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But he keeps on the go—and he sets a cruel pace. He has traveled to Washington, Manhattan, Hawaii, Chicago, Atlantic City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle and Des Moines, and, for seven lively weeks, to Europe. At every stopping place he has increased his reputation as a character, whether by calling Richard Nixon an s.o.b. or by calling a general a squirrel-head (TIME, June 4). He acted as Father of the Bride with gracious dignity, and the entire nation shared his pride and his sadness. He wrote his memoirs and delighted in being called a liar by Douglas MacArthur and Jimmy Byrnes and Henry Wallace and Bernard Baruch and Pat Hurley and Francis Biddle. He also stayed up to his eyeglasses in politics.
By 8 o'clock each morning Harry Truman is tooling his green-and-cream Royal Lancer Dodge through the heavy interurban traffic on Truman Road from Independence to his five-room office in Kansas City's Federal Reserve Bank Building. He keeps three secretaries working full time, spends about $5,000 a month keeping up with the duties of an ex-President. All his expenses come out of his own pocket, but Truman was one of the few U.S. Presidents to save money in office, has since picked up some handsome fees, e.g., from LIFE and Doubleday for his bestselling memoirs, from King Features for his European series. His main office chores: answering the weekly mail, which ranges from 2,000 to 7,000 letters, autographing his Memoirs, and—increasingly with the convention drawing closer—greeting Democratic visitors who troop in to see him—some old friends, some on the make, some on the wane.
Mossy Was Burned. One day late last month, Averell Harriman landed in Kansas City to get a farm-state tour off to a flying start by being photographed with Truman (who has permitted Harriman's aides to use his name in their approaches to delegates). On Harriman's heels was Truman's Interior Secretary Oscar Chapman, a Stevenson leader, arriving for a weekend in Independence; he felt confident that Truman would not try to block Adlai. Two days later Tennessee's Governor Frank Clement, the convention keynoter who—at 36—has hopes for the vice-presidential nomination, checked into Kansas City. Truman walked over to Clement's Muehlebach Hotel suite, explaining: "I wanted to take an hour or so so we can talk in a peaceful way. My office is full of customers, as you know, all the time."
The next Kansas City caller was Kentucky's Governor "Happy" Chandler, who is absurdly serious about his chances for the presidential nomination. Harry Truman stayed in his office for Chandler, granted him a brief (12 minutes) interview. When newsmen arrived, Truman wagged his finger at the photographers, remarked to Chandler: "I have to fuss at these birds because they punch holes in my rug with those tripods. The Shah of Iran gave me this Persian rug. Old Mossadegh found out that the Shah had given me the rug, and he was burned up."