My Uncle and Mark Twain

My uncle, a fan of Mark Twain, gets carried away when he entertains tourists with his knowledge of the writers life and works.

My Uncle and Mark Twain

By Robert D. Winthrop

 As I remember my uncle Bud when I was young and living in Hannibal, Missouri, he was a very sober man. By sober, I mean that he drank very little or not at all, as far as I knew. But he was also sober in that he was a rational man who seldom laughed, raised his voice, or argued with anyone. He was also a frugal man, and he kept a ledger of every penny that he spent. Uncle Bud’s real name was Everett James Parker, Jr., but he had been called Bud all of his life. He was married to my mother’s sister Bertha, or Aunt Bert, as we called her.

 

Uncle Bud’s fingers were yellow from the hand-rolled cigarettes he puffed, and their house always smelled of cigarette smoke. He was a small, wiry man, only five feet, eight inches tall and weighing less than one hundred and fifty pounds.

 

Being the youngest of all of the cousins, I dreaded going to visit Aunt Bert and Uncle Bud. Their children were grown and out on their own, and there was never anyone near their house on Hill Street to play with. Uncle Bud would greet us, ask how we were, and then go back to whatever he was reading. One day I asked him about the book that lay on the table in front of him. He told me that it was a book by Mark Twain called The Innocents Abroad.

 

 “What are innocents?” I asked him.

 

“Well,” he answered as he rolled a cigarette, “in this case they are American tourists traveling in Europe and the Holy Land in the 1860s. Today we might refer to them as ‘ugly Americans,’ people who have difficulty understanding the customs and languages of other countries and expect everyone to speak English. It’s mostly a very funny book.”

 

“Oh,” I said, “I thought maybe they were like Frankenstein’s monsters or something.”

 

I went into the kitchen to listen to the gossip being passed between my mother and her sister. Both of them had grown up in the small town of Ilasco, a few miles south of Hannibal. Hannibal was widely known as the boyhood home of Mark Twain, or “America’s Hometown,” as the Chamber of Commerce liked to call it. Ilasco was located near a cement plant where my uncle had worked. The letters in its name stood for the various components of Atlas cement. A town adjoining Ilasco was called Monkey Run, a name we liked to tease my brother about because he had been born there. Both villages were near the Mark Twain Cave, a site that played an important part in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

 

I soon tired of the conversation in the kitchen as the two sisters spoke about Pearl Lee, Homer Ragland, Myra Malone and a host of other people I had never known. They talked of people being “double cousins” and “aunt-by-marriage,” terms that were all Greek to me.

 

I wandered outside, threw some rocks, and dug in the dirt with a stick. Sometimes I would see Aunt Bert’s next-door neighbor, Miss Eleanor Brown, a very old lady who was my grade school principal.  One day as we talked across the fence, she told me that she had received her high school diploma directly from Mark Twain on one of his rare visits to his hometown.

 

Having lived in Hannibal all of my life, I seemed to be so overloaded with Mark Twain that he did not hold much interest for me. I liked The Adventures of Tom Sawyer that our third grade teacher had read to us, and I had made a quick tour of the Mark Twain Home and Museum, but I knew little about the man who more or less put Hannibal on the map. I attended Mark Twain School, ate at the Mark Twain Diner, crossed to Illinois on the Mark Twain Bridge, and had once lived on Mark Twain Avenue. However, these names meant no more to me than other names in the town like Elm Street or Eugene Field School. It was not until many years later that I learned that a shack in an alley that I sometimes used as a shortcut had been the home of “The Unsinkable Molly Brown” or Maggie Tobin, as she was called when she lived in Hannibal. I had seen the movie about her, and I found her more interesting than some long-dead author.

 

My Uncle Bud, on the other hand, knew as much about Mark Twain as anyone in our town. I marveled at how smart Uncle Bud was. After all, my mother had once told me that he had left school after the eighth grade because he had to go to work. According to my aunt and my uncle’s contemporaries, Uncle Bud had read every book that the famous author ever wrote. He had studied all of the biographies of Twain, and he even knew the words to Big River, the Broadway musical based on The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. After his youngest daughter bought him a recording of the show, he had played it so often that his wife began shutting the door to the living room when he was at home.

 

Not long after Uncle Bud retired, his wife began sending him on errands. As much as she loved him, Aunt Bert found that his being at home all day upset her daily routine of cleaning, cooking, and crocheting. Uncle Bud soon realized that he was in her way, and like so many retirees, he also grew tired of reading and working crossword puzzles.

 

One day after buying some crochet thread for Aunt Bert, Uncle Bud had an uneasy feeling that there was something else he was supposed to have bought, but he could not remember what it was As he walked up Main Street, he noticed the empty stores with their darkened windows, like orphans begging to be adopted. He remembered when the street had boasted three ten-cent stores, Woolworth’s, Newberry’s, and Kresge’s, and a department store. Now a few antique stores, a coffee bar, and two taverns were the principal occupants of the old buildings, some of which dated back to the 1800s. Looking around as he walked, he saw people going into the Mark Twain Tavern and Grill. This bar might have passed into history many years before had it not offered, as well as alcoholic libations, the biggest and tastiest pork tenderloin in all of the Midwest. This deep-fried, hand-breaded delicacy was twice the size of the bun it rested upon. Doused with catsup and garnished with pickles, it was a gourmet delight.

