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Journal Notes from the November 1998 Float to the Sea:
DAY 3
(Nov 7):
Euphus "Butch" Ruth arrived and surprised me
with breakfast: an Arby’s sloppy joe. I had never before considered this
breakfast fare, but it sure did the trick. I set out in winds starting to
rise out of the Southeast, winds that were to continue all day, and make
paddling necessary. Dear reader, you might here question my authenticity
as a "riverman," but I actually have distaste for paddling. Much
better it is to float, to go with the flow, to let the river do the work.
But on a day like today you have two choices: either to paddle or to stay
on shore. I was ready to get away from that point, mainly because I only
carried on my person $400 cash, and did not want to end my journey with a
collect phone call from the Greenville jail to friends in Clarksdale. It
was a laborious day. I hardly remember anything of it save for an angry
towboat pilot who kept waving me away from the shore at the Greenville
Bridge. He was facing upstream, and pulled up to the Arkansas bank,
awaiting the passage of a large downstream tow, fully loaded, a
three-screw tug pushing. I easily passed the downstream barge as he was
coming into position to make the turn. It is a tight bend known as Walker
Bend.
All that arm waving was unnecessary, I thought, but perhaps
things look a lot different from the wings of the pilothouse. Later I
learned that the Greenville Bridge is notorious on the river. It is the
toughest one to navigate for tugboats. No less than twenty-five barges are
sunk below its aging concrete towers. Part of the difficulty is in the
fast waters coming around Walker Bend. The other difficulty is that the
fast water stays against Arkansas, on the Western shore, while an enormous
eddy reaches into the middle of the river from Mississippi, precisely
where the pilots have to steer their long noses under highway 82. It would
be something like driving your car around a corner where the inside lane
was moving faster than the outside one, but you had to get into the
outside lane to make the bridge.
Coming around the bend a
downstream pilot is left with a maximum of only two miles in which to
negotiate his position before reaching the bridge. When you consider the
fact that for some tows it requires two miles to come to a complete stop,
you can see why the pilots start sweating at this place, and the
"cub" pilots are separated here from the mature ones.
Day’s end found me on the bend around Leota Bar, darkness settling
in with impending storms out of the West. Unwilling to paddle further, and
reaching exhaustion, I pulled into the sandbar in a treeless place, with a
swoop of sand two miles below, and another giant swoop above. Not my ideal
place on that stormy eve, but I just couldn’t force my tired limbs any
further.
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