By late 1905 more bad luck fell upon John Truman when his corn crop was wiped out
in the floods. Uncle Harrison, now tired of working the Young family farm, arranged
for John Truman to take over. Harry agreed to go back to
the farm to help his father and brother Vivian. So in October of 1905, Harry had quit
his $100-a-month job to learn farming.
Harry would spend long days on the plow, working ten to twelve hour days just to
plow about five acres. Truman said, "Riding one of these plows all day, day after
day, gives one time to think. I've settled all the ills of mankind in one way and
another while riding along, seeing that each animal pulled his part of the load."4
The Trumans were good farmers and kept the land producing well by rotating their crops.
The full rotation cycle would take five years as they rotated corn, clover, wheat
and oats. This process increased the wheat yield from thirteen to nineteen bushels, oats from
eight to fifty bushels and corn from thirty-five to seventy bushels per acre.5 John
Truman was also a stickler for straight cornrows and no bare spots. The farm
produced very well under his guidance.
In January of 1909 Harry Truman applied and was accepted by the Masons in the Belton
Lodge. His interest in the Masons was very strong and he advanced in his station.
By December he was a Junior Warden. When the Masons decided to start a new Lodge
in Grandview, Harry was elected the Presiding Officer and served as the first
Master in the new lodge. In fact, by September of 1940, he was elected Grand
Master in St. Louis.
In 1910 John Truman was given a political appointment of a road overseer. The road
overseer's main responsibility was to see that the bridges, culverts and mud holes
were kept in good repair. Collecting money or services from each of the local
farmers to make those repairs was also part of the job. Many road overseers were
corrupt and simply collected the money without making the repairs. Or a farmer
could avoid paying the three dollar tax if he volunteered to work for three days.
John Truman, like everything else he did, saw to it that if a man chose that option,
he gave an honest day's work for a day's pay. The overseer also had the option to
pay someone else to do the work or do the work himself and keep the money. John
Truman liked the extra money, and often did the work himself. When John Truman
passed away in 1914, Harry became the road overseer in his father's place.
1910 was also the year Truman met up again with Bess Wallace. Bess was living in
Independence across the street from his cousins, the Nolands. On a visit to the
Nolands, the two crossed paths. Actually the Nolands had a dish that had to be
returned to the Wallaces and Harry gladly volunteered to deliver it.
The ride from Grandview to Independence is a 16-mile journey and took considerable
time traveling by buggy. Harry began at once to correspond with Bess. He seemed
to be able to say things in letters that he could never say in person. Finally in
June of 1911 he proposed to her in a letter. He waited three weeks and when he
hadn't gotten a response, he sent another letter saying that he hoped he had not
offended her. When she finally responded, she turned him down. Despite this, he
was not discouraged and continued to come to Sunday dinners at the Wallace house.
It wasn't until a letter in November of 1913, that Bess Wallace secretly agreed
to marry him. To say Harry was elated would be a huge understatement.
Martha Truman, Harry's mother, became very ill in March of 1914. With Harry's
assistance the doctor performed a hernia operation
right in the house. After his mother recovered, she gave
Harry enough money to buy a car. Harry bought a used 1911 Stafford, hand-built
and one of only three hundred ever built. With Bess still living in Independence,
this gave him a new lease on life. The car sold new for $2,350 but Harry got
it used at a bargain price of $650.
With the death of his father, Harry felt the additional pressures to make the farm work,
not to mention that he also inherited his father's large debt. Harry was looking
to make it big in order to provide for Bess when they could be married. In the
meantime he had lost the job of road overseer when the political winds changed in
Independence. Shortly thereafter, he was appointed postmaster in Grandview. This
appointment was in name only because Harry let a widow, desperately in need of
financial support, do the job and keep the money.
During this time Harry sought to strike it rich by investing in a zinc mine in Commerce,
Oklahoma, some 192 miles from Grandview. He partnered with two other men and they
named it T-H-C Mining Company after the three partners, Truman, Hughes and Culbertson.
The mine was fraught with disasters. By September of 1916 the mine closed, and Truman
by his own accounts, lost $2,000.
Not learning from his first mistake, Harry again set out in a partnership with
Culbertson-- this time in an oil company. Harry's investment was $5,000.
The company bought land in Oklahoma, Kansas and Texas fully expecting to strike
it rich. With the war coming, oil would be a boom industry in the country. The
problems started when Woodrow Wilson declared war and volunteers flooded to
register. This left little manpower to drill for oil. When Truman also signed up,
the company quickly went under. Later, another company bought out the land and began
drilling. It turned out that had Truman and his partners drilled on that land,
they would have all been millionaires--the land they had purchased was part of
the famous Teeter Pool.
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