Columns

HANNIBAL, MO. — “Tom! No answer. Tom! No answer. What’s gone with that boy, I wonder?” Is there a person in America who can’t place that partial exchange?

It comes from the opening lines of “Tom Sawyer,” a classic of American Literature, whose author everybody remembers as Mark Twain, The Mark Twain, the one-of-a-kind storyteller, humorist, observer of American life along the Mississippi.

Remember those looping, joined-up letters that for centuries have stood as signs of education and sophistication? We used to call that bit of artistry penmanship, or, so as not to offend anyone, let’s call it “penpersonship.”

This world that I live in is changing so fast I really can’t keep up. A visit with some of the family I don’t see very often brought that home in a big way. Seems like every time I turned around, someone had a phone/camera/Ipod type device aimed and shooting at either one of us or something that was of interest at the time. My question is, what do they do with all of these pictures?

At what point will the term “turn of the century” refer to this century instead of last? To me the expression corresponds to the era when my dad, born in 1903, came around.

But we’ve been into the 21st century for 11 years, and technically, the few years past ought to be the real turn of the century.

In addition, for years I’ve heard people say things like, “Back in oh-2, when I was a kid ...” It’s usually an exaggeration, one I used in class a number of times.