Champion of Peace” was carved at the feet of Eisenhower and I began to get the sense that Eisenhower didn’t just campaign for peace but rather was the biggest victor when peace came. And behind Eisenhower, was another field, and behind that were five large, monoliths—seemingly lifted from the Stanley Kubrick film 2001:A Space Odyssey. This pavilion or memorial had various quotes inscribed; though with a balance, theme and purpose I could not figure out. Baffled by the structure’s dignity, Matt and I myself walked over to the library, knowing of an exhibit that would act as a minor distraction to the rest of our trip.

The exhibit, housed in a single room, was “the Eight Wonders of Kansas” and, as Kansans ourselves, was everything we feared. I wanted it to be good. I wanted to say it was exciting, educational or otherwise worthy of anybody’s time in a successful effort to strike back against every Wizard of Oz joke any of the current 2.8 million Kansans have had to endure when wandering outside of the state’s border. Instead, I could only roll my eyes at the unashamed desperation. Specifically, the “Eight Wonders” were lifted from the eight cultural elements that (apparently) drive tourism: architecture, art, commerce, cuisine, customs, geography, history, and people. Each of the Eight Wonders had eight examples and each of them was described as “historic” or “unique” possibly eight times. Matt became excited at the sight of a display for Wheat State beer, but became reciprocally disappointed when the bottles had long since been emptied and locked behind glass. Drenched in Kansas pride and without any beers, Matt and I reaffirmed the day’s purpose and went to the Visitor’s Center’s auditorium for the next showing of what had to be the most concisely titled Presidential documentary ever: “Dwight Eisenhower: American.”

MY ROAD TRIPS: The Harry S. Truman Museum (part four)

The last section on the Harry S. Truman Presidential Museum:

And “The Upset of the Century” is exactly what Truman pulled off in the next room. The museum literally puts the writing on the wall as quotes from politicians and journalists line the entryway, describing the impossibility of a Truman victory and the inevitability of Truman getting embarrassed and smacked around harder than Steve Buscemi in…well, any movie that Buscemi is in. Truman, though, campaigned ferociously while Thomas Dewey (R-NY) sat back and asked his advisers what color the drapes in the Oval Office should be.

The Hall of Failed Campaigns is full of bad hair cuts...

that and crazy people.

Dewey had lost the 1944 presidential election in small part due to his mudslinging and so spent most of 1948 spouting absurdly cautious platitudes, characterized in the press as: "Agriculture is important," "You cannot have freedom without liberty" and "Our future lies ahead." Unfortunately for Dewey, his political moderation regarding Communism and previous support for Truman’s international efforts (the Truman Doctrine, etc.) failed to energize his supporters and Truman got to add a couple more rooms to his presidential library.

However the next few rooms contain hardly anything for Harry Truman to celebrate. Like for many presidents, the next four years proved even more domestically tumultuous than the previous four. Compounding the frustrations, every political, cultural and even moral discussion circled back around to the single issue of the day: the Cold War. The next several exhibits followed the evolution of the Cold War from the Red Scare to nuclear escalation, propaganda films, the trials of Alger Hiss (that snake!), and culminated with the McCarthy investigations.

For the climax of our trip, Tyson and I were subjected to an interactive theater experience titled, “Spies in Government: How Far Do You Go To Find Them?” The point of the show seemed limited, focusing on the hypothetical and generalities rather than the specific history of the singular event. Obviously, it’s important to connect history with modern life, but this presentation failed to go four minutes without noting Internet privacy and wire-tapping. Even when the show stayed historical, it maintained an apologetic tone—again, implicitly rejecting current invasions of privacy.

The film—though it was more dimensional than a film—grudgingly admitted that Truman was just too politically weak to stand up against the blatantly obvious “red baiting.” That he despised communist fear mongering is increasingly regrettable when one remembers he had contributed to the origins by adopting NSC-68. By 1951, Truman was stuck in the, US-led but UN-supported, Korean conflict and had no hope of winning another term, which was still a legal possibility. The man had become a lame duck, plucked by the skyrocketing television news media, an opposition Congress, Supreme Commander General Douglas MacArthur and the administration’s infighting and corruption.

