Hannibal, MO: Mark Twain’s boyhood home, Lucky to be alive, Cricket eating
We visited Mark Twain’s boyhood home and saved money when we bought the admission on Groupon before entering the museum. Mark Twain has the curious distinction of being one of the most celebrated and banned American authors. He popularized writing in the American vernacular and his subjects of race and individualism have been a source of controversy in 1885 as well as today. It has been said that all modern American literature comes from the books ‘The Adventures of Tom Sawyer’ and ‘Huckleberry Finn’.
Mark Twain, born Samuel Clemens in 1835, could tell a story. He grew up on the Missouri frontier and his childhood stories and the people he knew and met became the setting for the wildly popular ‘Adventures of Tom Sawyer.’ Mark Twain WAS Tom Sawyer in his youth and his friend Tom Blankenship was Huckleberry Finn. We purchased a book from the gift shop and the cashier embossed the first page with an official stamp since the book came from Mark Twain’s home.
The white-haired, Einstein-looking writer in the white suit had more than one career. In his 20s, Twain piloted steamboats on the Mississippi River. Fun fact: “Mark Twain” is a term boatmen called out to indicate a fathom, or 12-feet deep water, which is safe for riverboat navigation. Twain left riverboating when the Civil War broke out.
Interesting fact: At age 11, Mark Twain’s father died of pneumonia and the family moved in with Dr. Grant’s family across the street until they could get on their feet. Dr. Grant was first cousins with Ulysses S. Grant, the President of the United States! So Mark Twain was friends with the President and years later published the POTUS memoir post-mortem which helped the U.S. Grant family get out of debt when Grant passed from cancer.
Life was hard growing up in the 1800s. The Hannibal Gazette printed in 1847 that ‘one quarter of the children born die before they are one year old; one half die before they are 21, and not one quarter reach the age of 40.’ Check out the photo of the wheel of misfortune. Many pandemics of yellow fever, measles, typhoid, and cholera took lives on a recurring basis.
After visiting Twain’s boyhood home and surrounding properties, we walked a block to the wide Mississippi River and saw steamboats parked at the dock and Mark Twain’s pilot statue. At the nearby ice cream shop, the owner said that the Mississippi River is slow moving but mighty. You would not want to swim in it as there are dangerous undertows.
Do you know what ice cream we got? You bet it was huckleberry ice cream! Huckleberries taste a lot like a cross between a blue berry and a blackberry. The ice cream tasted so good!
On a fun and adventurous note, after visiting the Mark Twain museums, Nathan and Ava ate dried crickets today! These cheese and bacon-flavored crickets were bought at the local ice cream shop. Nathan’s been wanting to try them.
The overall opinion from the kids is that they aren’t too bad. Ava equated it to stale popcorn with flavoring. Nathan said the crickets dissolve quickly into powder in your mouth. The kids are now ready for an adventurous culinary show!
Some additional fun photos from the day
