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>> public radio reporter matthews algeo retraces the roadtrip that president harry truman and his wife bess took in the summer of 1953 from independence missouri to newark city and that without secret service. the 19 day trip attended by the former first couple in an amenity brought them face-to-face with the american public as they frequented roadside stands, stores and hotels. this event hosted by the kansas city public library in kansas city, missouri, is about an hour. >> first of all let me take my jacket off because i am like harry, i cannot stand the heat. [laughter] in fact your swett like nixon. [laughter]

what a great, what a great venue you have here come the truman forman auditorium and it is a real pleasure to be here. it is my third time in kansas city, and each time i seem to enjoy it more and more. my brother, howard, who is henry said is helping me out on this trip, he and i went to the baseball game last night and they went 11 innings but we didn't stay the whole game have to admit. if you guys haven't been to offman stadium lately to see the changes, it is pretty cool. the stadium is great. bess truman was a great baseball fan and in the truman household bess was the sports fan and as a kid she actually played a lot of sports. harry was not much of an athlete as a kid. he wore glasses and confessed to not being very coordinated but bess played a pretty good

shortstop according to harry, and in her later years she actually followed the royal's pretty closely. she was on record chair of the thomas eagleton in 1974, running for re-election of the senate, was on ariri co-chair of his campaign and when he went to the house on delaware st. he was amazed else you wanted to talk about was the royals'. [laughter] anyway about this story, takes place in the summer of 1953. it is about six months after bess and harry left the white house. that summer they did something that millions of ordinary americans do all the time, and something that had never been done before. they took a vacation, a summer vacation. they took a road trip. harry was behind the wheel, bess road shotgun and they drove 2500 miles from the independence to the east coast and back again.

the trip lasted 19 days. the trip was unique because the truman's travel alone at that time. ex-president's did not get secret service protection and so it was just harry and bess in their chrysler new yorker. there's no security contingent, no press pool. it was just a middle-aged couple driving across america in a heatwave, and just as they received no secret service protection, ex-president's back then it also received no pensions. harry and bess truman were on a fixed income so as a result they were frugal travelers. one night they stayed in a cheap motel and another night in indianapolis they crashed with friends. they took most of their meals at roadside diners as my exhaustive research has revealed. there were partial two fruit plates. and iced tea. bess for some reason really seemed to enjoy cantaloupe. never before and never since

have the former president and first lady mingled so casually what their fellow citizens. it was a roadtrip unlike any other in american history. i have writ netbook about it. i happen to think it is a pretty good book. you can decide for yourselves. before a tool ubot the triplett me tell you about myself and how i became to know the story. in college they majored in folklore. you may be surprised to learn that folklore is not a lucrative profession. [laughter] so, shortly after graduation i began working in public radio, which is kind of a welfare program for people with these less liberal arts degrees, like me. [laughter] and this worked up pretty well. i worked at stations in seattle, st. louis, minnesota and maine in 2003 went to los angeles to work for a program called marketplace, a business news program. was around this time that mitel

mounted wife ellison took the foreign service exam and passed, and in 2005 she was hired by the u.s. state department for her first assignment we were sent to bomb echo. yeah. we did not know where it was either. , coe is the capital of mali in west africa. soi left marketplace and found myself in west africa with a lot of time on my hands. this gave me ample time to write my first book which is called last team standing. this is a book about the 1943 merger of the pittsburgh steelers in philadelphia eagles. the nfl was so short of players that they merge the steelers and eagles and they became known as the steagles. the receiver was blind in one eye. the center was death and one year. the running back had ulcers. the actually did much better than you might expect. how well did they do? the book is available in

paperback. [laughter] after that book came out in 2006 i was still in west africa and still had plenty of free time on my hands the began fishing around for a book idea and i suspect like most writers and reporters i keep a folder marked, ideas. 99.9% of which are bad and that is probably a good word for it but everyone's while you find it jim. buried in there was a piece of pacer-- paper with the words truman road tip. back in 1998, at the time i was working at the public radio station in st. louis and i came to kansas city to do research for the 50th anniversary of the 1948 whistlestop campaign, and i went to the german library and in the basement of the library, i think they have to wear three cars in the basement of the library and they have they little display of ephemera and his driver's license and registration and then they have a clipping from a magazine. it was a picture of harry

