Mark Twain Made Me Do It and Other Plains Adventures

by Bryan L. Jones

Book Overview

Mark Twain Made Me Do It and Other Plains Adventures is a collection of humorous essays portraying western Nebraska life and culture of the 1950s. Anecdotes on small-town baseball and the polio epidemic of 1952 provide a historic backdrop to the story of a wide-eyed boy exploring the limits of his universe. The adventures of a Twain-inspired raft trip down the South Platte and Sputnik-inspired homemade rockets mirror a society of seemingly...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0803275927
• ISBN13: 9780803275928
• Release Date: March 1997
• Publisher: Bison Books
• Length: 210 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.5" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

I wish there were more stories...

Every once in a while, I read an author whose voice stays with me. Bryan Jones is one of those authors. He makes himself and his self-aware, intelligent humor an integral part of the actual book itself. Each story in the collection can stand alone, and each one has an element of that incredible humor present. I laughed my way through the book, getting to know the protagonist better and better, until finally I felt like I would recognize him if we happened to run into each other. Long after I finished the book, I heard echoes of his dry observations, and I'll still chuckle when I recall the situational comedy that was apparently unavoidable in Nebraska in the 50s. But I'll also recall the simple, direct manner in which he described the fear and panic of a polio summer, the lines of iron lungs and the deadly earnest March of Dimes efforts. Tragedy is never sidestepped; death and loss and horrible chance are addressed with the same directness that characterizes the boyhood escapades. Reading Mark Twain Made Me Do It was like being afforded a brief glimpse into a life that I can never know. It made me envious, and not because it presented an idyllic childhood to dream on; on the contrary, I was envious of Bryan's having the varied experiences to draw on during the writing of these stories, and the talent and skill to write them well. I can't for the life of me figure out why this collection hasn't run rampant across the bestseller lists of the country. It was a truly wonderful reading experience that I would recommend to anyone looking for good laughs and some poignant Midwest truths. And the wicked wit is just an added bonus.

Laugh-out-loud memoir of a Nebraska boyhood

Bryan Jones' book is about growing up in small town Nebraska in the 1950s, the son of an easy-going Methodist minister and brother of two older sisters. Throughout, it is humorous; at times it is laugh-out-loud funny.The title comes from a Huck Finn-inspired attempt to float down the Platte River on an inner tube raft with another boy, an adventure somewhat diminished by the shallow river's lack of water and a tumultuous thunderstorm that drives them to a motel. The book begins and ends with accounts of the extended families from which both of his parents spring -- the Tuppers of Red Cloud (Willa Cather country) and the Joneses of little Magnet in northeast Nebraska. The rest is a vivid evocation of a small-town boyhood set mostly in the western Panhandle town of Chappell, Nebraska. For a boy who owns BB guns, loves elaborate pranks, and plays baseball, it's a town of lazy summers, cranky neighbors, vicious school teachers, incompetent town cops, and various oddball residents. Although he does not make much of this, he is the proverbial preacher's son, always riding the ragged edge of disaster.There are a few sobering moments in the mix, as when he pauses in a recollection of the early 1950s polio outbreaks to tell of two young survivors. But for the most part, Jones is eagerly looking for the comic turns in his stories, the ironies and absurdities. He manages this by lapsing into the frame of mind he seems to have had as a boy, irrepressible, heedless, and almost totally self-centered. I recommend this book to anyone who has ever loved Huck Finn. It takes its rightful place on a bookshelf of American small-town childhoods. As companion volumes, I'd recommend Roger Welsch's humorous "It's Not the End of the Earth But You Can See It From Here," about the goings on in another Nebraska small town, Dannebrog, as well as Willie Morris' memoir of growing up in Yazoo City, Mississippi, "My Dog Skip."

You Don't Know Bryan

Bryan is my high school history teacher of long ago and I would say you can beleive most of the hysterically funny stories found in this book! Why, it's better than a comic book! Read it and I'll bet you can relate to many of the situations.