Tom Sawyer

One of the news clips I'm working with for the walk chapter called Chiles a "40-year-old Tom Sawyer." He still had a boyish grin before long hours of Washington politics rubbed it off.

I pulled Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer off the shelf a couple days ago. For months, I had been planning to look at it for ideas on how to think about and write the first chapter. In my mind, the halcyon days of a rural boyhood and life on the riverboat went together. Turned out it offered no help at all. The widow Douglas, Aunt Sally, Jim; they just didn't really hit the spot. I gave the book to Goodwill. Huck Finn is supposed to be Twain's masterpiece, anyway. And I still have that.

I'm going back to the book on Polk County and the lore for ideas. I think the last minutes before a rally at Munn Park in Lakeland is the best place the start. The story of Jacob Summerlin, "King of the Crackers," is one I'm really focusing on.