Harry Truman's Excellent Adventure - Matthew Algeo [74]
The Pennsylvania Turnpike wasn’t merely a way to get from one place to another; it became a destination in its own right. Tourists came from all over the country to see the self-proclaimed “World’s Greatest Highway,” and the service plazas did a brisk business in turnpike souvenirs: postcards, glasses, mugs, plates, pennants, ashtrays, and countless other trinkets.
Its success spurred other states to build similar toll roads: Illinois, Maine, Ohio, New Jersey, and New York. By 1957 it was possible to drive from New York to Chicago without even thinking about a traffic light. The feasibility of a nationwide system of limited-access highways was now indisputable.
The tolls on the Pennsylvania Turnpike were supposed to be lifted once the bonds sold to finance construction had been retired. Instead, however, the commission that operated the turnpike used toll revenue to finance new projects, setting in motion a constant need for tolls. By 1956 the turnpike stretched all the way across the state, 360 miles from Ohio to New Jersey, with a 110-mile extension from Philadelphia to Allentown and Scranton. (Apropos of Harry’s injunction against memorials to the living, a tunnel on the extension was going to be named after the chairman of the turnpike commission until he was convicted of attempting to defraud the commission of nineteen million dollars.) More recently, the commission has approved plans to expand large sections of the turnpike from four lanes to six.
So-called perpetual tolls troubled some transportation officials, who said the fees would “stifle free transportation and injure the national welfare.” In 1950, the trade journal Engineering News-Record warned that never-ending tolls were “pernicious.”
On the Pennsylvania Turnpike, Harry Truman must have found it extremely difficult to abide by his wife’s prohibition against speeding. To his credit, he did—yet he still got in trouble.
Harry was in the left lane, cruising along at fifty-five with a line of cars behind him, when Pennsylvania State Trooper Manley Stampler pulled alongside him and motioned for him to pull over. (At the time, state police cars in Pennsylvania had no emergency lights.)
Harry later claimed the only reason the trooper pulled him over was to “shake hands.”
That’s not how Manley remembers it.
Now comfortably retired in suburban Phoenix, Manley whiles away the days penning cantankerous letters to the editors of local newspapers. (“It only cost $430 million to send the Phoenix Mars mission to the Red Planet. What a bargain. That money could have been spent to help the Hurricane Katrina victims …”)
Manley was just seventeen when he dropped out of high school to enlist in the navy in 1945. After his discharge, he joined the Pennsylvania State Police. “It was kind of a romantic thing to do,” he told me. He was assigned to the barracks in Bedford, a town of three thousand in the rural south-central part of the state.
Mostly he just patrolled the turnpike, an assignment he enjoyed. On his breaks he would stop at the Howard Johnson’s at the Cove Valley service plaza and flirt with a pretty waitress. When he asked her to marry him one day, she said yes.
July 5, 1953, began as a “typical day,” Manley remembered. He was pulling an eight-hour shift on the pike. When he saw that big black Chrysler blocking traffic in the left lane, he had no idea who the driver was. He only knew the law was being broken.
When he realized he’d pulled over the former president, Manley was flabbergasted. He hadn’t heard about the Trumans’ trip. “I just couldn’t believe that I had pulled this man over.” But he had a job to do. He gave Harry a brief lecture, the same one he delivered to countless other motorists.
“I told him what he had done wrong and he said he didn’t realize it—that it wasn’t intentional. Then, I told him how dangerous the turnpike is and … wouldn’t he please be more careful.” Truman was smiling, Manley