Author: Paul Gerald

When I was dropped off at the airport in Oregon, it was 11 p.m., 47
degrees, and drizzling. I was wearing long pants, a sweater, and a wide-brim
leather hat, but in my carry-on bag were a pair of shorts, sandals, and a T-
shirt. With cool rain dripping off my hat, it seemed beyond reason that when
the sun came up I would be in Texas, and by noon I would be in the
Bahamas.

Standing in line to check in, I wondered what ever happened to
the pre-trip buzz. I used to spend days in a giddy state, counting the hours
until I would leave. Now, even on departure day, you can hardly tell I’m
leaving. I packed for 10 days in the Caribbean in less than an hour.

We left Portland at midnight, and I was asleep before the drink
cart came by. The pilot had his speaker turned up to about 100 decibels,
though, so when he came on to welcome us and say, “Sleep well,” he
woke everybody up.

I’ve never fully processed the fact that while I sip ginger ale
and do some reading, we cross the Rocky Mountains. I catch a few winks, and
the Great Plains go by. When I ask for a cup of coffee at 5:30 a.m., I can see
the lights of Dallas-Fort Worth. And soon enough we step out of the metal tube
and into another airport/mall, just like the one a few hours ago, only this
one is thousands of miles away, beside the Gulf of Mexico instead of the
Columbia River.

Walking across the, ahem, Houston George Bush Airport, I saw ads
for Christian magazines, overheard a guy in a cowboy hat say, “one tough
sumbitch,” and saw a father-son pair wearing identical Astros hats. Other
than these details, I might as well have been in Vancouver. And this: At 6
a.m. in April, Houston was 74 degrees.

I’m always reminded of an NPR story, years ago, about a 90-year-
old woman who flew from San Diego to St. Louis. This was newsworthy because it
was the first time she had been back since going out West in a covered wagon
in the 1890s. It took her four months at age 5, four hours at age 90.

The technology of transportation is staggering, but I think
something has been lost. Along with telephones and e-mail, the airplane is
eliminating the spaces that exist between us. That has advantages, of course,
but the spaces between are, in many cases, definitive of the journey. Somehow
getting out West without even seeing the mountains doesn’t seem like going out
West. One should reach Texas by crossing vast, sun-baked plains, not while
sipping and reading and trying to sleep.

(Speaking of sipping: At the bar near my gate in Houston, a guy
was asking what time they start serving beer. This was at 6:50 a.m.)

Back into the metal tube, a bad breakfast in a box, and “to
your left is the mouth of the Mississippi River.” Most people didn’t even
look up from their newspapers or laptops. Two hours later we disembarked into
another mall, this one apparently in Fort Lauderdale. Everybody was in shorts
and flower shirts, showing off either their brand-new tans or their pasty-
white Northern winter skin.

My flight was in one of those wonderful six-gate waiting areas,
where at any given moment two announcements are being made and three ticket
agents are being yelled at. The whole place was filled with people from
Boston, New York, Hartford, and Philadelphia — cities where, to judge from
their ambassadors in Florida, no one is ever happy. I overheard stories of
previous airline incompetence, interrupted by spouses arguing pointless
details. “No, Frank, that was in ’92, not ’93, and it was Joanie who
picked us up at La Guardia, not Francine.”

An hour before departure time, with no agent at our desk, two
dozen people stood in line to check in. Everybody was in a nervous rush to get
there and relax.

When we finally walked outside and boarded the 18-seater for the
Bahamas, it was sunny and in the 80s, and I was wearing my shorts and sandals.
The amount of time that had elapsed since sweater and drizzle was a typical
night’s sleep, but I was beginning to feel the buzz. It was finally dawning on
me that I had left home and was on my way to a vacation. I had a little strut
in my step as I crossed the tarmac.

We took off over the beach — the other side of the continent —
and in an hour were descending to the landing strip in Marsh Harbour, over
clear ocean and under a cloudless sky. I leaned back in my seat, let go of the
nervous Easterners, thought of the ocean swim to come, and decided that near-
instant travel wasn’t such a bad thing after all.

