Harry Truman’s house

Though my grandparents moved here 26 years ago and lived a few blocks from the Truman residence, somehow my father and I had both missed touring it. This morning we finally bought the tickets and took the tour.

It was interesting, of course. President Truman’s final car (a ’72 Chrysler Newport, from the year of his death) is still parked in the garage. The kitchen calendar is still set to October 1982, the month that Bess Truman died. The President’s famous rain coat and fedora are still on a hidden hook, and right there was the hotline where Truman first learned of the invasion of Korea from Secretary of State Acheson.

There was a television in the house, but it was a rarely used gift from the Trumans’ daughter. They were very much pre-TV, radio-oriented people.

Our ranger guide told us that a half dozen other Presidents visited Truman here, but that Lyndon B. Johnson was the most frequent. Makes sense. Truman and Johnson seem cut from the same cloth in a way.

Then my father and I were discussing Johnson afterward while walking away rom Truman’s house, and we agree that he was an unusual but very significant and underrated president. Vietnam is the big blot on his record, of course. But as time passes, his highly progressive social agenda looks more and more remarkable. He was able to strong-arm his conservative southern friends into going along with civil rights breakthroughs, and his spending on the poor was perhaps the equal of Roosevelt’s. And all in just 5 years as President.