Harry Truman's Excellent Adventure - Matthew Algeo [71]
The General Assembly happened to be in session, and the secretary general was delivering a report. I couldn’t figure out what it was about, but it sounded dreadfully dull. The hall was less than half full. Some of the delegates appeared to be dozing. It seemed no more exciting than the average city council meeting—and considerably less exciting than one in, say, Philadelphia or Chicago.
And that was it. Julia led us outside, let her hair down again, and delivered a short soliloquy in which she stressed that the UN was not a governmental organ-eye-zation. She ended with a quote from Kofi Anan, who was once asked why God was able to create the world in seven days while it has taken the UN more than sixty years to achieve what it has.
“The good Lord,” replied Anan, “had the advantage of working alone.”
The next day was the Fourth of July. Harry and Bess celebrated by catching another show, the matinee performance of the play My Three Angels at the Morosco Theater on 45th Street. (The theater, where both Death of a Salesman and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof opened, was demolished in 1982 to make way for a Marriott hotel.) That night they had a quiet dinner at the Waldorf and went to bed early. It had been a whirlwind week. It was time to go home.
* * *
11
Pennsylvania (or, Abducted),
July 5–6, 1953
The Automobile Club of New York predicted a record-breaking one million cars would be on the city’s highways over the Fourth of July weekend in 1953. (The auto club also predicted a record-breaking number of highway fatalities, prompting this jolly headline in the New York World-Telegram and Sun: “Hundreds to Die as Nation Observes Independence Day.”) To get a jump on the holiday traffic, Harry and Bess got up before dawn on Sunday, July 5. Two bellhops helped Harry carry their luggage down to the garage, but Harry loaded it all into the car by himself, despite the bellhops’ protestations.
“I’ll go back up and get the folks for breakfast,” Harry announced after all the bags were stowed to his satisfaction.
A few minutes later, Harry, Bess, and Margaret entered the hotel’s Norse Grill.
Harry and Bess pulling away from the Waldorf-Astoria in New York, July 5, 1953. Margaret is in the back seat. Harry dropped her off at her apartment before heading for home.
“He ordered a half grapefruit, toast, coffee, and bacon,” the New York Times solemnly reported. “The women ordered cantaloupe.”
After breakfast, the family posed for photographs at the garage entrance, and Harry gave his autograph to two youngsters. When asked which way he planned to drive home, Harry was cagy. “It’ll be a zigzag route,” was all he would say.
It was seven o’clock now, and Harry was eager to hit the road.
“This has been a happy week,” he told the reporters and photographers who’d come to chronicle his departure. He and Bess had had so much fun, he said, “it makes it so we want to come back.”
Then he and Bess and Margaret climbed into the big black Chrysler.
“Well, let’s go!” he said.
He pulled out of the Waldorf garage and turned right onto 49th Street. At Madison Avenue he turned right again. At 76th Street he parked in front of the Carlyle, where Margaret lived. Bess asked Margaret, probably for the millionth time, if she was sure she didn’t want to ride back to Independence with her parents. Yes, said Margaret with a smile. She was much too busy in New York to go home just then.
Bess waited in the car while Harry and Margaret went inside. In the lobby Harry kissed his daughter