Hannibal has had a hard time of it ever since I can recollect, and I was "raised" there. First, it had me for a citizen, but I was too young then to really hurt the place. -- Mark Twain, private letter (1867)
But I reckon I got to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she's going to adopt me and sivilize me, and I can't stand it. I been there before. --
Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884)
 |
| The Mysterious Box |
THE MYSTERIOUS BOX*
kept me enraptured for the biggest part of the night.
Now, because Greyhound also does a sideline on shipping... how they've managed to succeed, I have no idea, since they're expensive and have the same weight restrictions as the USPS... there are always boxes. And people do pack boxes to travel. So it's not the mere presence of a box that bothers me.
What bothers me is that in some other, more affluent context... if it was even sitting by an Amtrak Gate... an abandoned box would garner more attention. If it was at an airport, they'd call out the bomb squad, the squat team. The Department of Homeland Security would be involved, and maybe the FBI. News trucks would crowding in as close as possible, cameras angled to catch the low on the totem pole talking heads AND the box in the same shot so the audience can get a palpable sense of What Is Really Happening.
But this Mysterious Box, left between Gate 2 and Gate 3 at the St. Louis Greyhound Bus Depot, gets none of that. At one point last night, a custodian stood next to the box and leaned on her push broom to watch some talentless hack yodel on The Voice. And then she swept AROUND the box and moved on.
Really.
And can I just say... I hate musicals. Really. Rogers and Hammerstein, if there's a hell, belong in it for the abomination that is Oklahoma! If that doesn't convince you, The Sound of Music sure as hell should. The hills are alive my ass. The Hills Have Eyes, and they turn yodeling nuns into meth hookers like THAT (snap.)
But I left The Mysterious Box and the fairly insulated climate of the bus depot in order to go to Hannibal, the boyhood home of one Samuel Clemens... who later wrote himself in Mark Twain.
Now, I realize that there's a cottage industry taking license and making money on his pen name and image. In fact, one of the pictures I DIDN'T take was of the new Chamber of MOTHER FUCKING Commerce Building at the corner of Main and Broadway. Not only did they have his image and signature etched into the large window glass, they had dolls... full sized mannequins... of children dressed like Tom Sawyer and Becky. [CREEPY SHIT. Even for a disorganized body like a Chamber of MOTHER FUCKING Commerce.]
So I avoided the museum, the hotel, and the tour of his childhood home. I didn't want to go see the version of Mark Twain they were buying and selling... even more than he, in the end, bought and sold himself. I wanted to see if I could catch a glimpse of what it was he saw. Foolish, I know, since Hannibal, like every other small town in America, is trying to figure out how to survive.
If you want to find the heart and soul of a small town, you need to get away from the interstate by-pass as quickly as possible. The buildings along the by-pass is the stuff they want strangers to see.
And if the town happens to be a river town, then you need to go in search of the river, since that's where the place began. All river towns... Hannibal, Missouri, Savanna, Illinois, Maysville, Kentucky, all of them... crawled out of river commerce. Businesses brought houses, bars, brothels, deep shadows. Most river towns try and hide this part of themselves... tourists aren't nearly as impressed by the easy access to meth and hookers as they are to restored steamboats turned into restaurants and old timey musak being piped onto the streets. (No, Hannibal isn't doing that. Yet.)
The bus dropped me off at the Hardees on James Street, near the interstate. I looked around for signs of where the river might be and headed in that direction, figuring that either the landscape or the buildings would tell me. I walked through a lot of residential neighborhood between the businesses close to the by-pass and center of town. Except for a family style pizza and sub restaurant, there was no hint of a bar until I was past the Marion County Administration Building. I was glad to see more than a few hole in the wall bars, and regretful that I had neither the money nor the time ... okay, I didn't have the money... to sit down and drink a beer.
I have no idea what this gloriously dilapidated house on Broadway and Sixth used to be. But there's a bar in the basement, the Down Under Lounge. Today was Taco Tuesday. I didn't stop.