 

“I’ll just drop in and have a tenderloin sandwich,” Uncle Bud thought. “and maybe I’ll remember what else I am supposed to get.”

 

The bar was an unfamiliar habitat for him although his children had from time to time brought him a tenderloin sandwich from there. This day the tavern was half full of people whose faces Uncle Bud did not recognize. At first, the loud music, smoke, and smell of sour beer and grease were overwhelming. But he took his place at the bar, ordered his sandwich, and listened to the conversations going on around him. “What else was I supposed to buy?” he asked himself. As he waited for his order, an incident occurred that would change his life.

 

Two couples were sitting at a table near him. One of the men remarked, “For years and years I’ve wanted to visit Mark Twain’s birthplace. And I must say I’m not disappointed. This is one interesting town.”

 

Uncle Bud could not resist. “I beg your pardon,” he said, “but I couldn’t help hearing what you said. Mark Twain was not actually born here. He was born in a little place called Florida, Missouri.”

 

“Well, I’ll be jiggered,” said the man. “I thought he was born here.”

 

“No,” continued my uncle. “He was born in a two-room cabin that his father rented in Florida, Missouri, and he didn’t come to Hannibal until he was four. His birthplace is not far from here. It’s in Mark Twain State Park.”

 

“Thank you so much,” said the man. “Do you live here?” asked his wife.  “I’d like to buy you a drink,” offered the other man at the table.

 

“Well, I might have a beer,” said Uncle Bud. “As Old Mark said, ‘Never refuse to do a kindness unless the act would work great injury to yourself, and never refuse to take a drink�"under any circumstances.’”

 

All of the people at the bar and at the nearby tables howled with laughter.

 

When Uncle Bud arrived home that evening and presented Aunt Bertha with the crochet thread he had bought, Aunt Bertha was not happy. “I swear you are getting so forgetful.

Where’s the shampoo I asked you to buy?” Then she noticed that he had given her the incorrect change from the money she had given him. Was this the man who accounted for every cent he spent?

 

After his first visit to the tavern, my uncle’s life would never be the same. Instead of being told by his wife what errands to run, he concocted reasons to go to Main Street, ending each trip with a stop at the Mark Twain Tavern. He sought out tables of tourists, asking them if they were enjoying their visits. Then he would ask them a question about the humorist such as “Do you know about Mark Twain and Halley’s Comet? ” It was believed that Mark Twain or Samuel Langhorne Clemens, his real name, had been born a year the comet appeared and died 75 years later during its subsequent return.

 

Always hoping for a “no” answer to his inquiries, Uncle Bud would then regale the visitors with his version of the life of Mark Twain. More often than not the tourists would invite him to sit with them, and they would usually buy him a beer. After being a nearly anonymous cement plant worker for forty years, Uncle Bud found that the attention he was getting was as intoxicating as the beers that he was offered.

 

Soon after he became a regular at the tavern, Uncle Bud bought a recording by Hal Holbrook called Mark Twain Tonight. Holbrook had gained fame as an interpreter of Mark Twain. He often wore a white suit and wig for his performances so that he looked very much like Mark Twain. He had won a Tony on Broadway for his one-man show, and he toured around the country and throughout Europe. Holbrook had a rough gravel-like voice that sounded much like a recording that Twain had made.

 

In less than a week’s time Uncle Bud had memorized the entire vinyl record. The bartenders began to notice that Uncle Bud was speaking in a more gravelly voice.  One week when he had not been in for several days, the bartender said to him, “We thought you were dead.”

 

“The report of my death was an exaggeration,” replied my uncle in his new voice. “Or, as some people say, the news of my death has been exaggerated.” Uncle Bud knew that there were several versions of this Twain quotation.

 

Thereafter, often to the bartender’s annoyance, Bud began answering questions with quotations from Mark Twain. Tourists who overheard him found him funny and charming. They bought him more drinks, and his afternoons in the tavern became longer.

 

One day when a bartender suggested to Uncle Bud that he might be drinking too much, he answered by quoting Mark Twain, “A human being has a natural desire to have more of a good thing than he needs.”

 

Where once Aunt Bert was glad to have him out of the house, she began to miss his company. Always possessed of a nervous disposition, Aunt Bert did not handle change well. When her husband came home and immediately fell asleep, snoring on the couch, she picked up her crochet work and retreated to the bedroom. Now she seldom asked him to run errands for her because the few times that she did, he forgot what she had asked him to do. In addition to his long absences, his forgetfulness became a concern for her.

 

As I said, Uncle Bud was a very frugal man, and at the tavern he seldom had to pay for his own beer. The bartenders overlooked the fact that he was cadging drinks from the tourists because his rapport with them meant that they stayed longer and spent more money.

