Truman drove the family a thousand miles straight east to Washington. “I was nearly 51 years old at the time, [and] I was as timid as a country boy arriving on the campus of a great university for the first year,” he later wrote. Bess picked out a furnished apartment in a red brick building at 3016 Tilden Street, about five miles from where Truman’s office would be. The four-room apartment was not much bigger than their garage in Independence. The $150 rent made Truman’s eyes bulge; he borrowed money from a local bank and filled the little home with furniture. The new job would raise his
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