Hannibal, Missouri

In Mark Twain country

This is why this stop is on our itinerary. It's the hundredth anniversary of Mark Twain's death, and with his newly-published autobiography, there's been a renewed interest in America's greatest writer. We can't say that the Mark Twain Boyhood Home and Museum made it very easy for folks to find them; we spent a half hour or so lost. And much of the restoration of some of the buildings--his father's law office, the pharmacy, the Becky Thatcher House--are still works in progress. But being introduced and reintroduced to the fascinating life and prose of the man made the extra miles worth it.

Mark Twain's desk.

The Mark Twain Museum, four blocks away from his Boyhood Home & Museum, offered some artifacts, like the desk above, but mostly there were small tableaux of scenes from Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn:

Huck and Sam and me.

The museum not only captured the spirit of his works--especially Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn--but captured the time and the challenges of Clemens himself. Displays included a wheelhouse similar to those on many of the riverboats he piloted, including a typical bell the pilot would ring for depth, and a typical whistle he would blow for direction. Hmmm...bells and whistles!

Clemens depicted in the pilot house.

A number of other displays include Huck Finns raft, and the wagon below:

Mary Frances aboard the J & B Overland Express

A couple of pleasant surprises upstairs in the museum were a roomful of original Norman Rockwell paintings done as illustrations for new editions of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn (I didn't photograph those--nearly got in trouble last year for taking a photo of a different Rockwell) and another room where a display of quilts having nothing to do with Mark Twain or Tom or Huck or Becky was on display:

Mary F. with her favorite quilt on display: Fan Dance.

From the museum we moved up the street to the Boyhood Home and Interpretive Center, a display which has a lot of development yet to occur, but is fascinating in the way it enables the visitor to see the history of the man side-by-side with the stories he wrote.

Mark Twain in the bedroom of his youth--several rooms in the Clemens House showed the

older man in the rooms of his boyhood home, as if it were his spirit revisiting.

For a ten dollar fee, you can scribble your name on the reproduction of the famous whitewashed fence. We chose a different use for our money and bought his newly-published autobiography.

Mary F. at the famous fence.

There are also a couple of cave tours nearby but the writer's claustrophobia kicked in and we elected make a brief visit to Terrible's Mark Twain Casino, twenty miles or so north in Lagrange, instead.

A pleasant meal at Ruby Tuesday's and back to the hotel in time to catch the final quarter of the Patriot's victory over the Vikings, and Game 4 of the World Serious, as Ring Lardner used to call it.

All in all, a very nice day, and tomorrow we head for Salina, Kansas.