THE BOOK THAT SPARKED THE ADVENTURE

On our dining room buffet stood a row of novels, silent sentinels among other brick-a-brac.

Upright between bookends, six hardback books commanded a lonely vigil, unnoticed, untouched and unread, all penned by a single author.

In the mid 1940s, readership in our house consisted of a morning and evening daily newspaper, and the weekly LIFE Magazine, which hit the newsstands by noon Friday. I don’t remember any other books in the house, except those decorating the dining room buffet.

Sometime during my fifth or sixth grade elementary school years, I first noticed there were books in the dining room.

It must have been a cold winter day, or rainy summer day, one of those boring times with nothing to do inside the house, years before television.

Something motivated me to pull a book from the lineup and open it.

Sixth graders simply didn't read this kind of stuff, unrecognizable book titles and an author as well.

Yet one of the titles piqued my interest.

Opening the pages, I was transported to an unfamiliar and unknown time and geographical part of the country, imaginatively placed into a story dominated by colorful characters involved in one of the great historical moments of America's legendary past. It was great adventure. It hooked me. Forevermore, it was this author who introduced me to reading his great stories, and who has been my lifetime favorite, who captured my imagination and forever made an impression on my reading and writing.

The book was Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain

Since that day sometime in the 1940s, that book began my interest in reading. I wonder how many of us who are avid readers or simply part-time readers who enjoy a good escape story, can pinpoint a single book or author who sparked our journey.

I have not reread Life on the Mississippi since, but the images remain – the gruff old riverboat captain lording over his new apprentice, growling orders, teaching the young Samuel Clemmons safe steamboat river navigation, how to judge the ebb and flow of currents, how to spot and avoid pitfalls of shallow water, how to maneuver around sandbars and sunken tree stumps. How to do it, too, in the dark.

As he watched the steamboats ply the river from its banks at Hannibal, Missouri, Sam Clemmons knew as a young boy he wanted to be a riverboat captain, to wield such power over a crew and a steamboat, to bark orders and command a mighty and powerful ship as it plied the Mississippi.

It was big 19th Century stuff.

I have crossed the Mississippi River a few times over the years, in a car passing over on a bridge, looking down on this great north-south navigation highway, so vital in the early development of commerce in a young and growing country. I have stood on its banks in Vicksburg and Natchez, overlooking the river from a high bluff, you can visit the riverboat museum, stand with your hand on the giant wheel at the helm in a reconstructed pilot house.

At Natchez, a narrow and ancient steel girder bridge spans the river. A rusty bent sign gives a hint of its age, “Constructed during the administration of Huey Long, Governor of Louisiana.” But that’s another story.

Mark Twain gives us the romance of the river. Yet one cannot forget how destructive it can be, even this spring, flooding farms and towns, decimating people’s personal property and sometimes claiming lives.

As most of us know, the young riverboat apprentice and eventual pilot was Samuel Clemmons who became Mark Twain the great American writer. He took his pen name from a sounding device used on the riverboats to mark the depth of the water. The “mark twain” sounding shouted by a deckhand told the captain that he had only two feet of dangerous water in which to navigate his boat.

In your life’s personal readings, is there a Life on the Mississippi in your past? Which book piqued your interest in reading, and what was it about this particular story that grabbed your interest and sparked your imagination. Do you still have that book and does that author remain one of your favorites?

Tragically, there are those among us who take great pride in announcing that “I don’t read books” or “I have never read a book.” I hear it routinely. Those of us who are readers, even causal readers, find those views disturbing. Why would anyone be proud to proclaim they have never read or rarely read a book, or have a distain for learning?

I have not read all of Mark Twain’s books, but I have read most of them, including Huckleberry Finn, about four times. His great American novel, perhaps our country’s greatest American novel, still speaks to us today. Each additional reading dredges up new thoughts, insights and images.

That book or books you read years ago, those writings that influenced your life, or sparked an interest, why not read it again. Read it again for the first time. Rediscover it all over again. What was it about that story, that place in time, those images still with you today, what was it that gave you that lifelong reading spark?

Again, be the deckhand who shouts “mark twain” to the captain in the pilot house. Two feet of water. Bottom coming up fast. Sandbar ahead.

Let the adventure begin.