Most audaciously, the video itself repeatedly snapped on bright overhead lights and boomed portentous questions at the audience. Tyson and myself sat subjected to this impersonal interrogation, struggling to cognitively orient ourselves and stammer answers to faceless accusations. Most of the vindictive and belittling questions fell along the lines of, “do you know anyone who has ever expressed sympathy for communist sympathizers,” “have you ever felt hesitation about joining the U.S. military,” and “has the show ‘Amos ‘n Andy’ ever influenced your politics?” The first-hand interrogation experience was jarring, mean-spirited and annoying; which I guess made it fun, informative and sympathetic.

Winding down the energy of being taken out behind the woodshed by a voice recording, our journey led into the exhibit of “America in 1952,” where I really began to feel the evolution of the country’s culture in just the period of one administration. An entire wall was lined, floor-to-ceiling, with Life magazine covers, pictures and articles. Essays, quotes and quips displayed sentiments so much like today’s culture that the sentiments themselves emerged as cliches. We in live in a cynical time, wrote one person, not in 2011, but in 1952. If we are the most powerful nation on Earth, why are we always so scared, wrote another, again, not in 2011, but in 1952. Fortunately, athletes and movie stars stole enough column space to avoid the readership—then and now—from getting too introspective. And just like that, Truman was out of the White House with a sub-30 percent approval rating, which is about the same percentage of modern Americans who have passports.

"There sure are a lot of foreigners in those other countries."

Working as a quiet epilogue, a simple photo gallery transitioned Tyson and myself back into the real world. Perhaps it was because the photos were of Truman in his happiest moments, shared with JFK, Mickey Mantle, Harpo Marx and others that every thing felt proper. The pictures, quotes and film clips showed a nation that forgave, and even praised, the formerly unpopular president; in no small part thanks to his political transparency, especially when compared to the Vietnam and Watergate disasters.

Perhaps the experience felt like waking up because we were finally in the first (and only) exhibit to have windows into the museum’s courtyard; allowing the soft embrace of daylight to nudge us awake from our historic dream. It was like leaving a movie theater, except more gradual and more personal. We weren’t being ushered out by a bunch of bow tie-wearing, snot-nosed, punk teenagers, but rather methodically leaving on our own accord. Somehow, the control meant a lot but still allowed at least myself to feel an emotional toll after two and a half hours of darkness interchanged with artificial light, film strips and back lit displays. I was physically drained, with my brain still running a marathon on nothing more than caffeine pills and a Hi Boy burger.

-So I know this place in K.C., started Tyson, that serves $1 tacos and $2 margaritas on Wednesday.

I had to look at my cell phone to check the day. Forget about the time, it was Wednesday and that was good enough for me. I won’t be president next week. I won’t even be a senator, married, or even able to pass the Army’s physical fitness test. Sighing to myself, I knew I was just going to be some guy who has fun in Kansas City. Then again, at this point in his life, so was Harry Truman. And with company like that, I don’t know, I think just maybe everything’s going to be all right.

MY ROAD TRIPS: The Harry S. Truman Museum (part three)

Visiting the Harry S. Truman Presidential Museum:

Back onto the main floor, Tyson and I embarked on the linear path through Truman’s administration, starting with the country elbow-deep in the most widespread war the world has ever known. Quite the kickoff, really. The exhibit was mostly old newspapers stretched out and enhanced and back lit for easy-reading access, if one had the time. Yes, most of the papers were dominated by headlines such as, “V-E Day,” “Second Atomic Bombing” and “Japan Surrenders,” but the small articles kept me far more busy. Unexplainably, it was simply impossible to find the birth announcement of Helen Mirren.

Immediately following the newspapers, there was a dark room—actually the whole building had rather soft, or non-existent, lighting—dedicated to the “Decision to Drop the Bomb.” Now I haven’t been to many presidential museums, but I doubt any of the buildings were built to tarnish, scold or unabashedly deride a President’s legacy; and I think that is a problem and a notion that should be fleshed out some other time. As one would expect, for this moment, the museum’s audio clips and presented data took the stance that Truman’s decision was courageous.

However, there was also an admission that one can only be courageous if there is controversy. If dropping the atomic bombs on Japan was obviously the right thing to do, nobody would care Truman made the decision. Not shielding the reality of 1945, the museum also acknowledged racist propaganda in this section and the possible influence it had Americans. What I really appreciated though was the book and pen at a counter asking museum patrons what they thought about the decision to drop the A-bombs. Flipping through the pages, some people were with Truman but most were just signing their names or making shout-outs. There were a couple of doodles, notations and even short essays, but nothing more graphic than a G-rated bathroom stall.

