Twain agrees with Hannibalians that his childhood friend Tom Blankenship is the model for Huckleberry Finn. I suspect Tom Blankenship’s soul is soaring—wherever it ended up—to see a $300,000 structure represent the shack where Huck plotted when his Pap passed out. No matter what Tom Blankenship thinks, a high-rent shack signals a step forward for the citizens of Hannibal to embrace their culture, warts and all, in a fashion befitting their favorite son. It’s a tougher leap for the town to come to grips with acknowledging Huck’s costar Jim, the runaway slave. For folks whose eyeballs are between their ears, it’s common knowledge that racism can surface in a small town But it’s particularly difficult to deal with the vestiges of racism in this famous river town, named after an African genius.
One by one, all my Hannibal family died and each time one died, we’d gather after the burial for a meal at the Mark Twain Dinette. Now, they’re all in one cemetery or another, so I consumed my giant tenderloin alone, uninterrupted, in no hurry to visit much of anything else in Hannibal on this trip.
I slept that night in a place that was built for reclining but not sleeping. Lula Belle’s is a bed & breakfast down by the river and the railroad tracks, those two commercial conduits that supplied a steady stream of business for Lula Belle’s original purpose. Dad was just a young kid when his neighborhood gang, the RinkyDinks, would ride their bicycles to the riverfront, and hide in the weeds across the street from Lula Belle’s.
Back then, the place wasn’t called Lula Belle’s. And callers didn’t stick around for breakfast. The kids would gasp and squeal as they recognized pillars of the community slipping in, sneaking out.
Lying in that old bordello with the ghosts of the oldest profession, I fell asleep repeating the mantra, “Nothing’s better than a good night’s sleep.” Next morning I aroused to the scent of brewing coffee, and the next great adventure.
***
Before he died, John Clemens, Mark Twain’s father, was an early partner in building the old Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad, which, as one might suspect, leads from Hannibal to St. Joseph. Nobody rides those rails anymore, since a modern highway can deliver a driver from Hannibal to St. Jo between meals.
That was my goal when I left Hannibal, to be seated for dinner at the old Hoof & Horn, a historic steakhouse on the hide of St. Jo’s stockyards.
But on my way, I took a detour. And another. With no plan, I began a string of shortcuts that lasted beyond a dozen years, a journey that left my tire tracks along every mile of every road on my highway map.
My traveling companion was with me, the only partner that accompanied me on every mile of every Missouri road. It wasn’t Cheryl, who married me 35 years ago. She tolerates my travels, but has no desire to ride shotgun. Can’t blame her. Not everybody has the good sense to spend whole days crisscrossing county roads for the simple reason that they exist, checking off an alphabet soup of road signs, intent on discovering nothing in particular.
Our two daughters, having real lives of their own, agree with their mother about my foolish compulsion. Truth is, only one partner could put up with my aimless wandering: I met her in a car lot a dozen years ago. She was sleek and new and lipstick red, and even though I didn’t realize it at the time, she would carry me faithfully from beginning to end of this journey.
The car’s name is Erifnus Caitnop. She shares in every discovery herein, so the “we” in this odyssey refers to my ride and me. Erifnus and I covered more miles than the combined travels of Marco Polo and Magellan, Columbus and Zebulon Pike, Lewis and Clark and Dr. Livingstone. The only difference between us and those other explorers is that their amazing feats of bravery, skill and sacrifice changed the world. We just drove around. A lot.
Aside from the few intrepid reporters who rode along with me from time to time, I rarely could interest anybody to take these long treks into the middle of nowhere.
Can’t blame them.
The Avenue of the Greats
During the Great Depression, Dad was a hitchhiker by necessity. He was a poor college student in Kirksville, Missouri, with no car, not even money for a bus ticket. So he used his thumb.
In those days, Truman State University was called Kirksville State Teachers College. It was a suitcase school, and every weekend Dad would hitchhike back to his home on the outskirts of Hannibal, to a town called Oakwood where the only thing harder than Depression life was the well water. One Friday afternoon after his class, he packed his cardboard suitcase and walked to the highway to thumb a ride home.
On Highway 63 near Kirksville’s south city limits, he dropped his bag with the purple college pennant plastered on its side, and he stuck out his thumb. His goal was to reach the Macon junction and head east to Hannibal. A multitude of cars bypassed him as he stood with his thumb out. In the distance, he noticed a sleek black limousine approaching. He figured it was useless to stick out his thumb, but he did anyway out of habit. The limousine slowed. He couldn’t see anything through the car’s window shades. The car rolled past him and pulled to the shoulder. He was still hesitant to run after the car. The chauffeur got out. Dad picked up his bag and ran to catch up.
“Where ya headed?” the chauffeur asked.
“Hannibal.”
“Are you a Kirksville student?”
“I am.”
“Well, we’d like to give you a lift, at least as far as Macon. We’ll have to let you out there, since you’re going east and we’re headed west.”
The driver put Dad’s bag in the trunk and opened the passenger door. Seated inside was a distinguished white-haired man who could have passed for Mark Twain’s ghost. But Dad knew it wasn’t Mark Twain’s ghost, since the car wasn’t headed to Hannibal.
The chauffeur made the introduction: “This is J.C. Penney.” Even back in the ’30s, Penney was in his sixties. “We’re happy to have a Kirksville student to ride with us,” he welcomed Dad.
“Well, I appreciate the ride, especially with you....” Dad stammered.
Penney explained why he stopped: “It’s Friday, you look like a student, you have the emblems on your bag. I enjoy conversations with college students because I get ideas about merchandising. I don’t get enough opportunities to talk to people directly about what they want.”
They talked for the hour it took to reach Macon. Dad told Penney about the things he’d like to buy in a department store, a long list from a kid mired at the bottom of the Great Depression. Dad hopped out, thanked Penney and the chauffeur, and thumbed east to Hannibal. Penney headed west, home to Hamilton. They both were following a road that would become the Avenue of the Greats.
***
West of Hannibal just off that highway, Dad’s grandfather lies in a peaceful cemetery next to a church that struggles against time. Like the pastoral setting where he’s buried, Daniel O’Dwyer was a man of peace—mostly. Oh, there’s strong evidence that he liked whiskey more than gravy. He’d stand in the churchyard after services and get drunk with his cronies while their families waited in wagons, shivering cold. And yes, sometimes when he got drunk he would fight, but never in the churchyard and never in front of the family.
Years before, he had been a Catholic priest in his native County Cork, Ireland, until the church excommunicated him for falling in love with a girl who became my great-grandmother. They came to this country and dropped the overtly Irish “O’” from their name. He became a teacher, and she became a mother to their nine children, and when he died—murdered by horse thieves