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Journal Notes from the November 1998 Float to the Sea:
DAY 10
(Nov 14)
Natchez-Under-the-Hill
The Mississippi River is the place where
big dreams are made. It demands big dreams, and hence, big actions. There
just ain't no other way about it. Its like approaching a climb up Mount
Everest. You can't just make a day-hike out of it. But dreams are only the
first step, then comes the hard work. If you're lucky, the river will let
you get by, like it did La Salle. If you're not so lucky, you might not
leave (De Soto), or maybe you'll end up sunk, like the unlucky steamboat
Montezuma, which created Montezuma Towhead across from Friar's Point in
1829. There's been more than one unlucky soul who just simply disappeared
for no apparent reason at all. Remember Jeff Buckley, the rock musician?
And how about Doctor ____ from Vicksburg who spent his life on the river,
and everybody said knew the river like no one else. They never even found
his remains. Only God knows what fate befell him on his last day.
A grizzled pilot named Andre grabbed my ear shortly after I
entered Natchez-Under-the-Hill, as if he had been waiting all night for
me. Without any provocation on my part, he launched into several humorous
tales concerning the unusual expeditions he had seen coming down the Ol'
Man. There was the girl from Wisconsin. She paddled it alone in her kayak.
A couple of days after she left Natchez, some men in a canoe arrived, and
inquired about her. They were trying to catch up with her, but she was the
fastest paddler anybody had ever seen. Maybe those poor men are still
chasing her somewhere across the Caribbean.
"Then there was
Effie and her crew of Germans," said Andre. He picked up his cell
phone and put it to his ear. "All of the tugboat pilots had their UHF
radios like this and were telling each other about those Germans, and each
was hoping for a view." Seems those Germans liked to raft au natural.
They stayed in Natchez a while, and then pushed on. The next day they
rounded Carthage Point, where the river widens several miles. "It
looks like the river goes both ways," said Andre, "they went the
wrong way." The Germans had bottomed out in the shallow water of the
chute behind Carthage Towhead. "Effie sent for me. She told them to
get Andre down here and pull them out. So I got my boat, and a big winch,
and I asked the boys if anyone would come help me get them out. I had so
many volunteers, we couldn't fit them all." Andre grinned like a
walrus at the recollection, and then continued his narration. When they
got close to Effie and the breached raft full of Germans, Andre anchored
his boat, and began winching. His men eagerly got out in the water and
pushed the raft from behind, alongside all the au natural German women.
"It was the most motivated group of volunteers I ever had," he
said.
"Then there was Mr. Oregon," said Andre, and grinned again
like a walrus, sobering quickly to proceed. "Mr. Oregon was a golden
gloves boxer. One day he got an idea. He went to the 'Y' and learned to
swim. After becoming the best swimmer anyone had seen, he went to the
headwaters of the Mississippi (Lake Itaska, Minnesota) and stood there in
a wet suit, in the middle of the river, and then lowered his body into the
current, and began to swim." Mr. Oregon swam through the Twin Cities.
He swam through the Quad Cities (Moline, Davenport, Rock Island, and
Bettendorf), through St. Louis, through Memphis, and kept going. He must
have been some kind of superman.
(note: I've swam across the
Mississippi. Its no easy swim. You end up far downstream of where you
started, and there are all kinds of boils and eddies to contend with. One
time I couldn't get back to shore. It was on the edge of the river, near
island 63. The boils were pushing against me. In fact, it took about a
half hour of hard swimming to get back to shore, and I was only thirty
feet away from it. It was quite frightening. In the end, I only made
landing by swimming back out into the current and floating around a large
eddy which eventually brought me back in close enough to make landing.
Some people say I'm crazy for canoeing on the Mississippi. What would they
say about swimming the length of it? Just when you draw the line you'll
always find someone on the other side.)
Andre continued: "I
was standing at the landing one day and there came this black thing that
looked like a pile of trash, like inner tubes and tires…" It was Mr.
Oregon. He was an insurance salesman for New York Life. As he made his way
down the river - swimming, mind you, every stroke of the way - he would
call ahead and arrange accommodations with the NY Life salesman in every
town he came to. "He left Natchez with a plan for a pickup and ended
up sleeping with the mosquitoes on Warnicott Bar!" Andre grinned big
at this one, "he had to bury himself in the sand to get away from the
mosquitoes! Stayed all night buried in the sand."
What
happened was that Mr. Oregon had made plans with the Natchez NY Life
representative to meet him at Such-and-Such a Point at such-and-such a
time. But one of them got confused, and poor Mr. Oregon was left standing
on Warnicott Bar in the darkness, the mosquitoes becoming ravenous. Of
course, he couldn't carry a tent or any sort of protection with him as he
was swimming. So, he dug a hole and covered himself with Mississippi
Valley sand, still warm from the relentless sun of the day. He waved down
a passing fisherman the next morning and caught a ride back to Natchez to
recover from his miserable night.
The following day he returned to
Warnicott Bar, and the intrepid Mr. Oregon continued his journey.
Andre let me wash my clothes in the guest house above the bar. I
returned to Under-the-Hill for some fresh hot tamales (The best I've had
East of West Texas) and whiskey. J.D., the bar tender, refused my money.
That song "Proud Mary" kept running through my mind: "If
you down to that river 'Bet you're gonna find some people who live You
don't have to worry 'Cause you got no money People on the river are happy
to give…"
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