Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
limb, told his physician, 'I seem to have cut my durn arm off, Doc.' ” It's never: “Jones,
spurting blood, jumped around hysterically for twenty minutes, fell into a swoon and then
tried to run in four directions at once,” which is how it would be with you or me. Farm-
ers simply don't feel pain-that little voice in your head that tells you not to do something
because it's foolish and will hurt like hell and for the rest of your life somebody will have
to cut up your food for you doesn't speak to them. My grandfather was just the same. He
would often be repairing the car when the jack would slip and he would call out to you to
come and crank it up again as he was having difficulty breathing, or he would run over his
footwiththelawnmower,ortouchalivewire,shortingoutthewholeofWinfieldbutleav-
inghimselfunscathedapartfromaringingintheearsandacertainlingeringsmellofburnt
flesh. Like most people from the rural Midwest, he was practically indestructible. There
are only three things that can kill a farmer: lightning, rolling over in a tractor and old age.
It was old age that got my grandfather.
I drove on forty miles south to Hannibal, and went to see Mark Twain's boyhood home, a
trimandtidywhitewashedhousewithgreenshutterssetincongruouslyinthemiddleofthe
downtown.Itcosttwodollarstogetinandwasadisappointment.Itpurportedtobeafaith-
fulreproductionoftheoriginalinteriors,buttherewerewiresandwatersprinklersclumsily
evident in every room. I also very much doubt that young Samuel Clemens's bedroom had
Armstrong vinyl on the floor (the same pattern as in my mother's kitchen, I was interested
to note) or that his sister's bedroom had a plywood partition in it. You don't actually go
in the house; you look through the windows. At each window there is a recorded message
tellingyouaboutthatroomasifyouwereamoron(“Thisisthekitchen.ThisiswhereMrs.
Clemens would prepare the family's meals. . . .”). The whole thing is pretty shabby, which
wouldn't be so awful if it were owned by some underfunded local literary society and they
were doing the best they could with it. In fact, it is owned by the city of Hannibal and it
draws 135,000 visitors a year. It's a little gold mine for the town.
I proceeded from window to window behind a bald fat guy, whose abundant rolls of flesh
made him look as if he were wearing an assortment of inner tubes beneath his shirt. “What
do you think of it?” I asked him.
He fixed me with that instant friendliness Americans freely adopt with strangers. It is their
most becoming trait.
“Oh, I think it's great. I come here whenever I'm in Hannibal-two, three times a year. So-
metimes I go out of my way to come here.”
“Really?” I tried not to sound dumbfounded.
