Hannibal, Missouri Remarks at the Town Square.

Mayor Herman, Congressman Volkmer, and my good friend, Governor Joe Teasdale, and all the people of Hannibal"and the surrounding communities in Missouri, I guess on both sides of the Mississippi:

You have come here to make us feel welcome again.

I don't believe that any person lives in our country, and very few live throughout the world, who are not familiar with Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer, Becky Thatcher, Huckleberry Finn, and also Hannibal, Missouri.

Ours is a nation which has a source of strength and a source of greatness that's unshakable. And part of that strength comes from the memories of our boyhood and girlhood days in communities like Hannibal throughout the country—some smaller than Hannibal, like Plains; some much larger than Hannibal, like the urban areas of our country.

But the stability of a family life, the love of an Aunt Polly or a mother or a father or sisters or boyhood or girlhood sweethearts, live with us as long as we are on this Earth.

Ours is truly a great country. And I hope that Hannibal won't change very much, only in the number of people that can come here to witness and to be part of the life of Samuel Clemens, who spread the good news about America in many parts of the world.

We saw translations of "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" in the museum that went to 50 different kinds of languages so that people all over Earth can know about you and about his boyhood and about the truth of America.

He was indeed a remarkable person who saw, with a remarkable insight, what made America great. Coming down the river, Amy has been reading "Tom Sawyer" for the second time, and I've been reading "Life on the Mississippi" for the second time, or third time, or fourth time as well. It's been part of my life as it has been part of many of you.

Mark Twain, or Samuel Clemens, had one of the greatest senses of humor, I guess, of anyone who's ever lived in our country. He always had a good thing to say about America. And I hope that's part of our own lives, to say something good about our own country. I jotted down a few things that he said, and I'll be very brief.

He had a lot to say about inflation. I don't know if you know it or not, but in "Life on the Mississippi" he said that when he was a young boy, he first saw St. Louis, he said, "I could have bought it for $6 million, and it was the biggest mistake of my life that I didn't do it."

And then he commented on energy—I won't read the whole quote—but Mark Twain saw a tremendous change in the use of energy on the Mississippi.

When he was first training to be a pilot, as you know, the steamboats used wood, and the woodyards would go for miles and miles on both sides of the river near the towns. At that time there were 10,000 steamboats on the river system of our country. He was part of that life.

And the last thing I'd like to comment on is about the Federal Government. He had some good things to say about the Federal Government. And I particularly liked this because you don't hear that very much anymore. He went by one of the Federal projects, and he said, "Everything about it suggests the hand of the national government." Listen to this: "The government's work is always conspicuous for excellence, solidity, thoroughness, and neatness. The Government does its work well in the first place, and then takes care of it afterwards."

That's the good news. The bad news is this project that he was describing was a cemetery. [Laughter]

Well, we still live in a great country, as you well know, and times are changing, including energy. Last night, we came by one of the very few large electric powerplants on the Mississippi. We produce a very small amount of electricity now, with all this tremendous power going past Hannibal, about 16.5 megawatts. We have the capability already assessed to produce 2,400 megawatts of power, 15 times as much, just using the dams that are already constructed there for the locks. I'm going to instruct the Department of the Army to simplify the procedures so that these projects can be completed earlier without going through all the redtape and complication and delay that hold up such projects now.

There are so many ways in our country that we can take advantage of what we already have and have a better nation and a better life at the same time. Conserving energy or saving energy is not an unpleasant thing. It can be an exciting thing, an enjoyable thing, that saves us money, lets us be truly patriotic, lets us restore the energy security of our Nation, and binds us together in a spirit of common purpose.

So, I believe that in many ways the present crisis that we face with a shortage of energy, an overdependence on foreign oil, can be a blessing in disguise. It can give Americans a chance to prove that a tremendous challenge can be overcome, that a tremendous problem can be solved, that complicated questions can be answered by Americans who are unified.

We sometimes forget what a great nation we have. And I believe that in the solution of our energy problem, we can prove again that Americans have never faced a challenge to our country unsuccessfully. We are the greatest nation on Earth, and if we remember what we learned in our childhood, the truth that Mark Twain told to us with a great sense of humor, and remember how strong a family can be or a community can be or a nation can be when we face a problem together, there's no doubt in my mind that we can make the greatest nation on Earth, the United States of America, even greater in the future.

If we all work together, we cannot fail. I know we'll succeed. And I thank you for being so nice to us.

Thank you very much.