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Show PRESIDENT IN MISSOURI WASHINGTON. The next two months of President Truman's life are rilled with junkets similar to that which he has just taken through the heart of the Mark Twain country. At first, newsmen covering the White House figured that he took these trips for political reasons, but they have now changed their minds. The President takes these junkets because he loves them. Never since that fateful April day "when he took the oath of office has he had more fun than at Caruthersville, Mo., where he swapped yarns with the local postmaster, got up at 6:15 to "spit" in the Mississippi river, and ran out in the street to ring the bell of a small-scale locomotive. The locomotive was being conducted conduct-ed through the streets of Caruthersville Caruthers-ville by the "Forty and Eight" club of the American Legion (commemorating (commemo-rating the "40 men 8 horses" capacity ca-pacity of French freight cars in the last war). Suddenly the President of the United States spied it. Perhaps Per-haps it reminded him of 1918 when he unloaded artillery horses from those same French freight cars in the Meuse sector. Anyway, with a shout to War Mobilizer John Snyder, who once worked behind the cashier's cage of small-town Missouri-Arkansas' banks, Harry went over to the locomotive. Right then and there the war' mobilizer and the President of the United States had the time of their lives staging a locomotive bell-pulling contest. SECRET SERVICE FROWNS Another incident the secret service men didn't like was when the President Presi-dent arose shortly after 6 a. m., left the austere frame 42-room Majestic hotel' which had been cleared c,i guests in his honor, and walki down to the Mississippi river, it seems that there is an old custom in those parts which makes it .incumbent .incum-bent upon a visitor to spit in the father fa-ther of Waters. The secret service men, not bMng in the know regarding this spiying custom, were taken by surprise. One of them, however, spotted the ttjant President of the United States ambling am-bling off in the direction of the river, sounded the alarm, and a few minutes min-utes later, four bodyguards were trailing him. After Harry got through spi,ting, he skimmed a few stones out over the river, found that his technique as a stone-skimmer hadn't changed since boyhood days, and was then content to go back to town. On the way, he met two old Caruthersville Ca-ruthersville cronies, Nearl .Helm, county wholesale liquor deale:-, and James Reeves, former commander of the American Legion. They swapped stories as they walked down to the post office, wherts they dropped in to see Postmaster Bailey S. Brooks. There they swapped lome more. BOMBS FOR CONGRESS Six members of a congresslontu committee sailing to Europe lust August were nearly scared out. of their wits while on the Queen y.ary. Headed by Rep. Louis Rabiut of Michigan, a subcommittee of the house appropriations committee had debated whether to fly or to go by boat. Finally they decided to sail but they wished they hadn't. The group which decided to enjoy some relaxation on steamer chairs included Dean Gillespie of Colorado, Robert Jones of Ohio, Butler Hare of South Carolina, Thomas O'Brien of Illinois and Judge John Kerr of North Carolina. Kerr had argued for the boat trip and finally convinced con-vinced his colleagues. The congressmen were just beginning begin-ning to relax on their first night out from New York when an army officer of-ficer came to Chairman Rabaut with a disturbing message. "The skipper thought you gentlemen gentle-men ought to know," he said, "that we have just received a code message mes-sage from the FBI. They report they have discovered there are a number of incendiary bombs on the boat scheduled to go off at midnight. "There are several companies of Japanese - American troops on board," the officer told Rabaut, "and Japan is still at war with the United States." Rabaut called his colleagues together to-gether and told them the news. Judge Kerr's first comment was: "I wonder if the skipper has ordered airplanes to hover around the ship." All were alerted the entire night while the ship's crew searched unsuccessfully un-successfully for the bombs. No trace of them was ever found, but the restful rest-ful relaxation the congressmen had hoped for was not achieved until they set foot on solid ground once again. CAPITAL CHAFF C. Congratulations to Gen. Arthur Esterbrook of Santa Ana, Calif., for permitting his enlisted men to give him their gripes face to face and for speeding up discharges. If there were more generals like Esterbrook, there would be more men wanting to stay in the army. C. Wayne Coy, one-time Roosevelt lieutenant, now assistant publisher of the Washington Post, is a dark-horse dark-horse possibility in Indiana politics. Hoosier Democrats are trying to persuade Coy to run for the senate. |