We got into Missouri Sunday afternoon, July 1, 2007. We fought bad rain most of the way from Tulsa. We never got rained on again, but the rivers kept rising. Just about everybody had somewhere else to be. The purpose of this page is to have a place to share these parts of the trip. Right is Pat and I in front of Harry Truman's birthplace in Lamar. I bought a T-Shirt there which I wore to the Nashville Church gathering. There was a reason why I was here. Late in his life Meredith, who no longer recognized his children or grandchildren, related the following story to me and my father. I shivered later when I read his history and found the story had been committed to paper -

        "Two diehard Democrats were born in Barton County, Missouri in the year of 1884. One was Harry Truman, who was later to become President of the United States, and his birthplace is now a shrine at Lamar Mo., the other is your humble servant whose birthplace was destroyed before he could ever remember seeing it." Meredith Crouch

 Meredith left Missouri in 1943, before Harry became president and long before the home was turned into a shrine. I pretty sure he never visited it. If he had, he might have been surprised at how modest the place was compared to the home Meredith was raised in. We know nothing about Meredith's birth home.