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was history, but thought the Germans had bombed Pearl Harbor and was unable to name Truman’s predecessor in the White House. Her grandfather seemed unusually interested in the home’s bathroom fixtures. Maybe he was a plumber. Our guide was a friendly ranger named Norton, who looked exactly like Santa Claus with a ponytail and a Smokey Bear hat. The house looks much as it did when Harry and Bess returned from Washington in 1953. The kitchen is painted a bright apple green with cherry red accents. Against the wall is a small red Formica table where Harry and Bess took most of their meals, a Proctor-Silex toaster standing sentinel on top. The furnishings throughout the house are simple, almost Spartan. A small reading room is lined with bookshelves sagging under the weight of history tomes and murder mysteries. There are two well-worn upholstered chairs—his and hers. On the end table next to hers lies a Dorothy L. Sayers novel. In the front parlor, a massive black-and-white television set is parked incongruously against one wall, near a piano. Norton, our guide, explained that Bess liked to watch baseball games. (Bess was a good athlete in her own right. Harry liked to brag that she was “the best shortstop they ever had in Independence.”)

The Trumans were frugal, a blessing to the home’s preservationists. Norton pointed to a water-stained patch of wallpaper in the front parlor. It was being replaced by extra paper that Harry had saved and stored in the attic. In fact, the paper from the attic was so well preserved that it would have to be artificially aged before replacing the stained bit. But the Trumans’ frugality had a downside, too. As Norton explained, when the Park Service took over the property in 1983, it was in such poor condition that the repairs cost several hundred thousand dollars. It was said that only the paint was holding the house together.

When they left the White House, there was speculation that the Trumans might move to Key West, where they had often vacationed when Harry was president, or New York, where Margaret lived. But they returned to Independence, partly out of principle. As Harry liked to say, “I tried never to forget who I was and where I’d come from and where I’d go back to.”

There were practical advantages, too, to moving back to Independence. It was near the Truman farm in Grandview, Missouri, where Harry hoped to build his presidential library. And nobody made a big fuss over them. Visitors from out of town would occasionally come to the house, asking for an autograph or a handshake, a request Harry always obliged. But, by and large, the locals would leave the Trumans alone. Bess could drive to the library or push her cart around the supermarket without causing a stir. Harry could take his morning walks unmolested, often accompanied by Mike Westwood, an Independence cop assigned to the former president part-time.

But the Trumans also came back to Independence because they couldn’t afford to live anywhere else. They already owned the house on Delaware Street. Given their limited income, it just didn’t make sense to move anywhere else.

Back in Independence, Harry soon settled into a routine. He awoke every morning at five-thirty, dressed, read the morning papers (on the back porch when the weather was nice), picked a cane from his collection of a hundred or so, and took his walk. His route varied. Sometimes he would walk down to the town square, passing the Jackson County Courthouse, which had been built in 1934, back when he was the county’s presiding judge. Other times he would meander through the residential neighborhoods around his home. An old newsreel shows Truman enjoying one of his walks when a small boy in a cowboy costume suddenly jumps out of the bushes and “shoots” the former president with a toy gun. Truman laughs and pats the irrepressible tyke on the head. Today, a Secret Service agent watching the film would likely suffer a heart attack, and the unlucky youngster who attempted such an ambush would perish in a hail of gunfire.

Harry headed out for one of his morning