Hannibal, MO. 105, day 3

The morning broke to a glorius day that was perfect for a Texas boy. It was sunny and warm. After eating at the motel breakfast bar, Kevin and I went downtown to see Hannibal. That's Kevin across the street taking pictures back to the north.
Not surprisingly, most of the stores down by the river are geared to the tourists the town needs to survive and the notoriety of being the hometown of Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens).

Down at the south end of downtown, near the end of this main street, there is an avenue that goes to the park at the river's edge. This steamboat takes tourists out for rides. Standing just above the water, looking across to Illinois, I couldn't help but be amazed at just how big and fast moving the Mississippi is. There is just so much water!
When Kevin and I had stopped into one of the shops on Main Street, we asked how business was. The shopkeeper was an older woman who let us know what she thought then of the media coverage.
"CNN has nearly killed this town!" she vented. "We aren't getting very many people at all this year compared to last. I get phone calls all the time from people who say that they saw the floodcoverage on CNN and that picture of the water right up to the stop sign. We thought the town was ruined."
She explained the stop sign's location as being downriver from the main business district and that their levees and floodgates worked perfectly. But she said it wouldn't be exciting coverage of dry ground, so CNN spiced things up. When we walked to the boat dock, I was fascinated by the flood gate. I had never contemplated exactly what a flood gate was, how it worked or what it looked like. It wasn't until we were coming back toward the town from the river that I realized what we had walked over. The steel that is flush with the ground in the picture is raised to the height of the levee to form the barrier needed to hold the water back. It is a plate of about 5 inches in thickness. That shopkeeper had said they didn't have those back in the 90s when it flooded and without them, the town would have been devastated this year as well.
"But they worked perfectly. If only CNN worked as well."
I'm reminded of her as we are watching coverage of Hurricane Ike this morning.