A President In Peril

Chapter Twenty L₁ O₁ N₁ G₂ E₁ V₄ I₁ T₁ Y₄ (n) long life; great duration of life

At a few minutes after three I said my goodbyes to my fellow reporters and turned the Tribune desk in the press room over to Hoskins, who would hold down the fort until Garrity, the night man, came in. I walked north toward the Loop and had a late lunch of franks and beans at a quiet little café on South State in the neighborhood of the burlesque houses.

By four-fifteen, I was back out on the street, armed with my reporter’s notebook and five newly sharpened No. 2 pencils. It was still too early for crowds to begin gathering along the motorcade route, so I killed time at Marshall Field’s looking for a birthday present for Catherine. I narrowed it down to a necklace that would go well with a blue dress of hers and a boxed set of six leather-bound novels by Jane Austen, one of her favorites, but I couldn’t decide by the time the big store closed, and I found myself out on State Street.

I walked to the corner of Michigan and Madison, where the northbound motorcade from Truman’s hotel would turn west for its long march to the Stadium. The only indication so far of the event was a lone elderly gentleman sitting in a folding canvas lawn chair on the sidewalk with a hand-lettered sign nailed to a stick that said TRUMAN AND BARKLEY — OUR TRUE SALVATION.

“Wanted to make sure you got a good spot, eh?” I asked, identifying myself as a Tribune reporter and crouching down next to him.

“Dang right!” he exclaimed, his voice betraying a slight twang. “I’m from down Missouri way and I knew some of Harry’s people around Lamar, the place where he was born. Never did meet the president, though, so I figgered I’d at least lay eyes on the fella this one time. I’m eighty-four, so I ain’t likely to git me another chance.”

“I don’t know,” I said after I’d taken down his name and address. “You look to me like you’ve got a lot of good years left in you, Cyril.”

He cackled. “You might just be right at that, lad. My daddy, he lived to be ninety-five. And my daddy’s daddy, they say he was over a hunnert when he died, but nobody knowed for sure ’cause he didn’t have no record whatever of his birth. That’s the way things was back in them days.”

I congratulated the Missourian on his longevity and his loyalty to a native son, and started west on the north side of Madison. By now, little groups were gathering, and some of them had professional-looking signs, most of which read GIVE ’EM HELL HARRY. Others said things like CHICAGO FOR TRUMAN AND BARKLEY and KEEP THE G.O.P. WHERE THEY BELONG — AT HOME.

At the corner of Madison and Clark, there he was: the ‘red-white-and-blue man’ from the Dewey parade four years earlier. “I’ll bet you don’t remember me, Mr. Davidson,” I said as I went up beside him.

He eyed me from beneath his tri-colored beanie with its propeller. “I surely do, sir,” he said, bowing. “You are the fine gentleman from the Tribune who I had the pleasure of meeting on this very street four years ago.” He may have been batty, but there wasn’t a damn thing wrong with his memory.

“But that was at a parade for Dewey,” I said. “He won’t be here until tomorrow night.”

“Oh, you are quite correct, sir. I am still a supporter of the great Mr. Dewey and I will be present at this very spot tomorrow to applaud him. I am here tonight to express my opposition to this Truman.” He scowled as he pronounced the president’s name and then spun his sign around so I could read it: LET’S BREAK THE DEMOCRATIC STRANGLEHOLD.

“Aren’t you afraid of being attacked and berated by the Truman supporters who are beginning to fill the streets?” I asked him.

“I am capable of defending myself if need be, sir. And I am earnestly hoping some of these misguided souls might see my sign and engage me in conversation so that I can help them to see the error of their ways.”

“That’s hoping for a lot.”

“It is all part of my mission, sir. Mr. Dewey has enlisted me in his cause.”

“Has he really?”

“Oh yes. And I have reason to believe that after his election I will have the great honor to be named Secretary of the Treasury.”

“I seem to recall that the last time we met, it was Secretary of Agriculture you were hoping for.”

“Your memory is excellent, sir,” he said, favoring me with a dreamy smile. “Treasury is a more highly valued post, as I am sure you know, and Mr. Dewey is rewarding me for my work in his 1944 campaign against King Roosevelt, who has gone to his reward, whatever that may be.”

“You figure Dewey is going to win this time?”

“It is ordained,” he said, looking skyward. “Yes indeed, ordained.”

I shook my head and began to move off, wondering at the religious tone I had heard so far. First the old fellow from Missouri with his ‘true salvation,’ and now the Dewey man’s ‘ordained.’

The skies were darkening on this final week of Daylight Savings Time, and the crowds had thickened, parade onlookers sharing the sidewalks with suburbanites hustling west along Madison Street to the North Western Railway station to catch their homeward-bound trains.

I stopped a few of the commuters, identifying myself as a Tribune reporter and asked if they were staying for the motorcade. “Are you kidding?” demanded a graying and prosperous-looking fiftyish man carrying an alligator-skin briefcase. “I wouldn’t cross the street to see that son-of-a-bitch Truman. He’s nothing more than the second coming of FDR, and without as much brains.”

Another commuter, at least ten years younger than the first, was equally dismissive. “Truman? No thanks. It’s a wonder somebody hasn’t taken a potshot at him by this time. This country deserves better.” When I asked if he thought Dewey was better, he answered a question with a question: “How in the hell could he be worse than what we’ve got now?”

The next station-bound person I stopped was a trim woman who looked to be in her early twenties, probably somebody’s secretary. “Truman and the Democrats? No. My family — my dad and mom — have always voted straight Republican. And I can’t see that ever changing for me either.”

I kept moving west, swept along by the inexorable tide of commuters. Finally I reached the station itself, at Canal Street, and the surge was over. Now, suddenly on a less-populated sidewalk, I had the next stretch to look forward to — that grimy section of West Madison Street that Chicagoans had known for decades as Skid Row, home to uncounted numbers of the city’s down-and-out. Politicians and civic groups and other organizations termed as ‘do-gooders’ had railed for years against the squalid conditions in this district, but up to now, these blocks of Madison Street misery had seemed immune to alteration.

As I walked west into this valley of lost souls, I felt a sudden chill, although the temperature was mild for this late date. The wind must have shifted, I told myself, although there wasn’t even a breeze.