The president waved peeled ears of golden corn at farmers. Local marching bands honked out crowd favorites. Swarms of motorcycle police sporting American flags revved their engines. So soon after the war, patriotism was palpable at these rallies, and the hours moved by in a montage of red, white, and blue. “It is fascinating,” Margaret wrote in her diary on this day. “We made about six stops altogether, and we eat in between.” At the station in Des Moines, the Truman Special picked up the First Lady. Porters helped Mrs. Truman get her luggage aboard; Bess settled in for what would be her first and only national presidential campaign tour.
By the end of the first week, the reality of life aboard a traveling train began to set in. “Going across the country, I imagine we were the laughing stock of the nation,” recalled one Democratic Party official, John P. McEnery. “It was like a traveling circus,” according to columnist Richard Strout, who was aboard. “Nothing in the world is remotely like the atmosphere on one of these transcontinental campaign caravans,” the columnist Marquis Childs wrote of the Truman Special. “It is a perpetual public affairs forum, a gossipy smalltown sewing circle, a traveling rodeo, the mixture being unique and completely and unmistakably American.”
The Union Pacific railroad kitchen offered surprisingly tasty fare. The menu included an à la carte breakfast: bacon and eggs ($1.25), griddle cakes with syrup ($0.50), fillet of salt mackerel, club style ($1.85). At lunch and dinner, martini and Manhattan cocktails ($0.60) and beer ($0.40) accompanied chicken à la King ($2.05) or pan-fried fillet of fish with tartar sauce ($1.80), while the gem on the dessert menu was ice cream with caramel sauce ($0.30).
The Truman family and the president’s aides fell into a routine—as much as was possible, given that the schedule called for numerous whistle-stops at different times each day, from sunrise to well into the night. “The most important function was to take part in the daily policy meetings that took place to set the policy in the campaign,” recorded Clifford. “We met every day around the dining room table on his car sometimes at breakfast, sometimes at lunch, and sometimes off and on during the day.”
The advance team led by Oscar Chapman would be out in front of Truman’s train by a day or two, and this team would funnel back information via telephone or messenger. “As an advance man,” noted Chapman, “you first try to find out from your friends or whomever you’ve got the closest contacts with, the leaders from a different state or community, just what the situation is, what’s the President’s standing around there, what they feel about him, and what are the issues which they disagree with him on . . . Within a short time, you’ve pretty much got them catalogued into two or three groups of their likes or dislikes and their reasons.”
Data was constantly flying in from Bill Batt’s research division, working day and night in the Dupont Circle office in Washington. “They worked like dogs and they ground out an incredible amount of material,” recalled presidential aide George Elsey, whose job it was to organize this material for Truman. “All kinds of historical, literary, political, economic data flowed from them, and the news clippings, photostats of useful documents, anything that would give a spark and vitality and originality and vigor to President Truman’s campaign effort.”
“When [Truman] would come into Chicken Bristle, Iowa, or some such place like that . . . ,” noted Clark Clifford, “he would congratulate the town on their having a new sausage factory. That would be based on material that had just come in a few days earlier from the advance team.” While Truman would have notes to help him aim his talk at the specifics of his location, he had to wing these speeches. “He didn’t have time between stops to sit and think about what he would say at the next stop, because between stops, he had to do other things,” recalled speechwriter Charlie Murphy. “So in this sense, I suppose he did more in writing his own whistle stop speeches than anyone else.”
After a week of traveling, “we developed a pattern for the typical stop,” recorded Clifford. “The President would emerge at the back of his car, make a few nice remarks about the town he was in, and then launch into an attack on the ‘do nothing’ Eightieth Congress. He would ask the crowd, ‘How would you like to meet my family?’ and wait with his head cocked for the response. Then he would introduce Bess Truman, always referring to her as ‘the Boss.’ After that he would present his daughter Margaret . . . ‘who bosses the boss.’ Then, as the train started to pull away, Margaret would toss a red rose to someone in the crowd.”
Standing inside the train just behind a curtain, a few feet behind the president’s back, an aide named Jack Romagna would be taking down in shorthand what Truman was saying during his impromptu speeches, so there would be a record of each whistle-stop talk.* At the same time, armed Secret Service agents would ensure the president’s security. “We’d bring the rope up and let these people come right up to the back of the train, maybe 15, 20 feet away from the train,” recalled Floyd Boring, Truman’s driver and bodyguard on the Truman Special. “We’d have control that way.” Floyd Boring later took part in a gunfight during an assassination attempt on Truman in 1950 in Washington, which left one shooter and a Secret Service man dead.
When the opportunity presented itself, Truman would be up before sunrise to take a “constitutional” walk, 120 steps per minute. A farcical retinue of Secret Service agents and members of the press would hustle after him. At one point, on his way back to the train after one such
