In May I bought my nephew, Charlie, a 99 cent DVD of Tom and Huck. As I bought it, I thought to myself, "Jonathan would approve!" When Jonathan was moving to California, I went over and helped him pack up his stuff. The first thing I noticed was that Jonathan had a whole lot of stuff...a lot of it junk that he hadn't used in years and would probably never use again. He had huge plastic tubs of wires and another one full of bungee cords. He had a full set of bowling pins and a couple of roller racers that he and The Blob (aka Mark Metcalf) and, I think, H. Ross had picked up out of some garbage pile. But amongst all of this random stuff in his room, Jonathan had a beautiful set of Mark Twain books. In fact, Jonathan had so many different copies of Twain's books that I asked him about it. I knew that Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer were his favorite books, but I didn't know he was as obsessed with all Twain's stuff. In fact, he had certain copies of the books that were to stay in Jackson and were to go with him. The nicer ones were to stay so that nothing could happen to them. When I asked him about it, he stopped what he was doing, looked at me, and just smiled saying "Oh yea, I'm a big fan!" The only response I could give was, "Yea, I see that." From that moment on, Mark Twain became synonymous with Jonathan to me.
I bought my nephew this dirt cheap DVD of Tom and Huck because his Spongebob DVDs had been packed up when they had moved. In fact, it was just one of four DVDs that I bought him. From the first moment he sat down and watched the cartoon version of Twain's stories, Charlie was hooked...more like obsessed. The other three DVDs ended up in the garbage. He didn't want to watch them at all. My mom called to tell me how Charlie's vocabulary had been enhanced with words like steamboat and raft. This DVD also introduced him to another word Jonathan would have been proud of him saying: Mississippi. Anytime we would ask Charlie about Tom and Huck, he would talk insessantly about what happened in the story and who the secondary characters were in relation to Tom and Huck. We even got the two-year-old, picky eater to eat turnip greens, pork chops, and cornbread by telling him that it was Tom and Huck food. After four months of watching Tom and Huck 24/7, the DVD no longer played. Luckily, Wal-Mart had another copy of it, and Charlie is back to watching it every time he's at Mama's. Needless to say, Charlie, like Jonathan, is a big fan. While Jonathan wasn't exactly a kid's kinda person, I think he would smile and approve of the fact that another generation of little Mississippi boys are being introduced to the wonder of Twain's stories like Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.
-Elizabeth Crews
-Elizabeth Crews
