Larry Christensen

Idaho is famous for being Ernest Hemingway country. Harold W. Hannebaum, son of Idaho and Indiana, may soon become as famous and as appreciated. Hemingway attempted to get at the heart of truth by writing plain, forceful fiction. Hannebaum, a talented inventor with little formal education, reaches a remarkable dimension of truth through his nonfiction autobiographical stories. Someday Hannebaum's achievement may be judged as great as that of Hemingway.

In 1988 I was living in Idaho, working as director of development for Idaho State University in Pocatello. One morning I received one of those calls I loved to receive. It was an attorney in Twin Falls, representing an anonymous client who was trying to set up an endowed scholarship fund to help Native American students at ISU.

We finally worked out all of the details and wrote an agreement. Only then did I learn the names of the donors: Harold W. Hannebaum and Tilda Brownlee Hannebaum. I had never heard of them before, and even then knew almost nothing about them.

I wrote a letter to the attorney and asked him to thank the donors. I mentioned that it was traditional at ISU for scholarship donors to write a brief biography -- one or two pages -- that we could give to each student at the time they received their first scholarship check. We found that students appreciated their awards more when they could learn something about the people who had started the scholarship fund.

A period of time elapsed before I received a biography of Harold Hannebaum in the mail -- thirteen pages, single-spaced, legal size paper. I groaned and pushed it aside for several weeks. One day when I finally got around to reading it, I couldn't put it down. When I turned the last page, I wanted more.

He said he had only a sixth-grade education, and it was true that his spelling wasn't great. But the stories were exciting, humorous and original. As a graduate English major, I recognized it had that rare and elusive quality -- it was good literature. It was good, and maybe even great.

I wrote a letter to the Hannebaums in Sun Valley, Idaho, and thanked Harold for writing this biography. I encouraged him to expand on it. Mr. and Mrs. Hannebaum sent a nice note but did not mention any more writing. For a long time I didn't hear a word from them.

One day many months later I received a telephone call from Mrs. Hannebaum. They were coming to Pocatello -- could I meet with them? I quickly agreed, and offered to give them a tour of the ISU campus.

They arrived, easing their shiny Lincoln -- perhaps their only extravagance -- into a parking space I had reserved for them. They were both shorter and thinner than I had expected. To my surprise they carried a box with 150 pages of manuscript in it. I looked it over briefly, but soon we were busy touring the campus. They were pleasant and we had an uncommonly interesting conversation. I was completely disarmed by their homespun sense of humor. My favorite author is Samuel Clemens, and I finally knew what it might have been like to meet Mr. and Mrs. Clemens personally. I finally saw them back to their car, where I reluctantly waved goodbye.

The manuscript was great! The first 150 pages had been covered by only one paragraph in the original 13-page biography. But it was one long story that needed lots of spelling and grammar attention.

I made a decision. Several days later I called them on the telephone. I told Harold that if he would keep writing, I would volunteer to help him prepare the manuscript for publication on my own time.

And so we began. Harold wrote his stories in pencil on anything he could find. Tilda typed them and mailed them to me. I edited them on the computer, and mailed a draft back. Harold wrote in corrections and sent them back, and we went on. Occasionally stories were moved around so they were in better order, and a little more editing was done.

Over eight years, the manuscript went into thousands of pages, with seven distinct books emerging. I moved to Southern California, but our work continued at the same steady pace.

My enthusiasm and interest grew every year. Harold Hannebaum is known far and wide as a champion storyteller -- deeply appreciated because he tells true stories about people and places that his listeners know, or come to know, through his stories. If possible, Harold's stories in writing are better than when he tells them. He possesses a remarkable eye for authentic detail, and for seeing humor where most of us miss it.

I visited them whenever I could. Despite their love for fine cars, Harold and Tilda live in what first appears to be a plain, old-fashioned home, except for a number of beautiful glass fireplaces invented by Harold. What luxury they enjoy is provided by prototypes of Harold's inventions. His inventions are everywhere, yet they are invisible to me until he explains them because most of them are improvements of existing products.

Harold often tells me, "If the mind of man can create something, then you can understand it and improve on it."

There is a well known photo of Hemingway near Sun Valley, Idaho, kicking an empty beer can down a dirt road -- an image of emptiness and disgust. In 1961 he took his own life. I wish he could have had Harold for a friend.

For Hannebaum, living on an obscure farm just miles away, hiding lifelong illnesses and facing daunting problems, every day has been an opportunity to reinvent himself, to laugh and to dream his way into the future. As courageous as any Hemingway hero, yet he has always refused to accept "fate." Most Idahoans see survival as the highest success, and Harold Hannebaum may be Idaho's happiest survivor.

Yet he is called "Indiana" Hannebaum because of his many stories about childhood in Indiana -- vivid and compelling. He left Indiana in 1920 at the age of ten, but his family maintains ties to a large and colorful family there.

Is "Indiana" Hannebaum another Mark Twain? James Thurber? Booth Tarkington? I think he has written well enough to have a place in their august and irreverent company. When I send a letter to him I sometimes address it to Harold T.T.T. Hannebaum. He tells me that he has to keep buying new hats because his head is getting too swelled up for his old ones.

If you are fortunate enough to read his books, I'm sure he'll find a place in your heart, as he has in mine. -- Larry Christensen