filling his car and the caption mentioned the photograph was taken in the summer of 53 plan harry and bess truman were leisurely motoring eastward and this struck me as unusual that that soon after being president, that he and bess had taken this trip. i began researching the story in 2006 and i found it to be even more fascinating than i had hoped. mainly because the main characters are so fascinating. harry truman is certainly one of the most unlikely precedence in american history, i would say the most unlikely since grover cleveland, a side bar. grover cleveland was elected mayor of buffalo in 1881, governor of new york in 1882 and president in 1884 salan three years one for mayor of buffalo to president, the first time you went to washington was for his inauguration. and it is funny because harry

remembers rover prosecco election. kerry was born in 1884 so the second time grover was elected of course is not consecutive. i'm not going to do the baath-- mouth knupp another great president. harry himself for his own likeness was born 125 years ago. his early life was a remarkable. he worked at a bank and was a farmer. he served as an officer in world war i. he opened the haberdashery famously with his friend in kansas city and in early 1922 there was a financial crisis in the country, a panic and he and jacobson lost the haberdashery. it took harry many years to pay off the debt. this is harry truman in the summer of 1922, 38 unemployed and living at his mother-in-law's. at the time it said bess said to

our mother, don't worry, here is going places and her mother said, well he had better hurry up. [laughter] the circumstances did not portend greatness, but fate, destiny and chance, god, something intervened, as it would time and again in harry truman's like and in this particular instance in the summer of 1922 was a buddy named jimmy pendergast who had served in france with. jimmy had an uncle named tom pendergrass to us a big political boss in kansas city in jackson county at the time. they were looking for candidates to run for a judge, which you probably know is like a county commissioner. truman fit the bill perfectly. he was a baptist, a mason and a farmer so in 1922 he was elected judge. 12 years later pendergrass is looking for a candidate to run for the united states senate and

again harry gets the bill and he gets elected. ten years later at the 1944 convention, party bosses are looking for someone to replace henry wallace on the ticket. henry wallace was roosevelt's vice president at the time. talk about the book. henry wallace was a genius, probably one of the smartest man to ever hold national elective office in the united states. he was a plant geneticist by training, dabbled in astrology and metaphysics, was extremely liberal and a little weird. the party bosses and 44 thought, we need to replace them so they did. all the other candidates for too liberal or too conservative so truman got six. reporters joked it was another missouri can compromise. we all know what happened in 1945, franklin roosevelt died and harry s. truman became president.

he had been vice president just 82 days and had met with fdr just twice outside of cabinet meetings and all that time. is presidency of course encompassed major events in the 20th century, the end of world war ii, mccarthyism and the united nations. flash forward now eight years almost to 1953, january 20th and swidey eisenhower is inaugurated as president. and just as he was back in that summer of 1922, harry truman is unemployed. after eisenhower's warring in the secret service drove them to-- and said goodbye and harry and bess rode a train back to independence. i guess they rode the train to kansas city and was there-- independents there was a depot where they could go back to the independence. harry did not know what to do

with himself and there were rumors of the time that he would run for senate from the surry or governor. even that he would run for president in 1956, the last president eligible to serve more than two terms. it just occurred to me now the republicans pass that and why did they grandfathered truman in? look at said he can run that he was eligible to run for a third term and none of these were far-fetched because the fact of the matter was harry truman had to do something. he needed income, but he really didn't have any specialized training. he had nothing more than a high-school diploma, still the last president without a post-secondary degree and his only income was his army pension of $111.96 a month after taxes. that was for his service in world war i as an officer in the army. he did not receive credit for his almost eight years as commander in chief, which to me

dissing jilan fair. but that is how the army calculated his pension so we had $112 a month. he needed money because being the next president he quickly found was very expensive. he received about 1,000 letters a day when he first left office and his policy was to insert the single one. the filled with someone wrote him a letter, that it demanded a reply from him. with the go-to the truman library, there are acres of file cabinets, filled with this correspondence and carbon copies. if you send a newspaper clipping to harry truman he said qa letter back and said thank you for sending this clipping and sometimes he would say i don't agree with that. sometimes he would say i agree with that but the answer every single letter. a stamp at the time cost reasons. the first year alone, the postage was $10,000. so he had considerable expenses money left office and not considerable income.

