Harry Truman's Excellent Adventure

So, this book (subtitled "The True Story of a Great American Road Trip") is a good example of why we watch Book TV when we can (unfortunately, we only get it on C-Span on weekends): it introduces us to books and authors we might otherwise never come across, since they're on topics far from our usual interests (e.g., Tolkien).

Harry Truman's Excellent Adventure, by Matthew Algeo [2009] is a case in point: a delightful, interesting little book about a lost piece of Americana. It tells the story how one day in June 1953, a few months after leaving office, Truman decided to pack a suitcase, get in his new Chrysler, and drive (with his wife Bess watching the speedometer) from his home in Independence Missouri to New York City (where their daughter Margaret lived) and back. After years of being shadowed everywhere he went by Secret Service agents, and only two years after being the target of a major assassination attempt in which two people died (one of the gunmen and one of Truman's guards), he wanted to be just folks again. He and Bess would enjoy the scenary, stop in diners along the way, sleep in whatever motels took their fancy, visit with old friends, and generally enjoy themselves.

And, in the end, it kinda turned out that way. His desire for anonymity quickly went awry, since he and Bess were recognized most places they stopped (though usually not right away -- more like people at the next table looking over and saying hey, that can't possibly be . . . can it?). A few times they succeeded (as marked by gaps in the historical record), but by and large the longer Truman stayed in a place, the more likely it was that someone would recognize him and blow his cover -- especially after word got out and reporters started to cover the story and be on the look-out for the ex-president.

Algeo has also done a good job telling the story, retracing the Trumans' route, recounting local newspaper coverage at the time, and revisiting places they stayed. He even talked to a dozen or so people who met Truman during that trip. I think the most charming story is of the little girl who was working at her father's ice cream stand near Hannibal who always had to keep a sharp eye out for people parking in front of their stand and then going over to the cafe next door. Hence she saw the Trumans arrive, and recognized them at once:

"Dad," the twelve-year-old shouted,

"Harry Truman's out in front.

Do you want me to have him move his car?"

He thought she was mistaken, of course,

but when Bud looked for himself,

he saw that it was indeed Harry Truman.

Bud told Toni to call her sister . . .

and to tell her to bring a camera.

--The upshot of the story was that the Trumans had lunch, and only got recognized by folks in the diner as they were paying the bill, by a former colleague of Harry's from his county judge days ("Why, there's Judge Truman!"), after which he shook hands and signed autographs. Algeo even includes the photograph the twelve-year-old girl took of Truman in his white suit in her father's parking lot about to get into his big black Chrysler and drive off.

The book is full of little stories like that, which don't just show how down-to-earth Truman was (doing his own driving, carrying his own suitcase, chatting with folks he ran into) but how much ordinary people liked him, even when he'd just left office with one of the lowest 'approval ratings' in history (mind you, I think some of our earlier presidents were lucky there weren't pollsters in their day). Even (most of) the various bits of trivia Algeo put in were interesting, like his account of the first fatal traffic accident in the U. S. (Harry Bliss, who was run down by an electric taxi in New York City on Sept 13th 1899 and died the next day), or just how rude Eisenhower was to Truman on the latter's last day in office. The various ups and downs of the Truman/Hoover relationship were also interesting, as was the apocryphal quip about Truman, Hoover, and MacArthur running into each other in a New York elevator:

MacArthur: It's a small world.

Truman: How's the fade-away business?

MacArthur: You should know!

Janice read this one a while back on Kindle, and I just got to it last Friday and Saturday (in a book book, borrowed from our local library), as book #II.2807; highly recommended.

--JDR

WotC's Tolkien RPG

So, while I was away, Janice continued working on our long-term project to get everything in the Box Room sorted out and organized.* And among the boxes she opened and sorted through was one with a cluster of roleplaying material most centered around 2001 (give or take a bit) that had long been lost.

Among the goodies unearthed are

--a program book for MonteCon 2001 (the last MonteCon, I think), where I ran BIERCE SPOTS, a 1916 Call-of-Cthulhu scenario in which the Investigators travel to Mexico on the trail of Ambrose Bierce, and a Scooby Doo Cthulhu scenario in which Scooby and the gang come across a spooky old castle called Castle Ravenloft. Now I'll have to look for the notes re. the Bierce scenario, which I thought went really well.

--a program guide for GenCon 2002, the last GenCon in Milwaukee and the last one I went to.

--some early working notes regarding d20 Call of Cthulhu, which I'll put with the rest

--some campaign notes from Shaun Horner's MASKS OF NYARLATHOTEP campaign which he ran the first few months I was in Seattle ("The Friday Night Game"),** the other players being Miranda, Steve Brown ("Stan"), Robert Wiese, and myself; I recall we only got through the first two scenarios (The JuJu Shop and Cairo) and that my private-eye character died spectacularly twice (first by jumping from a train to avoid A Fate Worse Than Death and then, after being sinisterly re-animated, being blown to bits in the Bent Pyramid).

