Let’s return now to those thrilling days of yesteryear when the Lone Ranger Rides again. The time was 1948 and the presidential election was underway. I remember as a young boy at the Cotton Gin Store listening to the men talk about this election for 10 years afterward.
The November contest was between Republican Thomas Dewey and sitting president Harry S. Truman who had taken over in 1945 after the death of Franklin Roosevelt. Truman was disliked with abysmal poll numbers and even his mother- in-law who lived with him in the White House said she was voting against him.
The real action took place at the Democratic Convention in Philadelphia on July 12-15. The delegates started out saying anybody by Harry because he was hated by everyone and the national catchphrase “to err is Truman” was laughing hurled at him. The Southern Democrats, who now have converted into the GOP, walked out and formed their own party called the Dixiecrats over Truman’s support of the Civil Rights platform allowing black citizens to vote. Then the progressives walked out to support Henry Wallace for president with a platform supporting reconciliation with The Soviet Union because they were not really an enemy like Truman said. The convention was so disorganized, the Truman acceptance speech was at 3 a.m. after everyone was asleep.
All the professional commentators said Truman was a dead man walking and should be packing up to leave the White House immediately. Instead, Truman went on a train whistle stop tour all across America reminding voters of the last time the GOP was in the White House, we lived through a depression. I was talking with my brotherin- law, who is 82, and he recalled his mother taking him to the train station in Ft Worth to hear Truman speak.
In November Truman rose like a Phoenix from the ashes and a stunned GOP saw him ride back into the White House.