After that, we led ourselves into post-war America, an exhibit of vintage televisions, vintage refrigerators and vintage cardboard cut outs. It seems even presidential museums can’t escape the public’s insatiable demand for 3-D attractions (“It’s like they’re coming right at me!”). Nearby, I wandered into what I assumed was a dedication to Truman’s love for Halloween. The whole next hallway was creepy, with wind sound effects, darker than usual lights, carefully cut ruins, shadows and manufactured despair. I entirely expected a skeleton on a spring to be launched out of a plastic coffin.

-What is this, a haunted house, I sneered out loud.

-It’s post-war Europe, said Tyson.

-Whoops.

Yeah. Kind of bleak. I guess it was necessary to set the stage though for the Cold War origins in the next, much larger, brighter, room. The Cold War gallery had, among other stuff, a nine-screen video display that chopped up archival footage with well-choreographed, editing craft. The Berlin Airlift, the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan and formation of NATO and the UN are given appropriate weight and credit, including a whole bunch of mini airplanes hanging overhead. Disappointingly, the mini airplanes were just models and not the actual airplanes Truman tried to have airmen fly to Europe.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any exhibits or displays regarding the declassified report NSC-68—the 58-page memo that unnecessarily escalated the Cold War to an apocalyptic discussion. In short, NSC-68 advocated “a policy of calculated and gradual coercion,” a proposed effort to militarily contain both the USSR and the spread of communism worldwide. According the report, its writers and some of its readers, civilization itself was at risk if the Soviet Union was allowed its buffer zones and satellite states. In actuality, the Soviet Union never had the means to launch proper invasions into anywhere they didn’t already have their feet during WWII, nor did they really possess much ambition, what with struggling with their own starving neighborhoods and all. Ultimately, NSC-68 set the stage for the next forty years of American international politics, including (but not limited to) supporting totalitarian, military chieftains who snubbed, or executed, communists or just people they didn’t like and could call communists.

The museum noted the Potsdam Conference, the last meeting between the major Allied forces before the close of the war, but I believe they underplayed the real-life drama of the situation. During the conference, British PM (and anecdotal wizard) Winston Churchill found out that he lost the general election and was replaced by Clement Attlee. This was largely a result from Churchill calling Joseph Stalin a tyrant and proposing that the UK and US invade Russia after defeating Nazi Germany. Yes, people were willing to accept Stalin was a murderous dictator who desperately tried to ally himself with Hitler only a few years earlier, but the British people, and world in general, were just warred-out. On the American side, Truman had ascended to the presidency only months earlier (becoming the first American president not named FDR in over 12 years) and just earlier that week found out about the successful testing of a nuclear bomb in New Mexico.

During the negotiations, Truman told Stalin that America had “a new weapon of unusually destructive force.” Baffling, and even disturbing, President Truman, Stalin appeared disinterested. Though Truman was immediately suspicious, it would take several more years to discover that Stalin had successfully planted Russian spies in the Manhattan Project and, in all real likelihood, knew more about the atomic bombs than President Truman himself.

Still within international affairs, though in a separate exhibit, was the opportunity to explore Truman’s decision to recognize Israel. Like several of the other exhibits up to this point, the display was a detailing of the controversy, though unlike the others, this was a controversy I was only marginally aware existed. I am aware of the contemporary conflict between Israel and Palestine, but I was not aware that Truman’s own administration was divided so sharply; specifically, that George S. Marshall (of the famed Marshall Plan) promised he would never vote for Truman again if America recognized the nation of Israel. Marshall’s thinking was that recognizing Israel meant risking America’s access to Middle Eastern oil reserves and the calamitous results of paying 50 cents per gallon. While America eventually recognized and defended Israel, several Arab countries didn’t. And many still don’t seem comforted that most Americans cannot actually recognize Israel on a world map.

But between Israel, the escalating Cold War, Civil Rights battles and a lulling post-war economy, Truman seemed destined to go down as a one-term president. Any other election result would be the political upset of the century.

Next week on Past Times: The Political Upset of the Century.

MY ROAD TRIPS: The Harry S. Truman Museum (part two)

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...