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The Jumping Frog Jubilee: The Celebrated Mark Twain Returns to Calaveras County
| Article
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11911 |
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Section : |
LIFE
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| Issue
Date : |
8 / 1987 |
2,305 Words |
| Author
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Richard Bangs
Richard Bangs is the author of Island Gods, Whitewater
Adventure, and Riding the Dragon's Back, which won the
Lowell Thomas Award for the best travel book of 1989. He
is the founder of SOBEK Expeditions, an international
travel-adventure company, which has become part of Mt.
Travel-SOBEK. |
Dateline: Angels Camp, California. At 6:00 P.M. Sunday, May 17, the 59th annual Jumping Frog Jubilee was limping to a close. The reporter from ABC's Wide World of Sports packed up his videocassette and slammed the door behind him, leaving me hunched over a typewriter in the press booth wondering how to piece together a riveting account of a "ribeting" four-day event. I plucked at the keys, but typed only asterisks, explanation points, and expletives.
Then the door swung open and in staggered a frighteningly familiar white-suited, white-haired figure.
"Colonel Sanders? Hal Holbrook?" I sounded.
"Name's Twain, and I ain't exactly jumpin' for joy," he spat back while fumbling for a chair and patting a sweat-drenched forehead with a white handkerchief monogrammed "S.L.C."
"I thought you'd croaked."
"Nah. The reports of my death have been slightly exaggerated. I've been too hoppin' mad to keep still 'nuff for a funeral."
"Care to tell me about it?" I ventured, glad for the interruption from the agony of writer's block.
"Well, son, I reckon I do. See, I was through this town round 'bout 122 years ago, and the food was so bad I could never forget it. I was in the area so I thought I'd mosey on over and see if there was any survivors of the Hotel Angels' coffee and beans. Almost did me in back in '65.
"So imagine my surprise when I started into town and found 45,000 people in front of me. I figured the food must have improved considerably.
"As it turned out, the folks were comin' to see the celebrated jumpin' frogs of Calaveras County, which I wrote about durin' my gold minin' days when I lived in a cabin with Bret Harte just down the road a piece. I thought the contest a mite silly back then, about on a par with religion, and I was disbelievin' that a dozen grown men would take it seriously. So I was pleased to see civilization has leapt forward to the point where crowds as big as the population of Hannibal now come to watch batrachians hop, skip, and jump."
Jim
...
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