Looking around the dinner table, I saw no one I would have met anywhere else. There were two chirpy girls from L.A., a recovering addict from Santa Monica, a Republican political activist from Missouri, a college kid from Maryland, and me.

But the important thing was where we were: a little village called Gimmelwald, on top of a cliff in the Swiss Alps, in a hotel that we called — because we couldn’t pronounce its German name — Walter’s. On this winter night Walter had made the few travelers in his place a pot of vegetable soup, and somebody else had brought wine and bread down the hill from Murren, so we were bonding in that particular way that only travelers in a faraway land can bond.

They say Heidi lived in Gimmelwald, but what they mean is that Old Switzerland is alive and well there. There are no cars allowed in the village, and the whole place is designated “avalanche zone,” so developers are not allowed to “develop” it. So instead of tourist shops and fancy hotels, there are cows and winding footpaths and a log cabin from the 17th century. It’s the Switzerland you dream of: green valleys, snow-covered peaks, flowers in window boxes, and little old bearded men inviting you in for a bowl of soup. The locals have an expression: “If Heaven isn’t what it’s cracked up to be, send me back to Gimmelwald.”

So we sat at Walter’s table and swapped stories and tidbits from the European train circuit: the party hostel in Salzburg, the floating hash bar in Amsterdam, the scenic train from Montreux to Interlaken, the $4, seven-course feasts in Budapest, and the best fish and chips in London. The lines which would have separated us back in the States got blurred, and we met as friends.

There’s a wonderful thing that happens when we leave home; we leave part of ourselves there, too, ideally the masks we normally wear, and given a chance to start fresh for a while, we open up to new possibilities and new people. We find out a little more about who we are, and we’re more willing to share it.

Somebody came in and said the local schoolkids were going sledding and did anybody want to come along? For a moment we all looked at each other, and our eyes said the same thing: “Can this possibly be true? Did somebody just ask us if we wanted to go sledding with a bunch of Swiss schoolkids? Good God, let’s go!”

Yelling thanks to Walter and asking him to save our soup for later, we tumbled out the door in a heap, pulling on hats and gloves, and tore down the hill to the cable car station. Gimmelwald is Old Switzerland, but it’s also a stop on the cable car from down in the valley to further up in the hills. The skiers on their way to Murren barely notice Gimmelwald; most people get it confused with Grindlewald, a resort-filled taste of New Switzerland up the next valley.

The schoolkids wanted to practice their English with us, so we spent the ride up to Murren talking about Madonna and which drugs the recovering addict had done and why Americans don’t know anything about soccer. We also agreed, since this was a mostly male crowd, that it would be an American-versus-Swiss sled race back down the road to Gimmelwald.

Now, about that road. It was a winding, half-hour walk on a one-lane road, with steep hills on both sides — and occasionally stone walls on both sides. A lovely stroll when we first went down it, but one storm later it had become a snow- and ice-covered adventure ride. And now we were going to sled it.

I was paired with the Missouri Republican. We covered the tiny sled entirely. We started, with great excitement, ahead of the other Americans but behind several Swiss.

To steer, such as it was, we would drag our feet on one side or the other. We quickly developed commands — “hard left” and “hard right” or “pick ’em up” for outright speed — as well as a running sports commentary. We were the scrappy Americans trying to shock the sledding world by beating the Swiss on their home hill. At one point, we got it together enough to actually pass somebody and move into third place. The scrappy Yanks took aim at the second-place Swiss sled.

Then we hit the Death Turn — an S-curve covered with ice. The sled suddenly left the ground. We passed that Swiss team, all right, but by then we were going sideways, filling the valley with screams of terror. In the next moment we were somehow tangled together, under our sled, suffering a barrage of Swiss taunting, engulfed in laughter.

We would spend the rest of that night back at Walter’s, trading sledding stories with Swiss schoolkids, and I’ve spent the rest of my life thinking that Heaven probably is a lot like that night in Gimmelwald.

