May 24th - Hannibal, Missouri

We spent the day in pursuit of Mark Twain, who was raised in Missouri and whose writings I have always enjoyed. Our first stop was town of Florida, Missouri, which was small in his day and is smaller to the point of almost vanishing today. The town has a plaque where Mark Twain’s birthplace was located, but the cottage itself has been moved about a half a mile away to a small Mark Twain shrine built by the State of Missouri. The cottage is furnished with period furniture and an adjacent room holds a small set of exhibits about his life and career. He certainly did have some adventures before settling down to a career of writing—these came from time spent as a Confederate militiaman, newspaper editor, miner, and riverboat pilot.

But my how he could write. He had the same knack as the German Erich Kaestner (see Wanderung 2) in making everyday experiences quite engaging and often very funny. Twain’s descriptions of trying to cope with the idiosyncrasies of one of the first typewriters, and his encounters with dogs while riding an early high-wheel bicycle were just hilarious. Similarly, his insouciance when first applying for the job of riverboat pilot was a completely believable depiction of the overweening pride of youth. He figured there wasn’t much to the job as the river always led to the next town and you just had to keep the boat in the middle of it to get there.

From Twain’s birthplace we drove further east to Hannibal, Missouri, which lies on the Mississippi River. The town was having some kind of a festival or something—the streets in the historic section were lined with arts, crafts, and food vendors. The latter was particularly auspicious for us since it was lunchtime. I had a turkey leg with potatoes and Monika a pork steak sandwich. Both were huge, so we decided for the future that just buying one order and splitting it would make a lot more sense than having to throw food away, which I, in particular, just hate to do.

The historic district is just three square blocks, so we could see it rather quickly but touring the museums took more time. The museum complex consists of five buildings including Twain’s boyhood home and Becky Thatcher’s house, all well preserved and outfitted with period furniture. Twain’s father had his financial ups and downs, but the family seemed to always recover until the father died when Twain was 11. That ended his schooling at the 5th grade, which makes his subsequent literary career all the more remarkable.

In some ways this reminds me of my father who had his education ended after only seven years by the death of his mother and incapacitation of his father. In my father’s case, he went ahead and took the exam for an 8th grade diploma and passed it. After a stint in the oil fields, he advanced to work in research and development in the 1930s at Chicago Steel and Wire Company. Just goes to show it’s what you make of your education, not how much you have. Of course, it’s a whole lot easier to get ahead in modern society with an education, a point my mother often emphasized.

Twain’s boyhood home was completed outfitted with period furniture, and some of it belonged to his family, I think. The furnishings were nice, middle-class items on the whole, but of course the family slave had to sleep on the floor of the kitchen. Twain was asked about his thoughts on slavery later in life, and he said that since everybody accepted it and the preachers could show you bible verses that said slavery was OK, he never questioned it. That explained in part why at the beginning of the Civil War he joined a Confederate militia. They spent, as he said, their entire time retreating from the Federals and he became an expert at retreating if not fighting. Some of his later literary work is clearly written from the anti-slavery point of view, and I would very much like to know when and how Twain started to have this completely different point of view on slavery.