Mark Twain and 'The Unsinkable Molly Brown' (she survived the Titanic) both hail from Hannibal, Missouri.
It was all interstate driving from Chicago to Springfield, three hours of nondescript farmland laid bare by winter’s chilly disposition. A right turn just south of Springfield put Hannibal, Missouri, America’s self-proclaimed Hometown, within easy reach. Jimmy and I had the boyhood home of Samuel Clemens (yes that would be none other than Mark Twain) in our sights.
The dusty, quiet riverboat town of Hannibal, settled in the early 1800s on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi River, had an uncanny resemblance to Twain’s fictitious hometown of St. Petersburg, right down to protagonist Tom Sawyer’s infamous white-washed picket fence;
The dusty, quiet riverboat town of Hannibal, settled in the early 1800s on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi River, had an uncanny resemblance to Twain’s fictitious hometown of St. Petersburg, right down to protagonist Tom Sawyer’s infamous white-washed picket fence;
 Twain was a master when it came to the foibles of human nature, in this instance the gullibility of Sawyer's friends when coveting that which Sawyer portrayed as special - the chance to paint. |  Wow! Single digit postage, circa 1972. |
right down to the home of love interest Becky Thatcher.
Summer visitors to Hannibal might run into Tom and Becky ambassadors strolling Hannibal's historic district.
right down to the home of Huckleberry Finn.
 Since 1885, this house has been identified as the boyhood home of Tom Blankenship, a.k.a. Tom Sawyer's Huckleberry Finn. |  Jimmy has the same streak of adventure guiding his every waking hour, be it little boy or big boy. |
Ah, wily and resourceful Tom Sawyer, the embodiment of all my childhood adventures and misadventures, of all the magic and mischief of those wonderful and willful years.
Who of us doesn’t identify with Tom Sawyer?
Who of us doesn’t identify with Tom Sawyer?
 In 1890, this was the entrance to the infamous caves that were a big part of Twain's, "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer." |  Hard to imagine little Samuel exploring the vast labyrinth of underground caves with just a candle and spunk. |
I once came perilously close to being bait for an alligator the size of the state of Florida while exploring forbidden portions of the neighborhood, a nearby canal. My heart goes out to the parents of the two-year-old who didn’t fare as well during a recent visit to Disney World.
The boyhood home of Twain has been open to the public since 1912 and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1962. It sits adjacent to a Museum gift shop.
Granted, my childhood home (there were actually many homes given I grew up a military brat although my fondest memories involve two separate periods living in our tiny home in Florida) wasn’t as quaint as Samuel Clemens’,
The sounds of adventure are always within earshot of a child.
but I was just as inclined as Tom Sawyer/Samuel Clemens to steal away in search of the next adventure.
“But the greatest distraction came in fine weather, when through the open window drifted the drowsy summer sounds from Holliday’s Hill, inviting a boy to play hooky as Sam often did, swayed by the sight of idle boys like the Blankenships, ‘whose fathers ain’t able to send them to school,’ playing and chasing butterflies on the slopes of ‘that distant boy-Paradise.’”
Mark Twain at Work, Bernard De Voto, “Boy’s Manuscript,” p. 37; Autobiography, II, 179
Alas, it’s a shame hard times (my two sisters and I shared a single bedroom and slept in one double bed; six family members shared a single bathroom; AND I walked 5 miles to school, uphill both ways!) don’t guarantee literary fame.
“But the greatest distraction came in fine weather, when through the open window drifted the drowsy summer sounds from Holliday’s Hill, inviting a boy to play hooky as Sam often did, swayed by the sight of idle boys like the Blankenships, ‘whose fathers ain’t able to send them to school,’ playing and chasing butterflies on the slopes of ‘that distant boy-Paradise.’”
Mark Twain at Work, Bernard De Voto, “Boy’s Manuscript,” p. 37; Autobiography, II, 179
Alas, it’s a shame hard times (my two sisters and I shared a single bedroom and slept in one double bed; six family members shared a single bathroom; AND I walked 5 miles to school, uphill both ways!) don’t guarantee literary fame.