Bet you didn’t know that there are 11 Memphises in the U.S. Or would that be Memphii? No matter, when I was in St. Louis recently I convinced my friend Mark that we should go see Memphis, Missouri, which is way up north, almost in Iowa.

“What’s in Memphis, Missouri?” Mark asked.

“I have no idea,” I said — and many a road trip has begun on even less than that.

So off we went, north on Highway 61 to Clark County, where they were advertising the annual Mule Festival in Kahoka. We missed it by eight months, otherwise you’d surely be reading about it right now. We turned west onto U.S. 136, which was also labeled “The Avenue of the Saints,” presumably for all the churches on it.

Just before Memphis, we came upon a historical marker, which filled us in on some details. Memphis, Missouri, was founded in 1843 by a man from Scotland — and it’s named for the Memphis in Egypt, as well. There was a Civil War battle nearby, the Battle of Vassar Hill, during which the fighting was so intense that all the trees around were made useless to the mills because they were filled with lead. The sign simply said, “The Confederates withdrew,” making it sound like our Memphis’ Civil War action.

So on into town we went, past the welcome sign (population 2,094 and a “Tree City, USA”) and into that surreal world of visiting a place with the same name as your place. We saw, on a town square that looked like Collierville 20 years ago, the Memphis Theater, the Commercial Bank of Memphis, Memphis Auto Parts, and the Memphis Democrat newspaper. The lead stories in the Democrat were that a snowplow had flipped on Highway 15 (no injuries) and the Christmas talent show was won by — sigh — an Elvis impersonator.

We walked into the courthouse, outside of which there is, for no apparent reason, a replica of the Statue of Liberty. I walked into an office and introduced myself to a man who turned out to be an associate district judge. I was looking for the mayor, but he was still teaching his building trades class over at the high school.

The judge told me about some of the highlights of Memphis and the greater Scotland County area: the historical museum in an 1858 mansion, a memorial to a local World War I casualty, a round barn, and the 1862 Jacob Maggard home, which served as a hospital after the Battle of Vassar Hill. I later found out that the kid they built the World War I statue of, Parnell Patts Burnett, was actually killed by an immunization shot at Ft. Riley, Kansas. They don’t make a big deal out of that one in Memphis.

While the judge and I were talking, in one of those perfect small-town moments, a man came in and asked for the keys to the Masonic Hall. The judge reached into his pocket, pulled out a wad of keys — and just what other keys would a district judge possess? — and handed the guy the whole thing. Memphis is the kind of place where, when people duck into the Dollar Store to get some shaving cream, they leave their car motors running. Oh, and the way they say it, it’s “Memphis, Missura.”

I had to ask the judge about the biggest case he ever saw in his courtroom. He told me about the time a guy got four months for shooting a bald eagle. They never would have caught the guy, but his hunting buddy turned him in.

The judge also informed me that Scotland County was the home of Ella Ewing, the Missouri Giantess. Born in 1872, she grew to eight feet, four inches, weighed 277 pounds, and wore a size 24 shoe. (She always insisted her feet be hidden in photos and on stage.) At the age of 18, she went on the road with the Barnum and Bailey Circus and later toured with Buffalo Bill Cody and his Wild West Show for a few years, then came back and built a home for herself. The home has eight-foot doorways, six-foot windows, and 10-foot ceilings, and if the heat hadn’t been turned off for the last couple months we would have gone to see it. The tourist season in Scotland County was long over the day Mark and I were in Memphis, and the temperature was 8 degrees.

It was so cold, and Memphis so small, that after a couple hours Mark and I realized that we had seen pretty much everything. When we stopped on the way out of town to take some pictures, two pickups pulled over to see if we needed any help.

I had to wonder if that would happen in our Memphis.

They don’t mess around with the visitor in Hannibal. You come for Mark Twain, you get Mark Twain. In fact, you don’t even have to worry about all the complexities and contradictions of one of America’s greatest writers, nor worry about the long life lived by anybody named Samuel Langhorne Clemens.

