Mark Twain

Picture the river in the early days of Disneyland Paris.

The Molly Brown is slowly making its way around Big Thunder Mountain while, somewhere on the opposite side of the island, the Mark Twain comes into view.

These two large riverboats aren't simply scenic objects.

They're constantly reshaping the view as they move through the land.

If we stand near Thunder Mesa Riverboat Landing and mentally return to those early years, the first thing that changes is the amount of movement around us.

The Molly Brown's still there, of course, but she no longer has the river to herself.

Somewhere around Big Thunder Mountain, the Mark Twain is also making its way along the rivers of the Far West, occasionally disappearing behind the island before coming back into view.

Lower on the water, the River Road keelboats are making their own circuits, while guests in the Indian canoes paddle along the shoreline.

His brother Eric, not friend, John's brother Eric worked on the Jungle Cruise.

He drove the Mark Twain and the Columbia in the Fantasmic show.

So that was like a little bit later.

But he was on the Jungle Cruise and Pirates and Thunder Mountain when we were in high school.

Mm-hmm.

And the whistle from the, from the Mark Twain.

Yeah, which is right there.

[laughs]

Uh, uh, if I was gonna write a book, the title of the book would be I Have No Idea of What I'm Doing.

One of the, one of the ch- subchapters would be Mark Twain Saved My Life.

There are school records from when my grandfather was a kid describing him as restless.

During the summers as a boy, he would, uh, basically navigate barges with sticks across the Mississippi, and his boat was called the Mark Twain.

Which turns out is not a tugboat that specializes in racial slurs.

For my grandfather, working on that tugboat meant traveling up and down the Mississippi River, meeting service members, soldiers, hearing their stories and their adventures, and he started craving that life.

Our grandfather arrived at Iwo Jima with the 1st Battalion and was stuck in a foxhole for two days without food or water.

They're supposed to take a hill, and then a Jeep comes up, and they call out five names, and Dad's was one of them.