--a page of much older notes from one of the favorite D&D campaigns I ran back in Milwaukee, where at the end of a session I jotted down just what kind of fix the PCs had gotten themselves into and the various ways in which they might get out of it.

But the real prize is a folder containing pretty much all the material generated circa April through October 2000 by those of us in WotC's RPG R&D department for the Tolkien Game we hoped to publish. I've written about this before in connection with my speech at MERP-Con last year ("A Brief Sad History of Tolkien RPGs") but at that time couldn't locate this folder, which has been buried since around 2002. Now it goes on the shelf with the files re. the (similarly abortive) 1992 TSR Tolkien Game. Having now skimmed its contents, I'll be making a new post about that fordoomed project soon, though I won't be able to post the material since it doesn't belong to me.

More soon.

--JDR

*why yes, the river did rise some today, after yesterday's rain. not that I'm obsessively monitoring it, you understand.

**those first three months, before Janice came out and joined me, I was in three weekly games: the Monday Night Game (which I ran), the Wednesday Night Game (Monte's brave new world campaign), and the Friday Night Game (run by the Horners).

New Publication

So, tonight I was pleasantly surprised to get a pdf copy of my newest publication: "Hubert's Fine Arts",* one of the five component pieces making up A PECULIAR PENTAD, the latest CALL OF CTHULHU release from the good folks at Super Genius Games. On a quick read-through, the whole product looks nice. I'm in good company, my fellow authors being Jeff Grubb, Gwendolyn Kestrel, Thomas Reid, and Jeff Quick. I'll put up a link to the product once it's listed on their website, in case anyone wants to check it out for themselves, but for now I'm enjoying the chance to read over a piece I did more than a year ago (September 2008), under difficult circumstances (which staying in Billings, Montana, waiting for the recovery of someone who'd just been airlifted to a hospital our of Yellowstone Park for a triple bypass), and seeing how it holds up. And, of course, to finally have the chance to read the other contributors' pieces.

Cthulhu adventure sites, complete with characters and adventure hooks. Mmm; them'll's make fine reading for me over the next few days . . .

--JDR

*pronounced Hu-BEAR's, as in faux-French, not 'HEW-berts', as in Humphrey; I still haven't gotten the knack of getting in the accent marks in this format.

Oak Number Three

So, two weeks ago today I arrived in Magnolia for an emergency family trip which, fortunately, turned out not to be as big a crisis as we'd feared (so far, anyway). But it turned out I was there for one event I hadn't been expecting.

When I got into town, my first stop was to drop by and greet my mother at the Wal-Mart where she works. And, as usual, my second stop was to drive by and see the yard, the empty lot where the house I called home from 1969 to 1981 (and revisited many times thereafter, up until about four years ago) used to stand. Most of the (seasonal) flowers I'd planted last time were gone, as expected, and I sadly confirmed that neither the mimosa that came up on its own nor the cherry tree I planted had survived. But the new rose bush and the camellia (to replace the two wonderful camellias that came down with the house) seemed to be doing well, and the little raised bed of day lillies also seemed to have taken root, as well as the violets I dug up along the Ouachita River over in Camden. I made my usual survey of the trees, including the dying stub of one of the oaks, now hollow but having still valiantly put out a few thin straggly limbs just this past year; I'd convinced my mother to leave it standing, since from the holes in it it was obvious that someone, woodpecker or squirrel, was calling it home.

Then, the next day when we got back from our business in Shreveport that'd brought me down, I swung by again, only to find that the tree had come down either the night before (Monday) or earlier that day (Tuesday).* It hadn't done any damage, simply fallen over into the yard, neatly pointing away from the neighbor's driveway and storage shed, and even ending a few feet short of the rose bush. The top had disintegrated with the impact, leaving a limbless trunk perhaps eighteen feet long; investigation showed that only two roots had still been alive and holding the tree in place. My mother wanted to have it chopped up and hauled off, but I was able to persuade her that it'd be better to leave it as a nursery log, so I found someone who came by and maneuvered it into position along (but entirely on our side of) the property line, rather like some folks set out railroad ties. I spent an afternoon picking up the debris and getting it out of the way, cutting off a few roots sticking up the wrong way, and the like. In the end I was rather pleased with the results: the old tree now lies between two of its surviving brethren (Oak #2 and Oak #4), which like Oak #1 fared better than it did when the idiots at AP&L (Arkansas Power & Light) came by a few years ago and cut off all the third tree's limbs, since all four stood near a power line. The other three had some limbs left, enabling them to continue growing, but the tree-butchers lopped off every limb from one tree, effectively dooming it. Gah! I do feel bad about whatever had been living in it -- I found a bunch of yarn inside the debris that'd clearly been somebody's nest -- given that it's a hard time to lose yr home, with winter coming on. Maybe the fallen tree might still do, in a pinch.

