Word: besse
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Trivia & Fluffs. As always, the ubiquitous TV reporters caught some memorable glimpses: the unchivalrous disinterest of newspaper-reading delegates on ladies' day; NBC's pickup of the small but illuminating drama of Adlai Stevenson's reception for Mrs. Roosevelt; Bess Truman, behind dark glasses, nudging Harry in the ribs for speaking out of turn; bottle-bald Sam Rayburn (who did not submit to a dulling topsoil application of orange powder this time, as he did the last) threatening to shoot an admonishing finger right through the little glass screens in U.S. living rooms; the grin spreading across...
...Secret Service men as a security measure; it has been kept to hold out the tourists who flock around the house all day, every day. Mostly, the Trumans stay out of sight, but sometimes of an evening Harry can be seen in the backyard in an aluminum lawn chair. Bess Truman (who has a political mind of her own and is an enthusiastic admirer of Stuart Symington-toward whom Harry is cool) likes to putter around in her small garden. The day she came home from Europe she was out watering the lawn...
Encouraging her husband to work on the lawn (and, incidentally, trim off his extra poundage), Bess bought a new power mower. Every time she asked him to use it, Harry would grunt his agreement, do nothing. Bess kept nagging. One Sunday morning she was putting the breakfast dishes away, when she heard the whir of the mower. Harry Truman was mowing the grass-and waving happily at church-going friends...
Good Episcopalian Bess Truman was horrified, called out to Harry to stop-but he seemed not to hear. Recalls Bess: "I had to walk before the Baptists and the Methodists and tell him to stop cutting the grass on Sunday morning. He grinned at me, shut off the mower, put it in the garage-and he has not cut a blade of grass since that Sunday morning...
Even without the benefits of lawn-mowing exercise, Harry Truman seems in good health, although one of his favorite dishes, chili con carne, has been banned by Dr. Wallace Graham, former White House physician, now a Kansas City surgeon. Bess "almost froze to death" in unheated springtime Europe, now has a touch of arthritis...