Hannibal

by Dennis Goza
December 2001

In Hannibal, Missouri, you bump into Mark Twain everywhere you turn. Mark Twain Family Restaurant. Huck Finn Shopping Plaza. Becky Thatcher's Café. Injun Joe Campground. Pudd'n'head's Collectibles. And for a measure of reality to balance out the fiction, there's even the Hotel Clemens, one of the few instances of the author's real name being used. For an even heavier dose of reality, you can travel a few miles down the road and deposit some money at the Mark Twain Casino. You have to chuckle at the irony of a gaming establishment being named for a man who lost a fortune in risky ventures and even commented that "There are two times in a man's life when he shouldn't speculate-when he can't afford to, and when he can."

At any rate, Twain was born Samuel Langhorne Clemens in 1835 near the tiny town of Florida. When he was 4, Sam's father, a justice of the peace, transplanted the family to the metropolis of Hannibal (current population 18,000). The budding literary icon spent his formative years here, only a couple of blocks from the Mississippi River, which would become a dominant supporting character in some of his stories. In the process, he was exposed to a number of colorful personalities and events - including a shooting death on the street - that he later would weave so skillfully into his fiction. What's surprising is that virtually the entire book of Tom Sawyer appears to have been set within a radius of 3 or 4 blocks.

Many of the houses with which young Sam was familiar are still standing, although at least one of them is standing in a different location. (It was moved; it didn't move by itself!) The Clemens family home has been restored to a very authentic approximation of its condition about 150 years ago, a standard of living that may have been considered somewhat comfortable then, but now appears grimly spartan. Apparently there wasn't even a kitchen stove - the meals were cooked over an open hearth, if this restoration is accurate. One easily can imagine the lad sneaking out of his second storey bedroom window in the middle of the night to indulge in some mischief with his buddy Tom Blankenship, archetype of Huck Finn.

Across the street is the home of schoolmate Laura Hawkins, with whom Clemens was so smitten that he once deliberately misspelled a word in a spelling competition, so that she could win. He later would fictionalize and immortalize her as Becky Thatcher.

Next door is the tiny chamber where Justice Clemens presided over his sometimes rowdy cases. And next to that is Grant's Drug Store, above which the Clemens family lived for a time when finances went sour. Vintage pills, powders and potions are on display, as well as a corkscrew-like device used for wrenching out teeth. Fluoride, anyone?

A short distance up the street is Cardiff Hill, where the boys romped and cavorted for hours on end. Past the statue of Tom and Huck (believed to be the first statue erected in the U.S. to honor fictional characters), and up the wooden steps that probably weren't there in Twain's time, you get a commanding view of Ole Man River and Jackson's Island, a legendary hideout in Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. It's easy to imagine how this steep and somewhat treacherous hill, especially in the rather more densely thicketed condition it sported in times past, could provide a rich cache of inspiration for young adventurers. Having devoured the books as a child and enacted the episodes myself, I found it richly satisfying to be actually standing on the fabled landscape where much of the action supposedly occurred. I suppose it would be difficult for an imaginative, perceptive individual who spent his childhood exploring such an environment not to grow up to be a spellbinding storyteller.

On the way back down, I couldn't resist pausing for a moment to sit on a huge flat rock and gaze out at the Mississippi. I wasn't the least bit tired; I just had to park my bottom, if only briefly, in a spot where Mark Twain surely parked his. Yes, I know that the derriere can't absorb residual talent from over a century ago, but I had to make the gesture anyway.

On our initial visit to Hannibal, some 9 years ago, we spent an evening at the Main Street Dinner Theatre. In addition to a musical revue, there were excellent impersonators of Twain, and of another famous Hannibal resident, Molly Brown - who amassed a fortune, survived the Titanic disaster, saved the lives of several other passengers, and organized a relief drive for needy survivors. (Another prominent local was William Lear, inventor of the Lear Jet and -- more important as far as we are concerned -- the automobile radio.)

This time however, we came too late in the season to catch a show, or to bump cameras with other tourists. Actually, I prefer it that way. Walking the abandoned streets on a chilly night, I almost could hear the silver-maned satirist walking behind me, contemplating the mysteries of the river beside us.

Still, we also have a hankering to see the town bustling with activity. Specifically, we've been wanting for some time to attend Tom Sawyer Days, an internationally known, and heavily attended celebration held every July 4th weekend. And guess what? We got our wish! Immediately after our performance at the library, we were invited to come back for two shows on July 3rd. So we'll give you a full report as soon as we've scrubbed the whitewash from our overalls.