America's Hometown

Hannibal, Missouri is a town with a big heart.  Not content with being Mark Twain's childhood haunt, this town of nearly 18,000 people wants all its visitors to feel welcome here in 'America's Hometown.'  We couldn't think of a better place to spend the 4th of July than this Mississippi river town in the northeast corner of Missouri.

Well, I can think of a few other memorable locations where we've celebrated Independence Day.  There was the 4th of July summer symphony concert and fireworks display in Colorado Springs' Memorial Park where Tim popped The Question and lost his independence by marrying me.  I can also recall numerous celebrations on the rooftop of our home in Tucson, the best vantage point for watching the fireworks displayed by several of the city's resorts.  Finally for many years, we joined approximately half-a-million Americans on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. for a Capitol 4th concert that always ended with the stirring sounds of Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture as the opening salvo of cannons and rockets lit up the sky.  But I'd have to say that for homespun charm, Hannibal takes the cake.

Many small towns hold parades and a few even host arts & crafts fairs, but nowhere else may you watch wannabe Tom Sawyers compete in whitewashing a fence.  And that's not the only test.

Teens with an encyclopedic knowledge of Twain's literary masterpiece and Hannibal history go through several rounds of auditioning to make it to the top ten finalists who will portray Tom and Becky Thatcher at appearances throughout the year.

Their first responsibility is to lead the parade down Broadway to Main Street.

The parade was a spectacle that included the fire department's pumper truck, shriners on scooters, break dancers from the academy of dance and a cement-mixer truck masquerading as Uncle Sam.  All sashayed down the street to the tune of John Phillip Souza's Stars and Stripes Forever played by the high school marching band.

After the parade, the crowd dispersed as families headed off to sample the many attractions of Hannibal.  The Mark Twain Hotel, the Mark Twain Riverboat, the Mark Twain Cave--are you beginning to see a pattern here?  I believe Twain himself would be proud to see how his hometown has prospered by appropriating his name for its many attractions.

"I was born the 30th of November, 1835, in the almost invisible village of Florida, Missouri...[My parents'] first crop of children was born [in Tennessee], but as I was of a later vintage, I do not remember anything about it.  I was postponed--postponed to Missouri.  Missouri was an unknown new state and needed attractions."  ~ Autobiography of Mark Twain

Mark Twain's Boyhood Home

We decided the best place to start our exploration of the town was to visit Mark Twain's Boyhood Home.  For the price of one ticket, we gained entry six properties.

Becky Thatcher's House

Becky's house was actually the home of Laura Hawkins, a lifelong friend of Twain.

Huckleberry Finn's House

I had a hard time believing that Huckleberry Finn ever lived in a house.  So I was reassured to learn that was the home of another of Twain's childhood friends, Tom Blankenship, upon whom Twain based the character of Huckleberry Finn.  The office of his father, J.M. Clemens, who was Hannibal's Justice of the Peace Office, the Interpretive Center and the Museum Gallery were the other three properties.

In the Museum Gallery are the illustrations Norman Rockwell created for the 1935 editions of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.  To make his drawings as authentic as possible, Rockwell visited the city of Hannibal and the famous Mark Twain Cave.

There he realized that all the previous illustrators of Twain's classics had got it wrong.  They'd painted the cave with stalactites hanging from the roof when it was actually a limestone formation where rock had fallen away leaving horizontal jutting ledges and a corridor that led deep into the bluff.

Ready to get out on the river, Tim and I climbed aboard the Mark Twain Riverboat for a hour's ride.  Among the sights pointed out by the pilot were

The Mark Twain Memorial Bridge

See?  What did I tell you! Every place in and near Hannibal is named for Mark Twain.

Lovers' Leap

We restrained ourselves from making the plunge and in the background, Jackson's Island, the real landmark that famously became Huck and Injun Joe's hideout in Twain's book.

Finally, it was time for the fireworks.  We, along with hundreds of Hannibal natives and visitors, climbed to the top of the levee that protects the city from flooding.

From that vantage point, we watched the pyrotechnics as they were launched from Lovers' Leap into the darkened sky.  The end to a very memorable 4th of July.