just to handle the mail he rented an office in kansas city and the federal reserve building. he had to assistance, to women who worked with him in the white house to help him answer the mail and with his other various duties if the got invited to all sorts of things and just handling correspondence. he could have solved his money problems overnight. he received many lucrative business offers. there was a chain of clothing stores to offer to pay him $100,000 a year for a job as a sales manager which wouldn't have required him to do any work. there is a company that went to put out of brand of truman soap, keep you clean, come up with their own slogan. all kinds of offers a lot of them question of land terry refuse the mall. he didn't do anything that he felt would commercialize the presidency. he wouldn't, didn't want to do anything that would demean the office that the it recently vacated, and so he refused all these offers and even refuse to

extravagant speaking fees. he would take on there were one to cover expenses but he would not accept speaking fees or seats on corporate boards. this of course is a precedent that has not withstood the test of time. harry is not the first president to face many problems when he left office. this goes back to james monroe had to move in with his daughter and her husband because he was so destitute. ulysses s. grant famously lost all of his money in a swindle at one time and only had $80 the bank. grant was saved from financial ruin by selling his memoirs to mark twain and the memoirs were commercial and critical success, although there were published after his death and he finished writing them shortly before he died. congress was loath to grant

pensions to presidents. they were a little more generous with widows. generally presidential widows got $5,000 a year. there were many bills introduced to provide for presidential pensions but inevitably these bills died. and, i guess there was a feeling, just looking back at some of the newspaper clippings from the various bills that presence, it was undemocratic for presidents to receive pensions. they were just another citizen toiling in the service of their country, and that, when they were done, finished with their presidential service that they would return to being just ordinary citizens. it is really quite a grand ideal, but as harry discovered not a very realistic one. incidentally congress has been a little more generous or was it a little more generous with their own pensions because they began collecting pensions in 1946. unfortunately for harry that was the year after he left congress.

harry's timing was not very good when it came to getting a pension. about a month after he left office in february 1953 it seemed like his money problems for solved when doubleday, the publisher gave harry an advance of $600,000 to write his memoirs. berry in mind the average worker makes $4,000 a year. it seemed like grant, his problems had been salted his money problems have been solved by a book deal. but as anybody who was ever got netbook advance can tell you, they are not always as they seem and in harry's case the 600,000-dollar book advance was taxed as income at 67% at the time. it is worth noting here that eisenhower a few years earlier received a $600,000 grants to write his memoirs and the irs of the time, remember truman was

president, determined that should be taxed as a capital gain, that 25% and not as income vis-a-vis eisenhower was a general and not a writer by profession so it was a capital gain on income. when harry went to the irs eisenhowers president and he said can mine be taxed as a capital gain and not income? and they said no and this did not foster positive relations between eisenhower and truman. so $600,000 is now 200 the had to hire an army of ghostwriters, stenographers and researchers as well as maintain his office expenses and years later he would say out of that book events he netted $37,000. still, it did let harry splurge doolittle, so he bought a car come a big black 1953 chrysler new yorker. how much he paid for the car, chrysler definitely gate kerry

ato and i felt a letter that suggested that he may have paid as little as 1 dollar. still a bought the car in some deals are too good even for harry truman to pass up. when he was president he actually would try this on limosine occasionally. talk about something probably won't see again. one the fourth of july speaking engagement in charlottesville virginia he drove his limousine back to washington and reporters, it was reported that he was traveling 65 miles an hour and a 50-mile an hour sun and carried was furious and wrote a letter to the editor of the paper that reported but it was one of those letters that was actually never send. the truth did harry-- the truth was harry did try to that. that is the one indisputable fact that everyone agreed harry truman drove to fast. he was very meticulous about his cars. he would measure the tire pressure. he would measure the tread

regularly in the tire. of course he washed them, change the oil. he was very meticulous about keeping track of this gas mileage. he kept little cards and the glove compartment of the car and every gas purchase he made was duly marked and the mileage calculative. i know a lot of guys still do that so it is not that unusual. i am doing it on this trip myself. of course he loves to drive. often as a senator he would drive from independence to washington and back and he and bess made the trip quite often when he was in the senate. so when he received an invitation in the spring of 1953 to give a speech in philadelphia, he decided to accept it, and i think one of the main reasons he decided to accept it was because it would give him an excuse to take the road trip. he said he wanted to give the new chrysler real tryout, and this would be the perfect way to

do it, drive to the east coast and back again. pekid go to washington in see friends and go to new york to see their daughter margaret he was living there at the time. he wanted to make the transition from being mr. president u.s.c. called that mr. citizen. one it is he rose was the roman general cincinnatus, who forsook power after a battle and return to the farm. i think this was an ideal that harry believed in deeply. he believed they think he could make the move from being a leader of the free world to plain private citizen and this was one way he could do it. by taking this trip. bess, perhaps the voice of reason, thought it was a pretty crazy idea. harry seem to think if they traveled in cud nato, the guy had been president six months before and for some reason he thought nobody would recognize him. bess was a little more realistic about things.

