Bess Truman by Margaret Truman Page B

Harry made it clear that he was no country bumpkin. But he also was honest enough to admit that he agreed with his Uncle Harrison, who “says he’d rather go to the Orpheum [a vaudeville theater] and laugh all evening than sit and grate the enamel off his false teeth to see Mansfield or Sothern or any other big gun.”
    This confession was as shrewd as it was honest. Very early, Harry Truman noticed that Bess Wallace loved a good laugh. He was soon amusing her with vivid glimpses of the comic side of country life. Here are some wry observations on the party line telephone: “When you want to use it you have to take down the receiver and listen while some good sister tells some other good sister who is not so wise how to make butter or how to raise chickens or when it is the right time in the moon to plant onion sets or something else equally important. About the time you think the world is coming to an end or some other direful calamity will certainly overtake you if you don’t get to express your feelings into that phone the good sister will quit and then if you are quick and have a good strong voice you can have your say, but you know confidently that everyone in the neighborhood has heard you.”
    His wit was even dryer when it came to farm manners: “They are endeavoring faithfully to better the farmers’ condition . . . all the time. You know our friend Roosevelt [Theodore] appointed a country life commission to spend the extra cash in the U.S. Treasury. Some fellow with a good heart has also invented a soup spoon that won’t rattle. I know he had farmers in mind when he did that. Some other good fellow has invented peas that are cubes instead of spheres so they won’t roll off the knife when you eat them. If I can get the seed I will certainly raise them. . . . Now if someone would invent a fork with a spring, so you could press it and spear a biscuit at arm’s length without having to reach over and incommode your neighbor - well he’d just simply be elected president, that’s all.”
    During a visit to Delaware Street, Harry heard Bess and Nellie Noland discuss Ethel Noland’s dislike of emotional excitement in religion. This inspired one of his best letters.
    I think you and Nellie could probably get up some religious excitement on Ethel’s part if you would do as a certain woman did Aunt Susan [his mother’s sister] was telling me about.
    You know they used to hold outdoor meetings when the weather was good and everyone for miles around attended and stayed sometimes for weeks. Along in the fifties they were holding a meeting not far from here and the preacher had exhorted and ranted and done everything else they usually do when they try to get something started, as they call it, but it was no use. He wasn’t a quitter though. Finally down one of the aisles one of the good sisters jumped out and began screaming and dancing up and down as they usually do when they get religion. The preacher made a dive for her with his hand extended, saying, “Oh, Sister I am so glad to see you come out and say you have religion.” Her answer between screams was, “I haven’t got it. I haven’t got it. There’s a lizard on my dress,” and she kept on dancing until Aunt Sue and someone else took her outside and one of those little lizards fell off her dress. Try it on Ethel. It will work I think.
    Like Bess, who had become an Episcopalian, Harry had “strayed from the Presbyterian fold,” although he still remembered his Sunday school days “very well.” He had become a member of the Baptist Church in Grandview, but he had very independent ideas about religion.
    I am by religion like everything else. I think there is more in acting than in talking. . . . We had a neighbor out here who could pray louder and talk more fervently in meetin’ than anyone I ever heard. He’d say in every prayer, “O Lord help this congregation to stop and think where they’s a going at.” We finally found that he beat his wife