Free Harry Truman by Margaret Truman

At that time, America west of Missouri was described as “the Great American desert” - a supposedly impassable, barren wilderness peopled only by savage, very dangerous Indians. A perfect grandfather to awaken in a growing boy the vastness and the drama of a continental nation.
    Interestingly, Grandfather Young was equally taken with young Harry. There is a family tradition, vouched for by my Cousin Ethel, that when my father was only three or four, Grandfather Young could not stop telling people what a remarkable little fellow he was. Dad still remembers with great affection one day when the old man - he was in his seventies when my father’s family moved to the farm - was ill and Dad cautiously approached his bedside to ask how he was feeling. Grandfather Young transfixed him with those bold pioneer eyes of his and said sternly, “How are you feeling? You’re the one I’m worried about.”
    Dad’s paternal grandfather, Anderson Shippe Truman, was a gentle, very quiet, reserved man - almost the opposite of outgoing, aggressive Grandfather Young. In 1887, when my father was three, his parents moved to the Young farm. Anderson Shippe Truman sold his own smaller farm and followed his son and daughter-in-law. “He had a bedroom upstairs in the farmhouse,” Dad says. “He spent a lot of his time there. Believe me, you didn’t go into it without an invitation.” Reminiscing about these two men at the age of eighty-six, Dad told me: “To be honest, I didn’t like either of the old men very much at the time. But when I looked back as an adult, my respect and affection for them grew with every passing year. Half of everything I became I owe to them.” Among more tangible things, Dad owed the middle initial in his name to both grandparents. To placate their touchy elders, his parents added an S, but studiously refrained from deciding whether it stood for Solomon or Shippe.
    Anderson Shippe Truman died the same year that the family moved to the Young farm, and it was Solomon Young who was the stronger influence on Dad’s early years. He took Dad with him to county fairs and for countless rides in his buggy behind one of his superb, high-stepping horses. Their friendship was one of those mysterious gifts which can only be exchanged by a mingling of the generations, a habit lost in contemporary America. Although he died when Dad was only nine, Grandfather Young has in many ways lived on in my father’s spirit.
    Dad was lucky to have had this added presence in his growing years. He had a problem to face, which might have made him a rather unhappy young man - his terrible eyesight. His mother noticed this affliction when he was about five years old. Oddly, she did not notice it when she was teaching him to read. He was able to make out the large letters in the family Bible without difficulty. But when she pointed out objects at a distance - a buggy coming down the road, a cow or a horse at the opposite end of a pasture - her son could not see them. This worried her. Then came a Fourth of July visit to nearby Grandview. The climax of the celebration was a series of rockets that exploded clusters of stars in the sky. Dad jumped when each rocket went off, but he was utterly indifferent to the showers of fizzing stars that were filling the night. He could not see them. Then and there Mamma Truman made up her mind to take her son to an eye doctor.
    Remember this was in 1889 in farm country. Glasses were seldom if ever prescribed for children. Mamma Truman’s husband was away on a business trip, but she decided that immediate action was called for, so she hitched up two horses to the farm wagon, sat her son on the seat beside her, and drove fifteen miles to Kansas City. There she discovered that my father was suffering from a rare malformation of the eye, which can best be described as flat eyeballs. The Kansas City eye doctor prescribed thick, very expensive glasses and sternly warned Dad not to play any of the popular sports,