they were not young at this point, 68, 69 years old. i mean, believe me-- that is young. [laughter] but bess realized that the physical toll it would take. harry did the driving. bess never drove when harry was in the car. harry always did the driving. bess knew he drove to fast so eventually he wore her down and she agreed to the trip on the condition that he drive no faster than 55 miles an hour. he agreed to this but it was quite a concession on his part. at the time missouri had no speed limits. the posted limits in the majority i think the wording on the sign was save fin prudence is how you were instructed to come instructed to drive. which i guess is an objective measure of speed. harry agree to the restriction

so he began planning for this trip. it is fun to read about it. he planned for it like he was going to potsdam. he charted every mile. he charted every stop he would make along the way. as they said he had done the trip in the senate many times so he knew his favorite places. he also tried to mix up the route a little bit so if people did find out people could not catch up with him. on the morning of june 19, 1953, he packed the chrysler with 11 suitcases. they did not travel light. they did not travel right-- white. he likes to dress up, they both did. margaret said he was an excellent packer, and harry prided himself on that, but now that i think about it, you think he could get fewer than 11 suitcases if you were an excellent packer.

harry got in the chrysler that morning and started driving east and a few hours later i believe they took 24 to monroe city and then 36 to hannibal. so they got to scannable at the junction of 36 and 61. there was a diner there. they parton cordovan i.c.e. cream stand. there was a 120 pro-working in the window of the i.c.e. cream stand. this 12-year-old girl, tony tobin, no tony walker i was able to find her. she saw the truman's park in front of the i.c.e. cream stand and they get out and walk next door to the diner. she knew her dad did not like it when the diner customers parked at the i.c.e. cream stand so she screamed back to her dad, harry truman just parked out front, the what me to make a move the car? [laughter] he came out in of course was very surprised to see in fact harry truman was parked in his parking lot. he went out in chatted with

terry for a while and did not make harry move the car. they went into the diner and it was lunchtime, and a fairly busy time of the year. nobody notice them and they sat down. they ordered fruit plates and iced tea. they did enjoy their mail in complete anonymity until they got up to pay. just as they got to pay and the old county judge walked into the diner and recognized harry, not as a former president but a former jackson county judge and said, there is judge truman. then everybody and the restaurant wanted his autograph and had to shake his hand. that is pretty much how it went the rest of the trip. just when they thought they were getting by as a big unknown couples as harry like to say somebody would recognize him and then as he liked to say, the incog was off.

he handled these onslaughts so well. people ask, could a trip like this take place today? i guess it couldn't in a practical sense but his personality was so well suited to a trip like this. he, he never refused did he request when someone, when people pressed around him for autographs and handshakes and somebody else to one time, how would you deal with these onslaughts all the time? he said i just tried to a imagine what it would feel like it is supposed big shot ignored me. and he did have a sense of them that they like that i think that really made it possible for him to do it trip like this in a way that maybe would not be possible for some other politicians. in decatur, illinois they stopped at a motel called the parkview. they spent the night at this motel, $5 a night is what the motel costs. for the book, i retrace the

trip. i try to eat with the people they met with so in decatur i found this motel that is still there. it is now a prison. [laughter] it is actually, it is in prison for work-release inmates and when you think about it that is a great idea for a motel, to turn it into a prison for work-release inmates if you are not going to use it for a motel. whether this is a sign of the time syndicator, i cannot tell you, but it is. i am kidding of course. i talked to one of the guards at the prison and dimension to her how funny i thought it was that an inmate now sleeps in the same room that harry truman slept then and she said, no three inmates sleep in the room that harry truman's lupton. in indianapolis they crashed with friends, as people often do um roadtrips. they stated the house of the former democratic national committee chairman and spoke

