Channeling Tom Sawyer in Hannibal, MO
Getting ready for the road trip to visit family down south (for the twentieth year and umpteenth time), I decided it was time to switch the route up a bit.
After spending some time mapping different paths and good places to stay over, Hannibal, Missouri won out. It was the right stopping point, looked like it would be scenic, and gave me the opportunity to share Mark Twain's classic story with our son, John. Required summer reading! For some reason I was more excited about this plan than he was.
This was a mom/son road trip, and as we set out with him in the passenger seat I started playing the final quarter of the book on our iPod, so that I could refresh my memory, and, honestly, be sure that he 'read' some of it - our informal quizzes on 'what happened in the last chapter?' had pretty vague answers.
My plans were put on hold as we headed into Iowa and John fell asleep after 15 minutes. For almost 3 hours. We rolled through the gentle Iowa scenery - it's beautiful in every season:
Mid-afternoon, we made our way into Hannibal. The first thing I noticed was that it was very, very hot. Which I love, but it was a shock to the system. Then, after John and I consulted some local web sites, I realized that we had less then one hour to do our planned visit to the Mark Twain Museum. However, since we are seasoned museum-racers (more on that topic later), we left our luggage in the car and headed on foot to the museum complex a couple of blocks away.
They have done a really nice job with the exhibits, and both John and I enjoyed reading more about Samuel Clemens/Mark Twain as a child and getting his start. The timeline even had a spot for the year in which he took to wearing white suits - who knew? There was a small statue of Mark Twain seated with all of his characters from his books. It was sculpted in miniature as a plan for a life-sized installation, but the Great Depression came along and ruined those plans. It was exquisite, and I wished that it had been fully realized.
We went over to the Huck Finn house, which housed the Blankenship family and their many children - son Tom was the inspiration for the Huck Finn character.
John was amazed to know that this small, one-roomed house was where a family of possibly ten lived. We talked a bit about how many families in the world have many people living in very small spaces. On the wall of the home was this quote:
"In Huckleberry Finn I have drawn Tom Blankenship exactly as he was. He was ignorant, unwashed, insufficiently fed; but he had as good a heart as ever any boy had. His liberties were totally unrestricted. He was the only really independent person—boy or man—in the community, and by consequence he was tranquilly and continuously happy and envied by the rest of us. And as his society was forbidden us by our parents the prohibition trebled and quadrupled its value, and therefore we sought and got more of his society than any other boy's." – Mark Twain's Autobiography.
We also raced down to the Mark Twain Gallery, because at the house museum the staff person was kind enough to call ahead, so they kept the gallery open late for us and several other visitors. There are several original Norman Rockwell paintings made for illustrating Tom Sawyer, including this one:
Of course, no visit would be complete without a little of our own whitewashing action:
For a later post I'll share more about the delicious evening dinner in the Hannibal historic district.
After spending some time mapping different paths and good places to stay over, Hannibal, Missouri won out. It was the right stopping point, looked like it would be scenic, and gave me the opportunity to share Mark Twain's classic story with our son, John. Required summer reading! For some reason I was more excited about this plan than he was.
This was a mom/son road trip, and as we set out with him in the passenger seat I started playing the final quarter of the book on our iPod, so that I could refresh my memory, and, honestly, be sure that he 'read' some of it - our informal quizzes on 'what happened in the last chapter?' had pretty vague answers.
My plans were put on hold as we headed into Iowa and John fell asleep after 15 minutes. For almost 3 hours. We rolled through the gentle Iowa scenery - it's beautiful in every season:
Mid-afternoon, we made our way into Hannibal. The first thing I noticed was that it was very, very hot. Which I love, but it was a shock to the system. Then, after John and I consulted some local web sites, I realized that we had less then one hour to do our planned visit to the Mark Twain Museum. However, since we are seasoned museum-racers (more on that topic later), we left our luggage in the car and headed on foot to the museum complex a couple of blocks away.
They have done a really nice job with the exhibits, and both John and I enjoyed reading more about Samuel Clemens/Mark Twain as a child and getting his start. The timeline even had a spot for the year in which he took to wearing white suits - who knew? There was a small statue of Mark Twain seated with all of his characters from his books. It was sculpted in miniature as a plan for a life-sized installation, but the Great Depression came along and ruined those plans. It was exquisite, and I wished that it had been fully realized.
We went over to the Huck Finn house, which housed the Blankenship family and their many children - son Tom was the inspiration for the Huck Finn character.
John was amazed to know that this small, one-roomed house was where a family of possibly ten lived. We talked a bit about how many families in the world have many people living in very small spaces. On the wall of the home was this quote:
"In Huckleberry Finn I have drawn Tom Blankenship exactly as he was. He was ignorant, unwashed, insufficiently fed; but he had as good a heart as ever any boy had. His liberties were totally unrestricted. He was the only really independent person—boy or man—in the community, and by consequence he was tranquilly and continuously happy and envied by the rest of us. And as his society was forbidden us by our parents the prohibition trebled and quadrupled its value, and therefore we sought and got more of his society than any other boy's." – Mark Twain's Autobiography.
We also raced down to the Mark Twain Gallery, because at the house museum the staff person was kind enough to call ahead, so they kept the gallery open late for us and several other visitors. There are several original Norman Rockwell paintings made for illustrating Tom Sawyer, including this one:
Of course, no visit would be complete without a little of our own whitewashing action:
For a later post I'll share more about the delicious evening dinner in the Hannibal historic district.
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