Harry Truman's Excellent Adventure - Matthew Algeo [72]
Emerging from the hotel, Harry asked a passerby, “Say, where is this West Side Highway?” He planned to take the highway to the Holland Tunnel.
“Are you really Mr. Truman?” said the perplexed pedestrian. Truman laughed, admitted he was, and got his directions.
They pulled onto the highway at 57th Street and headed north—the wrong direction. A newspaper photographer named Tom Gallagher who was following the Trumans realized their mistake. He caught up with them at 72nd Street and got them turned around.
It was 7:40 by the time the Trumans arrived at the entrance to the Holland Tunnel, where the toll taker recognized Harry and shook his hand before taking his fifty cents.
Emerging in New Jersey, they took the Pulaski Skyway to Newark, where Harry picked up Highway 22 and headed west, toward Pennsylvania, disappearing into the growing crush of traffic, just another holiday motorist.
Shortly before noon, Harry pulled into a service station on the east side of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. One of the attendants, Herbert Zearing, was cleaning the windshield when he realized who his customer was. “I kept working because I didn’t want to look surprised,” said Zearing. Meanwhile, the other attendant, Lester Lingle Jr., filled the car with 11.1 gallons of premium gasoline. The bill came to $3.45. Harry paid with a twenty. Bess, as she had throughout the trip, dutifully logged the purchase.
After filling up, Harry drove through downtown Harrisburg, past the green-domed capitol, where, according to one account, “one middle-aged man pointed excitedly at the Truman car as he gaped after the driving ex-president.” He crossed the Susquehanna River, picked up Highway 11, and continued west.
In the town of New Kingstown, just a few miles west of Harrisburg, the Trumans passed a small white building surrounded by a dazzling sea of flowers in full bloom. This caught Bess’s eye. “Harry, turn around,” she said. “Go back. I want to see that.” Harry did as Bess asked. The building was a restaurant called the Country House. They got out to admire the flowers. Then, since they were hungry anyway, they went inside for lunch.
They were seated and ordered two large fruit bowls. At first, nobody recognized them, even after they chatted with several other customers.
But one of the cooks had his suspicions. He went out to the parking lot. When he saw the Missouri plates on the big black Chrysler the couple was driving, his suspicions were confirmed. “The place became very excited after that,” said the next day’s Harrisburg Patriot, “and everybody asked for autographs.”
The building that housed the Country House is now the New Kingstown post office. I went inside. It looked exactly like every other small town post office, with a small counter and a wall of PO boxes. There was nothing distinctive about it. It was difficult to imagine it as a restaurant.
A little farther down Highway 11, in the town of Carlisle, I paid Harvey Sunday a visit. Harvey was the owner of the Country House. Today he lives in a retirement home, in a small room with a bed, a desk, and an easy chair. He shared this room with his wife, Helen, until she died on September 11, 2001—“the day that New York got blowed up,” as Harvey put it. “She died right there,” he told me, pointing to the bed he still slept in every night.
Though nearly ninety and confined to a wheelchair, Harvey’s mind was still razor sharp. He looked me right in the eye as he spoke. His green eyes were so piercing that I had to look away occasionally, pretending to fiddle with my tape recorder. Harvey said he and Helen built the Country House in 1950. He was working on his father’s farm at the time. “We growed hogs and steers and we growed corn and hay and wheat and barley,” Harvey said. “We thought we could work the farm produce into the restaurant.”
Harvey and Helen didn’t know the first thing about the restaurant business, but they worked hard and learned quickly. “We wanted to make it stand out a little,” Harvey said. He added a bell tower to the building, and customers were encouraged to ring