with their daughter claire mckinney, who told me that she came home that night from a night of dancing only to find harry truman playing the family's living room piano in the early morning hours. apparently harry had a couple of bourbons that night. in fallsburg, maryland he stockett the princess restaurant , a great town in far western maryland. this scourge from a chicken dinner. the cook was an old army mess sergeant and harry of course was his commander-in-chief so there was no getting away from it there and soon business was booming at the princess and phones were ringing all over town. the princess as far as i know is the only family owned enterprise or business that the truman's patronize on their trip and is still in the same family and in the same business. if you happen to be taking u.s. 40 through western maryland and

fallsburg, the princess is still there, still owned by the same family and in fact your truman booth has been preserved there and they have a plaque above the booth that says harry and bess truman ate lunch here june 1, 1953. they went to washington and saw friends. they went to new york can spend eight interesting days with market as their guide sightseeing in new york. they stayed at the waldorf towers. this was interesting because i was curious how harry was able to afford this and that the truman library he saved everything. harry never wrote a letter that he didn't say than they have all the correspondence with the general manager of the waldorf towers and soon after the walter kerr is here it would be making the trip they wrote him a letter and said would you like to stay with us for free? harry roche back in said i think that would be alright. [laughter]

so that is how harry truman, former leader of the free world no cash-strapped was able to afford eight nights at the waldorf. it is kind of interesting. harry was then-- i forget the floor. his suite was directly above herbert hoover's hoover lived at the waldorf at the time and truman and hoover had sort of a back and forth, a complex relationship. truman rehabilitated hoover's reputation after roosevelt died and change the name of what was it, bolder dam back to hoover dam said they become quite close the thin in the election of 1952, truman again invoked the name of herbert hoover as comparing eisenhower to-- the democrats ran against zuber for 30 years and, you know with some success so harry was not about to stop so i think they had a

tip that the time because there is no record that the two of them saw each other while harry was upstairs and herbert was downstairs. i have always wondered how they manage. the staff of the walled darth most binnun penson evil's trying to keep this couple apart not to mention that that was macarthur was six floors up. they took in broadway shows. they went to the 21 club, where all the rich and famous went in shortly after they got there another diner came in. the governor of new york, f. thomas duly which presented a problem for the maitre d' but the 21 club at the time had two floors of a were lucky, they were able to seat both and truman far apart. everywhere they went they took cabs. harry parked the car at the waldorf and they to cabs everywhere they went. they did not have trouble getting a cab because as soon as

the cabin would recognize harry truman was trying to wave them down they pullover in droves. they have no trouble getting a cab. my wife and i did stay at the waldorf for two days. we did get upgraded. on the drive home, a state trooper named manly stampler, a great name for a cop, a state cop in pennsylvania, manly stamper. he pulled harry over on the pennsylvania turnpike for careless driving. harry like to hang out in the left lane and in pennsylvania and you have to stay in the right except to pass. there were cars lined up so manly stampler zip the oppen motion for harry depaulo barrasso harry didden manly got out and adjusted his hat, walked back to the car and looked inside. he said, what am i going to do now? [laughter] just arrested harry truman.

truman later insisted the cop pulled them over to shake his hand. [laughter] manly stampler is still alive and well. he lives outside of phoenix and he says i did not pull them over to shake his hand. i pulled him over because he was violating the law and the also said he did not ask for a autograph but which he did. he did let him off with a warning, and casually when he went back to the barracks at the end of the day he mentioned to the desk sergeant, he will never guess who i pulled over today. the next day it was in all the papers that harry truman had been pulled over for a traffic violation and the republican papers especially have a good time with it. they return to independents on the eighth of july. the trip taught harry something and that is, that, i can't seem

to get from under that awful glare that shines on the white house. and it is said the new way because they think he felt he had almost become a burden to his friends. that he had lost, he had lost something, that-- you can't be casual when you are a former president. my brother and i went to the truman home today and did the tour. i have done it before of course but you are reminded, on the back porch, when they came home they returned to the same house they had been living in basically all their lives, all their married lives in the way. bess's mother died in 1952 and bess and harry bought out her two brothers and that was the first time harry truman had owned a house.