 

The jukebox in the tavern was Uncle Bud’s nemesis. The owners played the music of the day too loudly, and it interfered with the stories he liked to tell to the tourists. Uncle reasoned that if they could not hear him, they would not laugh at his stories nor buy the beers to which he had become accustomed. One afternoon when he appeared at the bar, he immediately noticed that the place was silent except for the hum of conversation among the patrons. 

 

The jukebox was broken! Now was his chance!

 

Uncle Bud stood in the middle of the tavern. “Well, as Old Mark once said, ‘The best way to cheer yourself is to cheer someone else up.’ So I’m gonna cheer up this place with a song from Big River, the musical version of Huckleberry Finn.” With that announcement, he began singing a song called Muddy Water a cappella. To the bartender’s amazement, Uncle Bud had a pleasant tenor voice, and he sang every note on key. The patrons applauded loudly and Uncle Bud made an exaggerated bow as several men yelled, “Give that man a beer!”

 

Uncle Bud was late getting home that afternoon.

 

Many afternoons following his singing debut, Uncle Bud stayed too long at the tavern. On several occasions, he was asked to leave. And on more than one occasion men who had worked with him at the cement plant gave him a ride and walked him up the stairs to his home. “Well, Bert,” they would say to his wife, “we’ve brought your wandering boy home again.”

 

Aunt Bert’s patience with her husband had ended weeks before. She refused to sleep with a man who smelled the way Uncle Bud did. She was accustomed to the odor of smoke on his breath, but when she caught the taint of sour beer and saw the silly look on his face, she felt that she hardly knew him. Although he was always contrite the next day and some weeks would go for three or four days without a visit to the tavern, the lure of performing would inevitably draw him back to Main Street.

 

All four of his children lived in other towns, but word of their father’s shenanigans began to reach them from friends in Hannibal. Unable to believe that their staid, sober father could have become a drunk, one by one they called their mother, who answered each of them the same way.

 

“It’s true,” Aunt Bert told them. “He’s having the time of his life, and I’m miserable. I just don’t know what to do.”

 

The owners of the bar continued to allow Uncle Bud to drink and perform. He expanded his repertoire of songs, and sharpened his delivery of stories and quotations. Some days after the jukebox was repaired, the owners would turn it off so that Bud could perform. But more and more often after he had been in the bar for a couple of hours and consumed too many beers, they suggested that he leave or sent him home with someone.

 

Finally, on a crisp fall afternoon when Uncle Bud was drunk and particularly obnoxious, the bartender spoke to him in a low voice,  “Time for you to go see Bertha. I’m not serving you anymore, so you might as well head out.” When Uncle Bud hesitated, the bartender spoke more sternly, “That’s final. Go home. I’ll see you later.” The bartenders had started to notice that the tourists were beginning to laugh at Bud rather than laughing with him.

 

Reluctantly Uncle Bud stubbed out his cigarette and left the tavern. He staggered up Hill Street, past Mark Twain’s Home and Museum. The sun was beginning to set.  Uncle Bert leaned against a building, squinting at what he thought was a man in a white suit. Uncle Bud walked a few steps closer and saw that the man had a mane of white hair and a white mustache. “Can it be?” he asked himself. He lifted his glasses, and rubbed his eyes. “Yes, it is,” he concluded. “It sure as hell is Mark Twain himself, and he doesn’t look happy.” Then the man in the white suit disappeared into the museum.

 

A few weeks later my cousin Harold came to visit Aunt Bert and Uncle Bud. He found his father reading as usual and his mother crocheting another of her ecru doilies that he hoped was not another gift for him and his wife.  Everything was just as he had seen it on his last visit home. Why were people spreading these stories about his father? He looked to be the same sober man that he had been for as long as Harold could remember. When Aunt Bert went to the kitchen, Harold followed her. “What about all of these stories about Pop being a drunk and so forth?”

 

“Well,” said Aunt Bert, “he did go through a bad period, but he has barely been out of the house in weeks, and he hasn’t had a drop of liquor either.”

 

“What happened? What about all of those stories I was hearing?”

 

“Are you ready?” asked Aunt Bert. “What happened was that one evening when he had been drinking, he was staggering home and he saw Mark Twain.”

 

“Drunken delusions!” said Harold.

 

“No,” replied Aunt Bert, “He really thought he saw Mark Twain. It scared him or confused him so bad that he gave up drinking completely.”

 

Harold looked at his mother “Why are you smiling like that?”

 

Aunt Bert took a crumpled newspaper article from her apron pocket and handed it to her son. “I remember the date well,” said Aunt Bert. “It was October fourteenth.”

 

Harold quickly scanned the piece of paper that his mother had given him. “So that was the day Hal Holbrook was in town to present Mark Twain Tonight. What Pop saw was Hal Holbrook.”

 

“I won’t tell him if you won’t,” said Aunt Bert and they both began to laugh.