The Englishman negotiates rivers of beer, baseball and BBQ with dignity

My husband is a tremendously good sport.  This was his first worry-free trip to my home town (the others were tied to my mother's death), so the extended family and I decided to show him a particularly Midwestern good time.  We would, we decided, dip him in all the Americana one week could bear.

We probably overdid it.  Certainly no typical week in my past has featured quite that much saturated fat, nor that amount of country music.  But nobody could resist toying with The Englishman.  And it was Fourth of July week.

The most memorable day was a road trip to Hannibal, Missouri.  We were heading for National Tom Sawyer Days, billed on the town's website as a big, exciting, Mark Twain-themed festival.  On arrival, it was a small strip of carnival rides at the end of town.  Main Street didn't seem particularly busy, its strip of quaint, 19th-century brick buildings filled with cafes and gift shops ... but not many people.  Beer tents and stages were still in set-up mode; clearly there was more activity scheduled the next day.


There's a short strip of clapper-boarded old buildings in the centre of this stretch, with plaques telling you this was the house of the girl who inspired Becky Thatcher, here's the pharmacy the young Twain lived over, and here's a model of the fence Tom persuaded his mates to paint for him.  Complete with bucket of whitewash for your photo opportunity.  The Englishman grudgingly obliged.


Just above this is the Mark Twain Diner, a humble place dishing out excellent burgers and home made root beer by locals who, I suspect, have never been further than Chicago or St. Louis.  Piers was wildly exotic.


It was all somewhat charming but, truth be told, it was worth no more than a 15-minute sightseeing stroll after lunch.  Add another five, perhaps, to climb to the top of the levee to marvel that the Mississippi was unusually high for this late in the year.  (This accompanied, incongruously, by a guy strolling back and forth on the grassy bank practicing Scottish tunes, badly, on bagpipes.)


It would have been a monumental bust had Hannibal been our only objective.  But the point of the day was the journey, not the destination.  We'd headed up the Great River Road and cut across the fertile flood plains fed by the Missouri, Mississippi and Illinois rivers.  The scenery is beautiful in its gentle way, with fields of nodding young corn surrounding humble farmsteads with collapsing old barns and shiny modern grain silos.  Limestone bluffs mark the edges of river valleys, from which you can spot eagles circling if you look sharp.  Every so often you cut through a tiny town with a few churches and a gas station.  Nothing has changed out here since I was a girl.


In fact, this drive was a wander through the back country of my youth.  Memories were gilded by the sun pouring through the open top of Mike's jeep, country music blaring on the radio.
First stop: Alton.  Once a major point for loading grain barges, just below a series of locks where the Mississippi and the Missouri meet, it's the traditional start of the prettiest part of the Great River Road above St. Louis.  Today it's perhaps most notable for Fast Eddie's BonAir, a bar that's been in continuous operation since Anheuser Busch (the man, not the company) opened the place in 1921.


You enter through the original art deco portal and emerge into a dark '50s style bar.  Beyond that is an enormous covered outdoor courtyard.  Service is fast and friendly and it's famous for ridiculously cheap burgers and boiled shrimp.  It was still early, however, so we only paused for drinks.


Then north along a strikingly beautiful part of the Mississippi, so wide at Portage des Sioux, where the Missouri joins, that it's dotted with forested islands and you'd swear you were looking at a lake.


The Piasa Bird, an ancient native American cliff painting of a dragon-like creature, still adorns the bluffs here, though today it's a modern recreation.  It was always the sign we were nearing Pere Marquette State Park, where the staff in the 1920s WPA-built lodge used to serve us fried chicken Sunday lunches that we'd walk off on the hiking trails through the wooded bluffs.  The park and lodge are still there, though I can't vouch for the chicken these days.  Though it was a great cue to tee up the Zac Brown Band's Chicken Fried on the iPhone, perhaps the most recent country music anthem to Americana and one bound to make The Englishman wince as the rest of us bellowed along with the chorus.


Eventually the road to Hannibal turns away from the Mississippi and into broad stretches of rolling farmland, before crossing the smaller Illinois river.  Just up from the crossing is the tiny town of Kampsville, population 302, which on that day had hung out banners welcoming a local boy home from service in Afghanistan.  My husband isn't really a complete stranger to small town America, since these places tend to supply the American soldiers he once worked with.



More than 30 years before, I had spent two summers here on archeology camp with Northwestern University.  Heat, mud and boredom knocked the archeology bug out of me, but I still have fond memories of sitting in the riverside park here, drinking a purloined beer (I was under age) and watching the little car ferry travel to and fro.


Half an hour on from Kampsville we skirted the town limits of Quincy, where another high school adventure had me on yearbook camp at the local college.  I was back in 1987 as part of my newspaper management programme in graduate school, advising the Quincy Herald Whig  on how to raise circulation with readers across the river in Hannibal.  (More Cardinals coverage, we said.)  And thus to Hannibal itself, which doesn't appear to have changed at all in 27 years, except for higher prices in the Mark Twain Diner.

The next day, back in St. Louis, we put The Englishman through a proper home-town July 4th.  Ribs smoking for five hours, copious quantities of beer, a bit of Springsteen.  An outing to the lazy river at the Kirkwood community pool for me, while he stayed in a shady spot by the bbq with chef Mike.  The family kept an amusing line of banter going on America's lucky escape from the UK, and laid out Union Jack paper napkins to rub the point in.  Piers answered with John Cleese's famous revocation of independence.  Later, off to the Kirkwood community fireworks for the logical conclusion of the day.  More beer, some ice cream, competitive singing of My Country 'Tis of Thee against God Save the Queen.  I had to help my husband out by singing the latter.

The last bit of requisite Americana, of course:  baseball.  We caught the Cardinals against the Marlins on the Sunday.  A win, a gentle breeze and temperatures just slightly below normal making a day game tolerable.  (Although the draining heat and humidity typical of St. Louis was on its way back.)  The Englishman demonstrated a growing expertise in the game, bought two new Cards caps and looked like a local by the time he was pounding post-game Anheuser Busch products straight out of the can at Paddy O's sports bar.

God bless America.  And God bless The Englishman willing to embrace the spirit of the Midwest.  Even though he refused to let me snap a photo of him consuming tinned Cheese Whiz on a triscuit.  That, evidently, was an indignity too far.