Day 218 - 225: Marceline
June 16, 2024
Dear Disney,
Today was our second streaming day. Every Sunday, we stream for about 45 minutes. We are currently reading, Bob Thomas’s biography of Walt Disney called, Walt Disney: An American Original.
Today’s chapters were on Disney’s childhood days. Thomas discusses where the family came from in Normandy, to Ireland, and then finally to the United States in 1834 when brother’s Elias and Robert moved from Ireland to North America. the family would bounce around between Canada and the United States, but eventually Elias’s grandchild would settle down in the Midwest, get married, and have a number of children. That Grandchild was Walt’s father, Elias.
Elias was a little bit of a wanderer and failed entrepreneur. Based on my understanding of Thomas’s language, Elias would see a possibility to get rich, try, fail, and move on to another city and another possibility. But for a number of years, Elias lived on a farm in Marceline, Missouri.
Later in life, Walt would try to recreate Marceline in Disneyland. I think he was trying to recapture his memories of a place that never really existed. The Marceline in Disneyland found on Main Street, USA, is a romanticized version of Marceline.
However, Bob Thomas’s describes Marceline and Walt’s time there as a time where Walt seemed to have the most fun. Thomas’s describes Walt as a somewhat mischievous youth, describing the time when Walt painted the side of the house with flowers and animals with black tar or the wide-ranging adventures in the woods surrounding the farm and town. The Disney Family lived in Marceline for four years. Thomas states that this time left more of an impression on Walt than any other period, and I have to agree.
What I know of Walt Disney is that he was a man of many faults and failures. I think he sought the nostalgia of Marceline the most when he was at his lowest and I think that we would not have the Disney we all enjoy now without those four years.
After Marceline, the Disney family moved to Kansas City. Elias had purchased paper-routes and Walt delivered papers throughout Kansas City before and after school.
Reading about Walt’s childhood is interesting. I also think of Walt as “Uncle Walt” from his later life and I forget, like the rest of us, Walt was a child once too. Maybe because we think of Walt as being a child-at-heart.
Until Next time,
Jim Dear
