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Title: Mark Twain Made Me Do It: & Other Plains Adventures by Bryan Jones, Bryan L. Jones ISBN: 0-8032-7592-7 Publisher: Bison Pub. Date: 01 March, 1997 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $15.00

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Average Customer Rating: 5 (2 reviews)

Rating: 5
Summary: Laugh-out-loud memoir of a Nebraska boyhood
Comment: 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."

Rating: 5
Summary: You Don't Know Bryan
Comment: 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.