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In the old gingerbread Wallace house on Independence's elm-lined North Delaware Street, where Judge and Mrs. Harry Truman lived with her mother, little Margaret was brought up under fond, watchful eyes, in carefully guarded privacy. Bess and Harry were doting parents, partly because their only child was born to them late, when each was close to 40, partly because she was a delicate child thin and pale, with frequent deep circles under her eyes. There were other doting relatives: a cluster of uncles and aunts Mrs. David ("Grandmother") Wallace. Bess's mother, and redoubtable Grandmother ("Mama") Truman. Margaret admits that "I was spoiled outrageously."
The Hicks. Margaret's best friends in Independence today are the half-dozen girls who lived within a block of her grandmother's house during her early schooldays. Bess, loath to have Margaret stray far from home, encouraged them all to come and play on Mrs. Wallace's lawn, where there were swings and a slide to lure them, and in the capacious Wallace attic and basement. There was an old slave quarters in a backyard close by, which had done time as a henhouse in its later years. There Margaret and her friends organized a club known as the "Henhouse Hicks." The Hicks furnished their clubhouse with castout furniture collected pictures of such girlhood idols as Clark Gable and Nelson Eddy, put out a weekly paper which lasted for five issues and produced a play which was favorably noticed by the Independence Examiner.
Margaret is best remembered by the Hicks today as the diplomat and peacemaker of the group. When an argument broke out, said one of them, "Margaret always liked to see that everyone made up and went home happy. It was almost as though she were afraid, if we went away mad, that we wouldn't come back."
Like many an only child, Margaret could produce a serviceable tantrum herself if the occasion warranted. Once when her parents were about to go visiting, leaving her behind, Margaret flung herself into a crying fit. Harry and Bess were firm, firmly departed. "As soon as they were out of sight," says Margaret, "I promptly turned off the weeps." Generally, her parents were more amenable. "I never bawled out Margaret but once in my life," the President confesses, without specifying the cause.
"Dopey," "Dearie." Margaret herself can remember one occasion when her father took a firm stand. His daughter, whose conversation even today is generously larded with such schoolgirlisms as 'gosh," "golly" and "dopey," had suddenly taken to calling everybody "dearie" —from her grandmother to some stray cat. Harry at last warned her that every "dearie" from then on would cost her 10¢ out of her allowance. After losing 40¢ at one dinner, Margaret was cured.