One thing about Missouri’s weather is it predictably unpredictable.
In the last month or so, we’ve gone from weeks of drought, torrential rains that flooded communities like Marble Hill (rain was falling at the rate of better than four inches an hour at my house, and about a week of the heat index above three digits, not counting the decimal point.
The Night of the Big Rain didn’t bring promised (dreaded) winds and hail, but the lightning was almost continuous.
That brought to mind Mark Twain’s comment, “Thunder is good, thunder is impressive, but it is lightning that does the work.”
Not only hot, it’s humid
You can see from the condensation on my basement window when I started up the stairs to go to bed that there’s a lot of moisture in the air
When the heat index was 106 (116 if you believe the local TV station), I elected to replace a dusk to dawn porch light that had decided to stay on all the time.
The whole process took about an hour, at which point you could ring sweat out of my cap, shirt, suspenders and underwear. I had other projects on my list, but I may put them on hold until the one week in November before temps drop below zero,
I’ve followed Randy “Hambone” Barnhouse’s musings on Facebook, and have even exchanged mail with him from time to time, but had never met him in the flesh.
When he posted that he’d be hawking his book, “Dear Samuel Clemens” Messages in a Bottle , on Main Street (with a $5 discount to “locals”), I figured it was time we hooked up.
“Want to make a deal?”
Randy “Hambone” Barnhouse 10-08-2020
I introduced myself, and said, “I think a might be able to slip by as a local, and I’d be happy to pay you $15 for your book, but I wondered if you’d like to trade for my Smelterville: A Community of Love.”
We bumped elbows and the deal was sealed.
We share a love of the river
Randy has led a much more adventuresome life than I have. He’s been a treasure salvor, an historian, a teacher, and a devotee of Mark Twain. I’ve just been a chronicler of other folks deeds and foibles.
Several years ago, the Mississippi gave Randy a tantalizing look at the bones of a boat exposed when the water went down.
He and the river have been playing hide and seek with the boat ever since.
I’m pretty sure the first contact I had with Randy was when he offered to share the location of the wreck if I would promise to keep the exact location secret.
I decided the best way for me to keep the secret was for me not to go see the site.
The Mississippi can be unforgiving to the careless. This isn’t Randy’s wreck, but it’s a barge that ran aground near Cape Rock in 2012.
We understand each other
Abandoned house – St Mary Mo c 1966
Randy was a diver with Mel Fisher, who helped recover gold and other items from the Atocha shipwreck off Key West. He and I speak the same language.
“After the initial phase of being allured by the gold and silver discoveries, I found the simple items from every day life just as unique in their own way. They spoke to me. Candlestick holders were fascinating to find. How many meals did they grace a table for and who appreciated the glow of the stick they held, and for what reason were they gathered around it? How much laughter, conversation and arguing had the the candlestick holders, with their fiery tube of wax and string been witness to?”
I walk around in old abandoned houses trying to pick up the vibes of those who lived there. The pride the first owners felt; marks on the door frames chronicling the growth of children; wondering what joys and sorrows were contained inside the walls. Sometimes those vibes hit me too hard.
When I looked through this open window of an old house in St. Mary, I had to wonder what did the owners take from those opened drawers, and why did the random beads, buttons and juice squeezer not make the cut when they closed the door the last time?
Letters to Mark Twain
The book is a series of letters Randy has written to Mark Twain: “each letter I write to you will be sealed in a bottle and tossed into the mighty Mississippi. There are no post offices in heaven or hell. Where we go, we never know until the last breath escapes our lungs. Maybe we disappear into inky oblivion from whence we came. Should your spirit dwell on the river, please read and respond in whatever manner a will-o’-wisp employs. I need your help while looking for your lost and discarded possessions.”
Searching for Mark Twain’s buried treasure
Randy has been using a metal detector to search for artifacts at Mark Twain’s home in Hannibal (with permission, I should note.
“Sam, to investigate and excavate the soil where you and your family once lived, loved and walked is an intimate act, too. What will your candlestick holder be that shines light on your time there on Hill Street? A coin, ring, shoe buckle, tool or object that will be attributed to you? Knowing your affinity for buried treasure causes me, in my wildest imagination, to hope that you buried something there.”
Whenever I take someone new to see what’s left of Cairo, we stop here long enough for them to pry up a piece of blue tile from what used to be a large department store.
I hope they keep it as a memory of a town that is rapidly disappearing, and as a link to me. Probably, though, they’ll pull open a drawer some day, and say, “What the hell is this?” and pitch it in the trash.
I guess I can’t be surprised. On any given day, some of my best work ended up on the floor being peed on by a poodle.
Shameless plug
Randy was kind enough to say some nice words about my Smelterville book on his Facebook page, and that caused a lot of folks to wonder where they could find it.
Pastimes Antiques, 45 Main Street, Cape Girardeau, Mo., 63701; Phone 573-332-8882. $20 in person.
Cape Girardeau County History Center, 102 S. High Street, Jackson, Mo., 63755; Phone 573-979-5170. $20 in person; $30 to cover shipping and handling if mailed.
Son Adam brought Grandkidlets Graham and Elliot over this evening to give their mother a few hours of piece and quiet.
That left me scrambling for something to post this morning. I came up with a long-forgotten (and poorly composed) shot of the front of Kent Library before a wraparound covered the names of seventeen writers chosen by English professor Dr. Harold Grauel and Dr. W.W. Parker, then president of the university.
Fred Lynch’s February 22, 2010, blog lists the names as “Walt Whitman, Mark Twain, William Shakespeare, John Milton, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Cardinal John Henry Newman, Virgil, Geoffrey Chaucer, Thomas Carlyle, John Ruskin, Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoi, Henry David Thoreau, Edgar Allen Poe, Eugene Field, Victor Hugo, Homer, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
Kent Library in 2010
Here’s what the library looked like in 2010. One-Shot Frony took a picture from almost this same angle in the late 1940s if you’d like to make a comparison.
By the way, Wife Lila questioned the spelling in my headline. Fred’s blog talks about that:
Grauel recalled that the stone mason wanted to alter the spelling of Shakespeare. Grauel suggested “Shakespere,” one of several ways that the famous playwright spelled his name.
That spelling was used on the frieze. Soon after, letters arrived at the school from people critical of what they felt was the “misspelling” of the name.
“When the enlargement of Kent Library was undertaken in the ’60s, I saw to it that the name of Shakespeare appeared on the new facade as SHAKESPEARE,” Grauel wrote.