they came back to this house and i think it first they expected to jus edelin to ordinary quiet retired life and they would go out on the back porch and if the weather was nice maybe have breakfast in read the papers and people would be lined up along the fence, i guess they call it truman road now, just watching them eat breakfast and read the paper. it was not, it wasn't what harry had quite expected so that is why they left the bushes grow up on that side of the port so you can see the bush from that side of the road anymore. in january 1958, going ahead a few years a, harry sold off the family farm in grandview. they were going to build the truman library on the family farm but harry sold that often part because for financial said the-- considerations. he had to sell it off to help

make ends meet. and it was turned into a shopping center, truman corners? is that what it is called today? later that year in 1958 congress passed a bill granting ex-president's pensions. these two events were not unrelated. harry having to sell the family farm finally spurred congress to give the ex-president's pensions. the pensions were $25,000 a year plus $50,000 for office expenses and unlimited postage. he had said all along, just give me posted so they gave him a little more for coincidently by that time truman and hoover had kissed and made up and they were friends again and had become quite good friends in fact, mainly through the shared misery of having to raise money to build they presidential library. hoover did not meet a pension. he made his fortune in mining before going into politics and

in fact, hoover did not except, herbert hoover did not take salary, refute desal or a but he didn't want to make kerry look that so he actually did take the pension i believe just donated it to his library. $25,000 a year is what they got in 1958. today a presidents pension is paid to the salary of a cabinet level officer in the cabinet, so it is nearly $200,000. the office expenses are more or less unlimited. bill clinton, the rent on his office in harlem last year was more than $500,000. it gives you some idea of the expense of maintaining our ex-president's, not to mention the fact that they speak at $100,000 a pop. it also goes without saying that

ex-president's rarely drive themselves anywhere anymore. in 1953 the "new york times" said of harry and bess's trip it is as it should be american ex-president accompanied only by his wife with no ceremony contractus on carter on the country and no one think it unusual. it shares one-up'd somehow and they think 56 years later it still does. i would like to read a little excerpt from the book for you. it is particularly relevant to this part of the country. this is describing in a little bit what harry's life was like right after he retired and came back to independence. back in independents terese and settled into a routine. he woke every morning at 5:30, read the morning paper on the back porch, picked a cane from his collection and took his walk. his rabb very, sometimes walking down to the towns were passing the jackson county courthouse

which had been built in 1934 that when he was the presiding judge. other times he would meander to the residential neighborhoods around his home. an old newsreel shows truman enjoying one of his walks with a small boy in a cowboy costume jumps out of the bushes and shoots the former president with a toy gun. truman ladson pass the irrepressible tie, head. today and agent watching the film would likely suffer a heart attack. and the unlucky youngster who attempted such an him bush wood perished inhale of gunfire. backhoe the hosia breakfast at the kitchen table with best we did not share his penchant for early rising. or around 9:00 he went to his office a week-- sometimes the independents cop who was a part-time bodyguard, sometimes he drove but often he drove himself. as truman was painted in black

letters on the opaque glass door just like a detective agency in a pope novel. he had to assistance, his private secretary burroughs conaway who served in the same capacity when he was president and a receptionist who worked in the truman white house. the pay their salaries of his own pocket. much of his day was spent answering mail. he received more than 70,000 pieces in the first two weeks after he left the white house and as many as 1,000 a day after their, invitations to everything from church suppers to conventions, autograph requests for the budding politicians rode him asking for the fis or endorsement. wincher mccaslin minton and an interview he was looking for a silver dollar minted in 1954 the year of market paused for it silver dollars poured in by the dozens. truman estimated less than one-half of 1% of the letters came from crackpots statistic

that surprised him. i expected more be said. i had many chances to make people mad. truman maintain an open door policy and anybody who dropped by was likely to get an audience. many people he said philip president orn next president is partly theirs and they are to some extent correct and that they ever right to call upon him. his office telephone number was even listed in the kansas city directory, baltimore 6150. his home number was unlisted, probably in deference to bess. when he was an answering mail are entertaining uninvited visitors or unsolicited telephone calls truman was busy raising money not for himself but for the grand library and the family farm in grandview. the library would serve as a repository for his papers which for the time being restored in 400 filing cabinets in a room on the fourth floor of the jackson county courthouse. truman invisionable library as a research center for the benefit of colleges in the midwest.

