Vacationing With Mark Twain
In The Town That Time Forgot
It was one of those somewhat annoying but minor change of plans, that on their face appear genuinely random, but when played out, lead us to just the place we were meant to be at just the moment we were meant to be there. This particular detour helped reacquaint me with an old friend, a writer of some renown, whom I was pleased to discover had grown more profound with time despite the seeming handicap of being deceased these past ninety-five years.
A rare occurrence at our house is the alignment of four schedules that produce a few days on the calendar when no appointments are penciled in. These tend to stand amid the dates nearly covered with the demands of modern life. It is at such times of revelation that my wife or I will suggest the need for a family get-away to take advantage of those free moments.
So it was a few weeks ago when we decided to spend a few days in Quincy, Illinois. My wife, Sue, had spent her freshman year in college there and we had both enjoyed an earlier visit to this picturesque community of lovingly preserved Victorian homes. Sue volunteers behind the scenes in community theater and we decided it would be fun to take in a local musical production and bought tickets on line.
We also noticed there was going to be a Blues Festival that weekend in the town square. Just an added bonus we thought, till we started calling around for hotel reservations. It seems the festival was a lot more popular than we imagined and there wasn’t a decent hotel room to be had in Quincy that weekend. Not wanting to give up our plans or our theater tickets we resolved to stay in Hannibal and drive to Quincy.
This decision resulted in the discovery of the scientific curiosity that it is thirty miles to Quincy from Hannibal if you follow the Missouri Highway signs, but only seventeen miles if you cross the Mississippi at Hannibal and take the county roads in Illinois. We also discovered a sad fact...Hannibal is dying of neglect.
The main museum and Twain boyhood home are well cared for and professionally operated. So are a few restaurants and shops. But many other attractions and many of the historic buildings on Main Street and downtown are not. Getting away from downtown, there are some better areas of town, but there are also areas of abject poverty. Like an aging dowager, there is a general sense of declining fortunes. The movie industry even had to come to St. Charles to film Back To Hannibal.
Quincy, in contrast, is Hannibals smarter and better looking twin...the one that got all the breaks. Quincy became a center for making iron stoves, rope, wagons and supplying the many things needed for Westward Expansion. Its old downtown commercial buildings are on average five stories tall to Hannibals two. It has many more mansions and great homes built by the captains of industry and river trade.
But like the riverboats that brought prosperity, those industries faded with time. But Quincy was able to reinvent itself. Proof was in the $1.7 million dollar community theater where our family enjoyed a wonderful evening and the many newer hotels that were booked solid for the weekend.
Despite the state in which we found Hannibal in, having part of our family getaway detoured there turned out to be a fortunate turn. It helped me rediscover the real Mark Twain in the pages of a book I picked up in the museum gift shop. My daughter also picked up a shirt with this classic Mark Twain zinger, “Suppose you are a Congressman, and suppose you are an idiot, but I repeat myself.” My book took longer to read, but her shirt might get read by more people.
The book is called The Bible According To Mark Twain, and is a collection of some of his lesser known works including the poignant Extracts From Adam’s Diary and moving Eve’s Diary. What is so ironic about Hannibal being a town that time forgot, is that the writings of its number one citizen are timeless. They are as bitingly relevant today as when Twain wrote them.
Twain was such a prolific writer because he had a never ending source of inspiration. “A man’s experiences of life are a book. There was never yet an uninteresting life. Such a thing is an impossibility. Inside of the dullest exterior, there is a drama, a comedy and a tragedy.” (Mark Twain The Refuge Of Derelicts)
What Hannibal has to offer visitors isn’t just Tom Sawyer, Becky Thatcher and Huck Finn. They can lay claim to one of the world’s most brilliant political satirists and humorists of all time. Read Glances At History sometime to see just how relevant Mark Twain has become with age. Offended by those who questioned the patriotism of those who disagreed with the party in power over a war in the Philippines, Twain wrote passionately:
“...Our Country right or wrong! An empty phrase, a silly phrase...And every man who failed to shout it or who was silent, was proclaimed a traitor - none but those others were patriots. To be a patriot, one had to say, and keep on saying, “Our Country, right or wrong,”...Each must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, and which course is patriotic and which isn’t. You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide it against your convictions is to be an unqualified and inexcusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let men label you as they may. If you alone of all the nation shall decide one way, and that way be the right way according to your conviction of the right, you have done your duty to yourself and by your country...”
2010 will be the 100th anniversary of Mark Twain’s death. It would be a fitting time for the State of Missouri to celebrate the continuing contribution of her most famous native son. A man who hasn’t let the inconvenience of his death get in the way of continuing to make people laugh, to think, or more importantly...to think for themselves.
Four years isn’t long to get ready for what could be an international media event. I would recommend the Governor take the lead and offer State funding for a major redevelopment plan for Hannibal and to marshal such individual, corporate, local, State and Federal assistance as needed for its implementation. Hannibal is often the first (and last) impression tourists and visitors get of the entire State. The people of Hannibal deserve better and the memory of Mark Twain deserves better.