Aside from that one old friend finally giving up the ghost, the yard looks pretty good. There are still nine of the original ten trees left: the other three oaks in a line to the left (sadly mangled years ago but having now largely recovered), the main oak out front (which lost some branches at the hands of the folks who knocked down the house but now, some four or five years later, once again thriving so that you can't see the damage unless you know where to look), one oak in the back, the two pecan trees (the big pecan in the back and the little pecan in the front), and the two double pines. All these would have been planted some sixty years or more ago, when the house was first built, and before my grandmother moved into it. In addition, a pine tree that'd grown up in a corner some thirty years ago is now a fairly substantial tree, though dwarfed by the older pines. In addition to the trees, the original forsythia (now a mighty bush) and a few of the nandina survive, as does the bamboo I planted years ago. I also, while I was there, created a second raised bed, this time lined with native stone and filled with daffodils below (for the spring) and pansies above (for my mother to enjoy right now). I'll see next visit how they did.

*I later learned from a neighbor who lives across the street that she'd heard it fall on Monday afternoon, so it'd come down only an hour or two after I'd been by to see it.

Other than that, it was a more eventful trip than I expected -- torrential rain, with several roads closed and one person drowned when her car went off the road in poor visibility (in a second incident, a man managed to climb atop the cab of his truck and was saved). All the more startling, since Magnolia lacks any river and only has a few v. minor creeks. But I missed the real fireworks, which were due to occur the evening of the day I drove back to Little Rock to catch my flight home: ex-Prime Minister Ohlmert's visit to S.A.U. I don't know how many people showed up for his $100-a-person speech (for $200, you cd get yr picture taken with him). I'd thought Ohlmert was in jail following his corruption trial, but apparently not. Odder still, his speech was due to be protested by the Pharisees from the Westboro Baptist Church, who turn out to be anti-semetic as well as homophobes and general loons. Whether they showed up or not I don't know, but at any rate I assume the Prime Minister had a better reception in Magnolia than he did a few days later at another stop in his bank-money-for-the-trial tour, as recorded in the following link:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ali-abunimah/citzens-arrest-and-mass-d_b_332178.html

So, as strange a trip as it was, if my timing had been a little different it cd have been considerably stranger.

--JDR

current book: THE AGENDA, by Bob Woodward.

I'm in Little Rock > Shreveport > Magnolia

So, now I know why Seattle had such a long dry summer and is having a relatively dry autumn so far -- or at least I know where all the rain's gone.

Arkansas. Or at least to that part of it my family's called home for a long, long time now (since about 1868, when the Rateliffs fled Mississippi during the famines that came in the wake of the Civil War). Specifically, Columbia County, where I am now, which has had thirty-two inches of rain since the beginning of September. Or so I was told when I arrived on Monday. And that was before the downpours on Tuesday, which cut off some roads. The Thursday papers carried pictures of (minor) flooding in Magolia itself. It's stopped now, and the sun came out in a beautiful blue sky today, perhaps marking a return to more usual weather in these parts.

Perhaps.

--John R.

current reading: WHAT KIND OF NATION (Jefferson vs. Marshall) by Ja. F. Simon [2002]

Obama Wins the Nobel Peace Prize

Thought for the Day: Peace is Good.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/09/obama-wins-nobel-peace-pr_n_314907.html

Follow-up Thought: Perhaps just by being elected, Obama has changed the world for the better?

Corollary: Racism is Bad.

Exhibit A: Erick Erick of RedState.com writes: "I did not realize the Nobel Peace Prize had an affirmative action quota"

http://www.redstate.com/erick/2009/10/09/barack-obama-wins-nobel-peace-prize/

--JDR

--JDR

We Declare War on the Moon (with apologiest to H. G. Wells)

So, tomorrow morning we fire a missile into the moon's south pole, to see if we can blow a big chunk of it sky-high in hopes of detecting miniscule amounts of water vapor in the pulverized debris. If so it'll prove that the moon has water -- or had, until we blasted it off into space. If not, then we'll have permanently altered a stretch of moonscape never visited by any astronaut or probe.

It's kind of like when we blew up a comet a few years ago: a kind of careless arrogance towards altering or destroying things in our solar neighborhood. I've always been pretty gung-ho on our space program, but I draw the line at blowing up or blowing pieces off other planets and moons -- though I don't go as far as C. S. Lewis, who held that our planet really ought to be under quarantine to protect neighboring space from us, rather than the other way around. At least it's not as bad as the time they nuked the Van Allen belts, just to see what would happen (good news: not much). At least we got VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA (the movie, not the tv series) out of that; I doubt we'll get even that out of our bombing the moon.

Oddly enough, since hearing the news I keep finding myself thinking back to H. G. Wells' THE FIRST MEN ON THE MOON, and wondering whether or not the King of the Selenites would take kindly to our preemptive strike, and what sort of counter-measure(s) his people might set in motion. Guess if a big 'Oy!' and 'you'll get yours!' signals reach us from the moon tomorrow after the blast we'll know.

--John R.

current reading: CONSERVATIVES WITHOUT CONSCIENCE by John Dean