it was not interested in a memorial to himself. i will be discussed for the next generation anyway. besides truman did not think much of memorials to the living. what foolishness they may get into before they get into a pine box and then the memorial just to be torn down. [laughter] around 4:00 he would go home. after dinner he listened to a newscaster on the radio and then retired to the reading room. dold his passion for history. by 10:00 he was in bed. it was in many respects a perfectly ordinary life. that is all i have to say right now. if you have any questions, i would like to take them and even more of would like to sell you some books. [applause] i think we are going to the lineup method here. i think, if we could go to, if

you have a question-- >> i think you indicated earlier that the truman's attended several plays in new york while they were there. did your research revealed what plays they saw? >> yes, they saw a play called wonderful town, which was, won several tony awards actually that year, also a play, my three angels. wonderful town was an interesting play because it was very complicated. i guess there were a lot of key changes. i don't know much about broadway musicals but i guess it was so complicated it is difficult for amateur production companies to take on, and so without that kind of rejuvenating energy of

being done by summers bachan immature productions is lost. it is the story of two girls from ohio that go to the city and find love and fortune. my three angels was the other place. i actually went to the theater, the winter garden theater, where it wonderful town was performed. and they went to see the play that is there now, which is why my for getting now? what is the abbah musical? mama mea is now being performed at the theater at the winter garden theater, where wonderful town was performed and i'm not about to pass judgment on the quality of broadway musicals or the taste of the people who attend them but it seems there has been some noticeable decline between wonderful town and mama mia. that is just me but it was a deductible expense of these which is fortunate because broadway plays are not cheap.

those are the plays that they saw when they were in new york. >> maya the question is, rarely did we see pictures of bess truman without your hat on. did she wear her hat while she was driving shotgun to new york and that? >> actually, that she have it on on the cover? yes, she does, she does on the cover. i guess, i was curious when they said the 11 pieces of luggage that the harry packed into that chrysler, whether they counted the hatboxes as a separate piece of luggage because that would tend to mitigate pull over packing thing, if they counted the hatboxes as a separate piece of luggage but bess did like your hat. it is funny, it is doing the research on this about bess truman, i was struck by a big difference between the public

perception of bess and how it seemed she really was. she was a very gregarious, a charming, outgoing kind of person. for some reason, maybe it is just because of her appearance which is completely unfair but the public perception of her was sort of doerr and dowdy, kind of matronly woman, and her personality could not have been more different, more different than the public perception. she was very private. she was not even crazy about the idea of harry being nominated for vice president. she already felt there were spending too much time away from independents and her mother of course the not like to spend time away from the independence of all. she was very private and very research. it is very interesting on this trip, she gave an interview when she was in indianapolis on this trip which was extremely rare. i remember when she was in the

white house, eleanor roosevelt did press conferences, so when harry became president they said is mrs. truman going to have press conferences and i think actually his answer was, i need to get back to you, which was mark. he ran this by bess first. she finally submitted to written questions and all the answers for yes or no. she just didn't take, just didn't take to being in public the way harry did. so yeah, but she loved her hats. >> when president truman left office he was not the most popular of president's. my question is, on this trip did he run into any animosity, people shaking this or anything of that nature? >> honestly, i did not find and i can't believe that didn't happen but i didn't find a reported incident of that and you are absolutely right.

his approval rating was about 22% when he left office in early 1953, which is just about where george w. bush's was when he left office in january of 2009. it is interesting that george w. bush has compared himself to harry truman and for obvious reasons i think he hopes his reputation-- but you are right he was unpopular when he left office and he speaks house apprised was that this outpouring of affection for him even as early as the ride home on the train, colleagues cannot to say goodbye and on the trip itself everywhere they went people were very affectionate toward him. he acted, he was quite surprised by that. somebody said something interesting, i forget where i read this, but you note the gallup polls or presidential popularity in the 1950's, there was still such a reference and

respect for the presidency that there were a certain percentage of people who wondered no circumstance would they say they disapprove of the president so 22 is probably a pretty generous figure in terms of what harries popularity was in late 52 and early 53. of course it was the korean war which was the latter issue and has presented to the and in some ways i try to get across in the book that the road trip anyway helped rehabilitate his personality or his reputation or cleese is standing, his popular standing. i think in 1969 the was the number seven most respected man in america according to the gallup poll. nixon was number one. >> thank you. [inaudible] >> i know president truman read a lot and his preparation for

the trip, did he read certain books, or did he make, you know, did he site see where there replace the t one a to go? >> i do noth idid this. he research just about every town on the itinerary to find out what the local issues were. he was still a politician at heart so it is amazing he shows up in wheeling, west virginia. and, a reporter tracks him down in the lobby of the hotel in wheeling. the mclure hotel, actually stayed there. mclure hotel is actually where mccarthy gave his famous i have in my hands a list of the known communist agents in the state department by the reporter tracked him down in the hotel, in the lobby of the hotel in wheeling, west virginia and said how was your trip going?

