Harry Truman's Excellent Adventure - Matthew Algeo [73]
The Country House was a cut above most roadside eateries. In fact, Harvey winced when I called it a diner. It was a restaurant, he gently corrected me. The tablecloths were white. The menu included filet mignon and “choice seafood.”
Harvey was washing dishes in the kitchen the day the Trumans unexpectedly showed up at his restaurant. “I finally got to talk to Harry after they were about ready to go,” Harvey said. “I didn’t want to bother him but I didn’t want to miss him either.” Harvey remembered Harry telling him he was “very happy” with his meal. Harry wasn’t just being nice either. For years afterward, he would recommend the restaurant to friends who were driving through central Pennsylvania. “After that we had a lot more customers from Independence, Missouri, than we had before,” Harvey said.
The restaurant was successful; some days upward of a thousand meals were served. It was hard work, but Harvey and Helen enjoyed it. “What we liked about it was the results,” Harvey said—the financial results. But they had three kids, too, and it was hard to give them the attention they deserved. “We looked around and realized we weren’t spending enough time with the children.” So, in 1960, Harvey and Helen sold the restaurant to the Dutch Pantry chain. The Dutch Pantry closed in 1970, and the U.S. Postal Service bought the building a few years later. It was converted into a post office. The bell tower was removed.
After they sold the Country House, Harvey and Helen took over his father’s farm full time. They finally retired in the late 1980s. The farm has since been turned into a golf course, a development that does not disturb Harvey in the least. “I think it was a good idea,” he told me. “Wish I’d done it myself, but I was too old.”
Harvey slowly wheeled himself over to his desk, moving the chair with his feet. He reached for a framed picture and handed it to me. It was a color brochure from the heyday of the Country House, the kind you might have found on a display rack at a highway rest stop. “Authentic Country Dining!” it announced. “Come to the Country House and discover an atmosphere that is both intriguing and inviting.” I read the copy out loud. “You’ll relax in air-conditioned comfort in one of five handsomely appointed dining rooms.” Harvey smiled.
“If it wouldn’t've been for the kids not getting enough attention,” he said, “we’d've probably still had it.”
In Carlisle, the Trumans picked up the Pennsylvania Turnpike. For Harry, a certified road aficionado, this must have been a thrilling experience.
When it opened in 1940, there was nothing like the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Built on the ruins of an abandoned railroad line, it stretched 160 miles from Carlisle west to Irwin, over and, via seven tunnels, through the Allegheny Mountains. The turnpike was an engineering marvel, with two twelve-foot lanes in each direction, separated by what was then a spacious ten-foot median. (For a time it was fashionable to picnic in the grassy median, until the state police deemed the practice foolhardy.) Access was limited to eleven interchanges, and all intersecting roads passed over or under the turnpike, so there were no intersections—and no traffic lights—and no speed limits. Ten service plazas gave motorists a place to fill their tanks (and themselves) without having to leave the cocoon of the road.
It cost seventy million dollars to build. Franklin Roosevelt, sensing its military value, prodded Congress to kick in $29.5 million. The rest of the money came from the sale of bonds, which would be paid off by collecting tolls of roughly a penny per mile for passenger vehicles. (Today the rate is about six cents per mile.)
Critics derided it as a boondoggle and a “road to nowhere,” but the turnpike proved a stunning success. Traffic the first year was nearly twice as heavy as projected, and toll revenue exceeded