Harry Truman's Excellent Adventure: The True Story of a Great American Road Trip by Matthew Algeo Page B

butter on baked potatoes!”
    She revealed that Harry had a favorite chair back home in Independence, an old wingback that “creaks and groans when he sits in it; the springs sag, and he won’t let me have it reupholstered—he likes it just as it is.”
    Of their road trip Bess said she was acting as chief “navigator, map checker, and road sign watcher…. He’s driving very conservatively on the trip,” she added, approvingly.
    Around two o’clock the Trumans said good-bye to the McKinneys—but they would return on their way home. Harry and Bess climbed back into the Chrysler. They picked up Highway 40 in downtown Indianapolis and continued east.
    About an hour later, near the town of Greenfield, the Trumans were pulled over by an Indiana state trooper. The state police had set up a roadblock on Highway 40 to hand out traffic-safety pamphlets to motorists. It was part of a program to reduce traffic fatalities and to familiarize out-of-state drivers with Indiana’s motor laws. (At the time, traffic regulations varied widely from state to state. Even road markings were not yet fully standardized.)
    The Trumans had passed through the roadblock unnoticed, but as they were pulling away, a state trooper named R. H. Reeves recognized them. Harry was done in by his fastidiousness. “It”—his car—“was so clean that my attention was attracted to it,” Reeves said.
    Reeves shouted for Truman to pull over. He did, and got out of the car. “What’re you selling here?” he asked the trooper. Reeves explained the traffic-safety program and asked the former president to pose for a picture to promote it.
    “I’m running about two hours late, but I’ll take time for that,” Harry said. “I certainly endorse your program.” While Bess sat and waited inside the sweltering Chrysler, Harry spent about twenty minutes at the roadblock, standing in his shirtsleeves, chatting and signing autographs. Then they were off again. It was nearly four o’clock.
    There are no recorded sightings of the Trumans for the next seven hours. In the interim they drove clear across Ohio. Presumably they stopped for dinner. Maybe it was in Columbus. But there are no newspaper reports of their stopping there or in any of the other major towns along their route. Perhaps they finally did manage to travel incognito, at least for a few hours. It’s not impossible. It was a busy Saturday night on Highway 40. One imagines Harry and Bess enjoying dinner in blessed solitude, just two ordinary Americans at last.

  6  
     
     
    Wheeling, West Virginia,
June 20–21, 1953
     
    T he road trip is a quintessentially American activity. From the earliest days of the republic, Americans have felt compelled to explore their homeland, in search of everything from gold to good vibes.
    Meriwether Lewis and William Clark embarked on the first great American road trip. Lewis left Pittsburgh on August 31, 1803, picked up Clark somewhere along the Ohio River, and set out for the Pacific Northwest—accompanied by a crew of more than thirty, including Clark’s slave York. The journey would take more than two years. Fourteen miles was considered a good day’s progress. Occasionally they got lucky and stumbled upon an ancient path worn by Indians, buffalo, deer, or elk. Mostly, though, they were on their own. “We had to cut Roads, through thickets of balsam fir timber, for our horses to pass through,” Joseph Whitehouse, a member of the expedition, wrote in his journal on September 3, 1805.
    In 1806, Thomas Jefferson signed a bill authorizing the federal government to spend thirty thousand dollars to build a road on an old pack trail through the Allegheny Mountains. Running from Cumberland, Maryland, to Wheeling, Virginia (later West Virginia), the road would connect the Potomac and Ohio rivers and effectively link the eastern seaboard and the rapidly growing Midwest. It was the first expenditure of federal funds on a public works project in American history,