he said it is going very well but i was very sorry to hear that congress did not pass funding for the flood wall here in weilin. so he knew exactly what the issues were along the way and he clearly had done a lot of preparation before he left, to know that individual issues in the towns along the way. so, he could be prepared to answer. the trip was really a political coming out party for him. the speech he gave and philadelphia was very political and part of the purpose of the trip was for him to begin engaging in politics again, and he really was the first, i guess they called kennedy the first television president of harry truman was kind of the first television act president. he was the first ex-president in the era of mass media to really be a bald politically. hoover by this time was it fairly old man and was not that active politically in his later years.

that is what he did in preparation for this trip. >> was he interested in american history? >> plea. >> battlefields? the most of the sightseeing they did was in new york. but there are big gaps in the story too. we talk about how he got recognized for could there were too long gaps where i had not been able to find any mention of what they did. teatro clear cross ohio the second night of the trip and there is no mention of where they stop for dinner, what they did, nothing so there are gaps in there and i wonder if they didn't do either some sightseeing or at the very least finally got to enjoy dinner in peace and quiet. >> after mr. truman sold the family farm, did your research indicate how he acquired the present site of the library financially and how he picked that side? >> i believe the city, or

independence actually donated the land to the truman library inc. after the farm was sold and that is how he came to be in independence. one more. don't run, don't run. >> i have a question. there is a building just near 39th and wyoming that has a sign on its that harry s. truman owned it. do you know anything about that? >> i don't, i have to confess i don't. does anybody here know? 39 fin weil men? i don't know that he owned property apart from the house. >> it is south of 39. >> this gentleman says he owned a fourplex. i guess in his later years he may have invested in some property.

i know in the early period, 53 to 58 he did not. >> just a simple question about the car trip. what was the price of gasoline then, and did harry keep track of his gas mileage? >> gas was 27.1 cents a gallon. the day he left standard oil had just hiked the price 1 penny a gallon in there was talk of collusion between the zero companies, that they were simultaneously raising the price. the oil companies of course complained the price of crude had skyrocketed to $3 a barrel so what could they do but pass the cost onto consumers. the house subcommittee actually investigated. his mileage was 16 to 17 miles per gallon and he was very proud of that, which is pretty good mileage for a car that they get that time. >> on their trip, did they send

in the postcards of their journey? >> i have not been able to find any and i looked pretty thoroughly. i found it hard to believe that these when they were in new york that they didn't send some kind of communication back to family, but i guess they figured the trip was being pretty well covered by the media at that point so there was no need to save we are okay in new york. i would have loved to have found a postcard from harry truman to his brother or something like that, but i didn't find any. >> i noticed in your bibliography you talk to-- >> clifton truman daniel. >> that within his grandson? >> clifton is the grandson. >> they might have sent a postcard to grandchildren. >> but in 53 this was two years before margaret married to clifton. >> thank you. >> thank you.

[applause] >> thank you very much. thank you matthew, thank you for coming. meth you will be out this way signing books. we will see you next time. [applause] matthew algeo is the author of last team standing how the steelers and the eagles, the steagles saved pro-football during world war ii. he is currently it public radio reporter. for more information visit the author's web site at truman roadtrip.com.

>> abc news political analyst mark halperin and national

correspondent john hiligman appeared on c-span's washington journal to discuss their news making but about the 2008 presidential campaign and the impact of the book on politics and policy in washington. the program is an hour. 's the we are joined by the authors of game change. mark brin let me begin with you. i heard i think it was you are one of you say you had a list of things that you thought would make news in this book, and it has been out there for a little bit now. we have heard many of the pieces in this book. what on that list hasn't made newshour what were you surprised that? >> guest: john and i set out to write a book we hoped people would find to be in lynching book to read in an interesting story as we say in the subtitle in the campaign but we also were going for breaking news because we thought there were things uncovered during the campaign. i will give you.