The adventures of Lester Goodin: Cape Girardeau resident known for portraying author Mark Twain

When Lester Goodin played Mark Twain in "Old Man River" 10 years ago, he had no lines.

Instead, for the inaugural show at Southeast Missouri State University's River Campus, he strode about the theater in a crisp white suit, rumpling his brow at this or that and smoking $8 cigars. That suited Goodin, since he had learned that while looking like Twain requires little more than the right facial hair and a frown, sounding like an American literary giant is a challenge.

"I'll tell you something about Mark Twain," he said. "The man was incapable of writing a dull sentence."

Twain's famous repertoire of one-liners, Goodin said, actually makes it more difficult for actors like him to impersonate the man.

"There's nobody like him," he said. "You might think that one quote might fit here or there, but it ain't so, pal. It's very hard to adapt those phrases to another setting."

But if Twain's linguistic economy evades Goodin, he has at least learned to approximate Twain's blustery wit. The other actors in "Old Man River," he said, were fantastic.

"And so was I," he said. "I can say nothing with the best of 'em."

Lester Goodin poses for a photo as Mark Twain on Wednesday at his Cape Girardeau home.Laura Simon

But when he does speak, it's not hard to see how he took to the impersonation game. Even when he's not both Twain and Faulkner corroborate.

"[My bookshelves] have a number of redundancies," he said. "And duplications."

But with racism being the obvious and important exception, Goodin said Southern history and values like respect and gallantry are admirable to this day.

"I think about [history] a lot of the time, when I'm out in the field planting," he said. "Sometimes, if I find a badly rusted mule shoe or something, I'll pick it up. I remember when I was a small boy and we used mule shoes, but that was the late '40s, at least."

His love of history led him to study it in Memphis, Tennessee, during his college years, and like Twain's own young-adulthood, Goodin's was characterized by restlessness and adventure.

"After I graduated high school in Charleston, I wanted to get as far away as possible from there," he recalled.

And he did, having joined the Peace Corps the year after President Kennedy was assassinated. But eventually, his wife's job took them both back to Cape Girardeau, and he once again became a farmer.

"I'm rooted in Charleston. I'm rooted in Mississippi County," he said, almost like a badly rusted mule shoe: "Deep, deep down in the bedrock."

And with the River Campus 10th anniversary approaching, Goodin will be reprising his role in "Old Man River" next spring. He said it's something he's looking forward to, since that was one of the things that helped him get into portraying Mark Twain.

Now that he's had the past decade to hone his craft, presumably he'll be even better at looking like Mark Twain.

But, he said, he'll probably have to trim his bushy white hair a bit, just in case.

"I'm starting to get some mileage as Albert Einstein," he joked.

tgraef@semissourian.com

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