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One of the benefits of working for the State of Missouri is getting Harry Truman’s birthday as a paid holiday. Truman, who was born on May 8, 1884 in Lamar, Missouri, got his start in politics in 1922 when representatives of the Pendergast political organization in Kansas City approached him about running for the job of Eastern Judge of Jackson County. Twelve years later, again with the backing of the Pendergast organization, Harry Truman was elected to the United States Senate. So close was his association with Pendergast that Tom Hirth, the President of the Missouri Farmers’ Association, referred to Truman as “Tom Pendergast’s bellhop.”
Shortly after Truman’s election to the Senate, Pendergast’s organization began to unravel. Maurice Milligan, the Federal District Attorney for Kansas City, launched an investigation that showed that approximately 60,000 “ghost” votes had been cast in the 1936 election in Kansas City, some of them in the many precincts in which the number of registered voters exceeded the total population. (Milligan, it should be noted, was a political ally of Bennett Clark, the other Senator from Missouri at the time, whose grandson Ben Clark is a loyal patron of The Tap Room.) Angered by this attack on his political mentor, on February 15, 1938 Senator Harry Truman, on the floor of the United States Senate, delivered a screed against Milligan, comparing his brand of justice to that of Hitler or Stalin. Despite this stirring defense, one year later, on May 22, 1939, Tom Pendergast pleaded guilty to tax evasion, with the amount of unpaid taxes and fines totaling $830,494.73.
Eleven years later, after he had been elected President, Harry Truman once again used strong language to defend the honor of someone near and dear to him. On Tuesday, December 5, 1950 his daughter Margaret sang at Constitution Hall in Washington. The following day, the review by Washington Post music critic Paul Hume was less than glowing. “Miss Truman cannot sing very well,” he wrote. “Miss Truman has not improved in the years we have heard her,” he continued, and “she still cannot sing with anything approaching professional finish.” For good measure Hume added, “She communicates almost nothing of the music she presents.”
Within minutes of reading this review on the morning of Wednesday, December 6, President Truman wrote and mailed his indignant response to Hume. “I’ve just read your lousy review of Margaret’s concert,” he began. “I’ve come to the conclusion that you are an ‘eight ulcer man on four ulcer pay.’” Two paragraphs later he escalated to making personal threats. “Some day I hope to meet you. When that happens you’ll need a new nose, a lot of beefsteak for black eyes, and perhaps a supporter below!”
Seventeen years later, in the winter of 1968, Paul Hume was still writing music reviews for the Washington Post and was also teaching a class in music appreciation at Georgetown University, which I was privileged to take. Forty years later I’m proud to observe that the alert readers (ARs) of The Growler express their opinions with far more civility and decorum than at least one reader of the Washington Post did in Hume’s day.
Speaking of ARs, an AR whose initials are AR (Ann Richardson) recently informed me of a bizarre experience she had in a supermarket in Kirkwood. AR the AR was doing her Saturday shopping when a woman approached her, identified herself as a representative of another brewery (as was confirmed by her name tag), then pointed to the six-pack of Schlafly Pale Ale in AR the AR’s cart and tried to bribe her to put it back on the shelf. Specifically, the representative of the other brewery (ROB) told AR the AR that she would buy her an equivalent amount of her brewery’s beer, provided AR the AR removed the Schlafly Pale Ale from her cart. AR the AR declined this offer but witnessed other customers accepting this bribe. In one instance she watched the ROB meet another shopper at the checkout counter and overheard her tell the other shopper that she (the shopper) needed to put her Schlafly six-pack back on the shelf before she (the ROB) would pay for her beer. Upon hearing this story I assured AR the AR that we at Schlafly would never resort to paying shoppers not to buy other beers.
While we’re on the subject of supermarkets, one historical detail of which many shoppers might be unaware is that almost all of the Schlafly Beer that is currently sold in supermarkets is brewed and bottled in a building that used to be one. In a former life 7260 Southwest Avenue in Maplewood, the current home of Schlafly Bottleworks, was a Shop ‘n Save store, prior to which it was a Kroger store. Since decamping from Maplewood, Kroger has begun to offer a beer called Tap Room No. 21, which I can only assume is a tribute to The Schlafly Tap Room on 21st Street. I’m flattered.
Long before Schlafly Beer came to Maplewood, Charles Arthur Floyd was an enthusiastic patron of Kroger stores in St. Louis. Better known by the sobriquet “Pretty Boy Floyd,” he robbed a Kroger store of $16,000 on September 11, 1925. Barely three months later, on December 19, 1925, he began serving a five year sentence for the crime at the Missouri State Penitentiary in Jefferson City. Three and a half years later, in 1929, he was released from prison, seemingly unchastened by the experience, and resumed his criminal lifestyle.
On June 17, 1933 Pretty Boy Floyd, along with Verne Miller and Adam Richetti, two equally nefarious characters, attempted to rescue Frank “Jelly” Nash, another “public enemy,” from the custody of law enforcement agents at Kansas City Union Station. The ensuing shootout resulted in the deaths of two Kansas City police officers, an FBI agent and a police chief from Oklahoma. Floyd and his colleagues escaped, reputedly with the help of Johnny Lazia, a notorious local mobster.
A little more than one year later, on July 10, 1934, Lazia himself died in a barrage of machine-gun fire in front of the Park Central Hotel in Kansas City. According to a contemporary account, his dying words were, “If anything happens, notify Mr. Pendergast…my best friend, and tell him I love him.” He was referring to Tom Pendergast, who had recently written a letter on Lazia’s behalf to Postmaster General Jim Farley in which he said, “Lazia is one of my chief lieutenants.” Apparently Pendergast considered Johnny Lazia much more important than Harry Truman, whom some dismissed as a mere bellhop at the time.
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