No, when you roll into this quiet little town on the Mississippi River, you get the old, warm, fuzzy Mark Twain, with white hair and suit, who wrote some really cute stories about children playing and having adventures. Not that there’s anything wrong with that — compared to most small towns, Hannibal is lucky anybody stops there for anything more than gas — but if you’re looking for Mark Twain, the Man of Letters, in Hannibal, you might as well look for a meal in a candy store.

It’s all Twain in Hannibal. South of town on Highway 61, the restaurant in Injun Joe Campground is Huck’s Homestead. Down in the old part of town, by the river, the Mark Twain Dinette is across from the Hotel Clemens. Pudd’nhead’s Antiques is right around the corner from Mrs. Clemens Antique Mall. There’s a Mark Twain Gift Shop and a Mark Twain Book and Gift Shop, as well as Tom Sawyer Dioramas and Gifts, a Mark Twain Memorial Lighthouse, Mark Twain Cave, Mississippi riverboat Mark Twain, Sawyer’s Creek Fun Park, Mark Twain Outdoor Theater, and the Becky Thatcher home.

Well, actually, it’s the Laura Hawkins home, and this is where things get a wee bit odd in Hannibal. After a while, you might wonder if you’re in Mark Twain’s hometown or that of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. I confess there were times in Hannibal when I wanted to tell people that Tom and Huck weren’t real, that Laura Hawkins wasn’t really Becky Thatcher — and, for that matter, that Mark Twain wrote some other books that they might enjoy.

Out in front of the Twain home, there’s a sign that reads, “Here stood the board fence which Tom Sawyer persuaded his gang to pay him for the privilege of whitewashing.” Call me a wet blanket, but I’m more intrigued by the fact that America’s Greatest Voice To Be sat on this street one day, looked at this fence, and thought of that story. I was also intrigued to learn that Hannibal’s town drunk at the time was named Finn.

Or you can call me a cynic. While I was enduring a film about “that rascal Huck” at the Mark Twain Museum, I remembered that later in life Twain wrote another story about Huck. In that one Huck came back from “the territories,” which he had lit out for at the end of his book, and he was quite thoroughly insane. I also remembered “The Mysterious Stranger,” about Satan coming to a place just like Hannibal, and Letters from the Earth, in which angels discuss, hilariously, how foolish humans are.

Hell, on the cover of the Hannibal Visitors Guide they have a kid in a straw hat (presumably Huck) holding a frog (presumably a jumping one from Calaveras County). To a Twain purist, this is like Beale Street publishing a picture of Elvis with a saxophone.

But, like I said, you can’t begrudge Hannibal for playing up the Local Hero angle. Without Mark Twain, Hannibal would be Jonesboro, only smaller. So you roll with it. You tour the two Clemens family homes, go through the museum to see one of his white suits and translations of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer in Icelandic, Norwegian, Chinese, Finnish, Hindi, and a bunch of other languages. You read that Clemens misspelled a word so Laura Hawkins could win the spelling bee (how cute) and see his actual “orchestrelle,” which appears to be a large music box. The newer museum in town has 15 original Norman Rockwells of Twain scenes and a heck of a collection of old woodworking tools. The tools have nothing to do with Mark Twain and are therefore a unique presence in town.

You can even go nuts and make plans to visit during the first few days of July, when National Tom Sawyer Days features a National Fence Painting Championship (raising the possibility of Regional Fence Painting Championships), a jumping-frog contest, and a Tom and Becky in the roles of King and Queen. There’s also, in a nod to more modern entertainment, a Hannibal Cannibal 10K Run and by all accounts a heck of a fireworks show over the river on July 4th.

Or you can take a different tack altogether: Leave the details of Tom and Huck World to your imagination and go read one of Twain’s books. Better yet, skip the sweet, cute stuff and get yourself a literary meal, something to sink your teeth into. One could make the argument that the very literary heart of America lies in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, but you wouldn’t guess it from hanging out in Hannibal.