THE BIG MUDDY

Dave heads for danger with a bottle of wine

Jan braves another bridge

Huh, what?

“Ole man river keeps rollin’along”. (?)   “That ol’ river keeps on rollin’ though/ no matter what gets in the way/ or which way the wind does blow”.  (Dylan)   “Can’t put the rain back in the sky/ once it falls down,  please don’t cry./ Can’t force the river upstream/ when it goes south, know what I mean./  Are you down, babe, down with that.” (Lucinda Williams- ESSENCE). 

     Now we’re on a REAL river.  If you consider the Missouri a part of it, it’s right up there with the Amazon and the Nile.  Big currents, big tows, big turns, big banks, big bridges.  “Past nun gut auf!” (Pay attention).  From the confluence we shot down the river at 10 knots (6 on our speedo, 10 on the GPS= 4 knot current.  We flew by the arch at St. Louis which city has no welcoming, safe waterfront facilities for the pleasure cruiser ?????  Why not?  We are known to the tow captains as PC’s (pleasure craft),  an apt appellation from our point of view, if, perhaps, a derogatory one from theirs.  I’m sure that we are akin to the mosquito to them, a constant if not particularly egregious irritation.  We try to blend into their traffic patterns by communicating on channel 13 with them, but to the neophyte, it’s a precipitous learning curve.  “The one whistle” means passing port to port when meeting, but port to starboard from the overtaking vessel’s weltanschauung.  The “two whistle” is of course the reciprocal.  The VHF transmissions are usually quite garbled with static and arcane references as to places and identities.  A 1500’ tow might suddenly decide to do a 180 deg. spin in the middle of the river.  They might want you on the “one” or the “two” when meeting or overtaking on a tight turn or in a congested situation.  These guys are incredible masters of their craft(s) and are unfailingly considerate, polite and calm.  The majority have a deep drawl with a predominance of Cajun influenced patois.  An amazing, and, I believe, very well paid subculture.  Thanks for your forbearance, guys.

The only choice for a stop on the first day was Hoppie’s marina, which is a barge moored along the right descending bank run by an old riverman- Hoppie- and his semi-famous partner, Fern, who holds an informational and precautionary confab with the Loopers who wash up on their bank each day.  Brilliant, piercing blue eyes, deeply lined face, and a cloud of smoke swirling in a halo. A group of boats will naturally congeal together due to lock timing, mooring opportunities, and a natural affinity of anxiety and shared adventure.  Rock Chalk, Confetti, Duddon Pilot, Oceanus, Last Dance, Last Chance, Sonata, Cap’t Sharon abd. Something Landing, et. al. all became radio personalities, happy hour raconteurs, boating stylists, sources of info, etc.  We must learn to make friends on shorter notice, because too soon the pace of travel will widen the gap.

  Then, in the morning, gird up your loins, screw your courage to the sticking point, and back on that horse (and don’t change it in midstream).  A quick 60+ miles down the river we pulled off into Little River Diversion Channel, a placid anchorage near Cape Girardeau with room for many boats and a chance of a barge tow entering in the night.  That night and all the next day it was buckets of rain, buckets of tears, got all them buckets comin’ out of my ears.  The ‘puter showed rain all the way up the Miss. and the Ill. Now we had to worry about a wall of water coming down the channel.  God willing or not, the creek was gonna rise.  We decided to take a lay day here anyway, so we did.  The GPS showed that town was 1.8 mi. away, so being bored in the rain and in need of certain comestibles, we set another anchor, downed dinghy, buzzed up to the RR bridge and struck out on foot in our foulies.  Well, we should have stayed on the RR tracks (There's a whole lot for a boy to think about as he walks along the tracks./  As he walks along...Greg Brown?)  because the two-track short-cut (Diek) turned out to be a morass (now that’s just grade school, Bill- there’s no need to denigrate a perfectly good word) of mud and quick(-mud)sand.  Every step Jan would take for 1/8^th of a mile she would almost lose a boot or fall over.  Oh,yeah, real funny, now. (Gonna’ do a little dance in that Mississippi mud.  Hank Wms. III) The path did take us by a couple of really cool caves  which Tom, Becky, and Huck could easily  have inhabited.  It turned out that the trek lasted 3 hours in the deluge and the thunder and lightning and nary a one Missourian to give us a ride.  Finally, we reached “town” and found a groc store, gas station, and, dripping wet , shivering, in our foul weather gear and mood we were served a fantastic authentic Mexican meal by a very bueno senorita.  Somewhere the sun was shining.  We then got our groc, talked the manager of the store into a ride back to the tracks near our boat and hiked back to the channel.  Here we were greeted by our dinghy riding 2’ higher than when we left it and a 5 knot current in the channel.  As we coasted down past the other boats anchored there, people were shouting, “What’s the name of your boat?”  Nrrrgsdtk dragging!  Oh, good, another dose of adrenaline.  Someone had come in, dropped anchor, and he quickly took the dogs ashore.  (Hi, Blucifer!) Well, she was on the boat alone when it started dragging out towards the raging river.  She started blowing the horn.  He, meanwhile threw the dogs in the dinghy, and headed toward the boat when his little outboard quit. Now he was being sucked out toward the big water in the dinghy and the big boat was dragging.  The horn blasts became more frequent and frantic.  We started out towards them but I glanced at the bow of our dinghy and we had 3” of freeboard with all our supplies and a 2 horse motor.  We about faced and inched our way back up current to the Visitor.  Some deft, brave soul in a Great Banks or possibly a Monk trawler ventured out to the edge of the current and threw the dinghy a line.  Disaster was narrowly averted. 

Jan stowed the groc., I cleaned the gluey mud off of our traveling gear, we heated some leftovers, and sank wearily into our dank, damp sleeping quarters.  Goodnight, Irene, good night Irene, I’ll see you in my dreams.