Mark Twain ManiaJun 7, 2011
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Mark Twain Home and Tom Sawyer's fence
Becky Thatcher's home
Art hard at work :)
| We went from “Everything Lincoln” while we were in Springfield, Illinois to “Everything Mark Twain” in Hannibal, Missouri. Hannibal is where Samuel Clemens aka Mark Twain spent most of his years growing up. The characters in many of his famous books such as The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn were based upon the people in this town. I’m amazed how he can weave a story about incidents that occurred when he was a so young. His works were translated into many language, and like Lincoln, he become an American icon. The city capitalizes on his fame. There’s an interpretive center and a museum. You can tour his boyhood home, see Becky Thatcher’s house (undergoing renovation), see the office where his father worked as Justice of the Peace, see the fence where Tom Sawyer persuaded his friends to pay him for the privilege of painting and attended a re-enactment of one of his lectures by a Twain look-alike. Now, I barely remember reading Mark Twain but I know that he traveled widely and was a voracious writer with thousands of published articles. Therefore, I felt the museum could have done a better job of showing the influence he had as a worldwide celebrity, author and humorist. While the city is everything Twain, the stores do a pretty good job of keeping the kitsch to a reasonable level. We enjoyed our visit here and would recommend a stop. While we were in Hannibal, there was a BBQ and blues festival going on so we got to taste some delicious pork and beef BBQ. Yumm. The temperatures soared to nearly 100 degrees so we also spent some time in the library to keep cool and catch up on reading the newspapers and magazines. Next Stop is another city along the Mississippi River - Nauvoo, Illinois – settled by Mormons and designated a National Historic Landmark District. |
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