According to Mark Twain, Hannibal was a "... white town drowsing in the sunshine of a summer morning" until the arrival of a riverboat turned it into a beehive of activity.
Samuel Clemens was born on November 30, 1835, in Florida, Missouri. Hoping to leave hard times behind, Samuel’s father moved the family (Samuel was the sixth of seven children born to John Marshall and Jane Moffit Clemens) 35 miles east to the river town of Hannibal when Samuel was 4.
The Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad was organized in 1846 in the offices of John Marshall Clemens.
Marshall opened a store and eventually became a justice of the peace, which afforded him the title “judge” but not much more by way of cold cash.
All told, 9 properties in Hannibal comprise the Mark Twain Boyhood Home & Museum Complex.
In 1846, unable to dodge the hard times, John Marshall and his family moved across the street to live with Dr. Orville Grant, his wife and his mother-in-law. A year later, when Samuel was 11, John Marshall died of pneumonia. When Samuel’s mother couldn’t afford the 25 cents per week she paid for his education, Samuel dropped out of school (he was a fifth grade student) to become a printer’s apprentice. Two years later he joined his brother Orion’s newspaper, the Hannibal Journal, working as a typesetter and editorial assistant, occasionally contributing articles and humorous sketches of the town. The seeds had been planted for Clemens’ luminous literary career.
Holy hand times! A fifth grader!
Holy hand times! A fifth grader!
Jimmy trying his hand at the wheel, as in riverboat.
At 18, Samuel Clemens left Hannibal, working as a printer for the next few years in New York City, Philadelphia, St. Louis, and Cincinnati. Along the way he educated himself in public libraries when he wasn’t working.
I have never let my schooling interfere with my education. – Mark Twain
But that boy, the one who grew up just a stone’s throw from the mighty Mississippi, never abandoned his dream of becoming a river pilot. Dreams are what keep us all just this side of insanity.
I have never let my schooling interfere with my education. – Mark Twain
But that boy, the one who grew up just a stone’s throw from the mighty Mississippi, never abandoned his dream of becoming a river pilot. Dreams are what keep us all just this side of insanity.
 This statue of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn graces a hill in the town of Hannibal. |  The Mark Twain Memorial Lighthouse was constructed in 1933. |
In 1856 Clemens began a two-year stint as a “cub” pilot with veteran Steamboat pilot Horace E. Bixby, learning how to “read the Mississippi river” between New Orleans and St. Louis. The cost of his two-year education, $500, was payable out of Clemens’ first wages after he earned his pilot’s license in 1858. Samuel Clemens, or should I say Mark Twain (the pseudonym is a river term the leadsman of a boat shouts to indicate a river depth of two fathoms, 12 feet, indicating safe passage for a steamboat) continued to work on the Mississippi River until the American Civil War broke out in 1861. Almost twenty years later, Mark Twain would publish his memoir of those days, Life on the Mississippi.
Twain, as accomplished a speaker as writer, is sometimes referred to as America's first stand-up comedian.
The early years of Twain’s life were as much the stuff of dreams as they were seeds of inspiration for his literary gifts. Wrote Ernest Hemingway of Twain's vivid, raw and not-so-respectable voice of the common folk - 'All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn.'
Indeed, Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain and Huckleberry Finn are national treasures.
The gifted raconteur, distinctive humorist and irascible moralist is a true American treasure, his literary contributions (in particular The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn) still inspiring more commentary one hundred years after his death in 1910 than any other American author.
His wit and wisdom are legendary. Maybe it’s his literary style, particularly suited to travel writing as in anecdotal and digressive without much regard to structure of plot (guilty as charged; but I digress), that has always inspired and appealed to me.
That he was a cantankerous icon in his later years, known for his white hair, white suit and folksy demeanor gives me hope.
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His wit and wisdom are legendary. Maybe it’s his literary style, particularly suited to travel writing as in anecdotal and digressive without much regard to structure of plot (guilty as charged; but I digress), that has always inspired and appealed to me.
That he was a cantankerous icon in his later years, known for his white hair, white suit and folksy demeanor gives me hope.
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