A funny little town in
Missouri. When I tell someone that I grew
up there, and I see a
glimmer of
recognition, I immediately say
"You know, the boyhood home of
Mark Twain." and they say "Oh yeah."
Hannibal was the setting for Mark Twain's
The Adventures of Tom
Sawyer, which was based loosely on his childhood.
The town is bravely nestled against the mighty Mississippi river.
Its historic downtown was saved from the Great Flood of 1993 by a
flood wall erected just a year earlier. Hannibal's wall was one of the
few levees that actually held that year.
My strangest memory of Hannibal was the mayfly explosion. Every
three years the mayfly nymphs living in the river all mature at once.
The adult flies live for less than a day before laying their eggs
and dropping dead. One year, I was near the river when the blight
happened. The swarm was so thick it was difficult to breathe
without getting one up the nose. They had to scrape the inches-deep
layer of corpses off the bridge with a snow plow.