Organizing anecdote(s)

When I was nine years old my parents took my brother and me to visit Mark Twain's childhood home in Hannibal, Missouri. The small town is something of a shrine to the greatest American writer and there are plenty of Twainish activities for parents to foist upon their children. Eat a meal at Becky Thatcher's Diner. Paint a fence white, etc. The Mississippi River idles past Hannibal and steamboats pilot tourists up and down a swath of the river every hour. As there is no sight quite so evocative and pleasing to the Southern eye as a steamboat on the Mississippi River my father insisted that we go aboard. Over and over a high school tour guide explained the etymology of Twain. The July heat was relentless and my brother and I buckled down with comic books in the air conditioned lounge on board the boat. Our father lured us out onto the deck with drinks ordered from the concession stand. Chocolate shakes in tall hurricane glasses topped off with whipped cream and cherries were pressed into our hands as we headed out to watch the Mississippi part in front of us. We passed Lover's Leap. We saw frogs and fish and cranes and as quickly as I drank my syrupy drink the landscape started to blur. The drinks were loaded with peppermint schnapps. Too late for me. My brother's was taken by my mother. I sat down on deck; everything slow was fast and the soft, drawling lilt of my mother's voice sounded as if it were coming from under water. Years and years later I recognized the slowing down of landscape and the underwater intonations of voice in Benjy Compson. Everything is disjointed. Only Caddy is constant, but Benjy and I exist in a historical moment and the whole of the South exists in every action and reaction.