In addition to selling the soul of Mark Twain for the sake of a greasy buck -- which is, I realize, no more than he did to himself -- Hannibal does venerate other important citizens. Like a lawyer:
No really. He's a lawyer. He did something else, according to the plaque, created some Office of Some Thing or Another at the federal level. So not only was he a lawyer, he was a bureaucrat.
Perfect.any mention of the Hannibal that Clemens might known is filtered through the cheese cloth of nostalgia. The new Chamber of Commerce building is proof of that. I know I'm talking about it and not posting pictures. But I was afraid one of them might see me and take it as some encouragement to continue. I don't know if the kids Twain had in mind really dressed that way or if it was some flight of fancy by the original illustrator that put Tom Sawyer in bib overalls and a corn straw hat... an ensemble that looks more in place in a Norman Rockwell painting than a what is essentially a murder mystery. (Read Tom Sawyer. Not now. Later. But read it. The same with Huck Finn.)
When I finally made it to the river... which meant crossing a set of railroad tracks... I felt a certain amount of ease. True, it's not the place Sam Clemens knew growing up. There's no real sense of how he ended up becoming Mark Twain in any of the landscape. So when I say, he wrote himself INTO Mark Twain, that's what I mean. We're a voyeur culture. That's why his boyhood home is such a economic nugget. Our culture likes to lay people open and dissect them, generally misinterpreting them in the process. In this, we're a bloody and efficient culture that has learned to reduce everyone... writers, artists, computer technicians... to a niche. Categorize and dismiss. Mark Twain is a grouch with white hair and mustache who wrote quaint books no one reads and everyone finds offensive. A bureaucrat deserves a statue, a plaque, and an addtional sign (yes) that repeats what the plaque says. The Chamber of MOTHER FUCKING Commerce deserves a prominent building in the newer part of town, but downtown, an empty store front window can read
BUILDING FOR SALE, LEASE, OR TRADE.
But that's just commerce, right? The way the ball bounces. And to be fair, Mark Twain had no issue with commerce... merely the greed that tends to accompany it.
The best part of Hannibal was sitting down at the river, staring at the water, and thinking about the face that just over on the other side of that river, there are people I care about very much, and who are amazingly supportive my need to wander, even if they don't understand. I'm not sure I understand. There's a lot going on with me that I don't quite understand. But I like that I don't. The only reason I picked Hannibal, Missouri to visit was because I love Mark Twain -- the older, darker, slightly annoyed that no one ever got the joke Mark Twain -- and because I had never been there before. I never had any intention of doing the tours, even if I had the money. Because that is a different trip than this one.
And while I have lonely moments, I never feel alone. The people I care about and who care about me know (I hope) that I carry them with me like I carry my blue rucksack. I think of them daily. I don't expect them to think of me, but I know some of them do...which is a nice feeling. Warm and fuzzy and full of a deep longing to see them again, to tell them about my traveling, and to make them feel like they're with me.
Yes, I have my sentimental moments. Lately I've rediscovered that not only do I like honest gushing mushiness, but that it's good for the soul. So suck on my left nut and deal with it.
People often cite Huck Finn as one of those idyllic characters from a nostalgic time. So much more innocent than we... the pinnacle that we imagine ourselves. Huck, who, like Twain, grew up in a world desensitized to human misery and degradation. Huck, though, unlike Tom Sawyer, had no intention of being anything other than himself. He is at once a parody, a paragon, and a prototype. One that we ought to be paying more attention to.
[THANKS FOR READING. Remember, if you like what you read...
- Share the link
- Contribute to the Travel Fund (I'll thank you on the blog)
- Share the link
ALSO: In my bum rush to get out of Louisville in some dignified manner... which, admittedly, didn't work... I forgot to thank Amanda and Shawn and Heather for putting up with me. I had a blast and was able to renew a friendship that is very important to me. A good time all the way around. :) ]
__________________________________________________________
*At the time of publication, The Mysterious Box remains unmoved, unexplained, and unopened.