took off, though it almost got washed away. The tiny arts community survived the Great Flood of ’93 thanks to townspeople who pitched in on a heroic sandbagging effort to keep floodwaters at bay. Today, Mary employs six dozen people in this town of ninety-four residents.
Joining us at our table was a youthful adventurer we’d encountered a few miles upriver. He introduced himself as Adam Book, and his current chapter focused on piloting a kayak down the entire Mississippi. From Adam’s perspective, as his faster craft overtook us, the Big Getter seemed luxurious, more accommodating. Adam wasn’t yet twenty-one, but he had guts and stamina to challenge the Mother of All Rivers by himself in a seven-foot boat.
Next day we bid adieu to Kimmswick, and to Adam, who rose with the sun and swiftly slid downriver out of sight. Unlike McLarty’s experience on the turbulent upper Mississippi, our weather featured the traditional August forecast: sunny and hot, perfect for a river sojourn.
Around a sweeping bend we noticed thick black smoke that signaled one of the rarest sights on the river, at least nowadays. Sure enough, a paddlewheel steamer appeared, churning toward us. As the distance closed between our two craft, the steamer stopped dead in the water, the pilot thrusting his paddlewheel into forward and reverse to hold the Mississippi Queen’s position in the strong current. We drifted within spitting distance of the big steamer. The captain appeared on the bridge and shouted down to us. “Better move out of the channel. Big barge coming down around the bend behind you.” We knew that. Still, we thanked him for his courtesy. And we endured every one of the 200 passengers who appeared on the big steamer’s Texas Deck to observe our curious craft and to yell at us, “Get out of the way! Big barge coming!” We debated thanking them in the traditional sign language from small craft to these big floating wedding cakes. But mooning those octogenarian passengers after their well-intended advice seemed beneath crass.
As we drifted past the big boat, her pilot signaled the engineer to step on it, and the Mississippi Queen chugged up around the bend and out of sight. Minutes later, the big barge tow overtook us and passed without incident.
Taking a brief respite from a Mississippi River journey, our crew navigated our raft through a narrow inlet to port Ste. Genevieve. Appropriate, I thought, since this was the first highway into town, used by explorers and settlers and Lewis and Clark, and maybe even the Duke of Bilgewater and the lost Dauphin, the royal poseurs who tried to sucker Huck Finn. We drifted way back into the protected bayou, greeted by a ghostly dock that had been abandoned after the last big flood. We lashed to the dock and overnighted, never seeing another soul in this overgrown inlet, save a few fishermen in johnboats and 2.6 billion mosquitoes.
Some people in Ste. Genevieve would like to reclaim the dock and the port and open for business to river visitors. But alas, they realize the quest is quixotic, up against a lack of money and a recession and a lack of money and time and materials and a bunch of loudmouth doubters and a lack of money. State and federal agencies appear reluctant to help dredge the inlet to keep it from silting up. And let’s face it, tourist traffic from the river probably wouldn’t pay for the upkeep.
I walked toward Ste. Genevieve, a distance of about a mile, mostly atop levees. I began to see the town, older than Thomas Jefferson. Built by folks named Balduc, Bequette, and Beauvais, the town leaves no doubt about its heritage. These settlers were from the same French stock that settled southern Louisiana, where their appellation shortened to Cajun.
Thirsty, I stopped into the historic Ste. Genevieve Hotel and ended up dining on the restaurant’s signature dish, liver dumplings. The accent was on the dumplings, with the liver cooked to an almost puree, soupy base. An acquired taste for sure, but delightful. Thus fortified with enough iron to attract magnets, or sink mosquitoes, I set out to explore this, the oldest community in Missouri, founded in 1732. The oldest record at the historic Catholic church is a 1759 baptism of one of founder Felix Valle’s slaves.
The houses were unique in two ways. First, three homes featured a rare French creole vernacular vertical log construction. And second, they were still standing, despite threats from fire, flood, time and man. These structures even survived the 1811-1812 New Madrid earthquakes, the most violent shakedown in the recorded history of the North American continent.
The town was a quiet walk back in time, thanks to four miles of insulation that separate Ste. Genevieve from the plastic modernity that proliferates along the interstate up the hill.
Next morning we left the abandoned dock, an eerily silent refuge, and worked our way back out to the river, passing a pair of unfriendly bubbas standing on shore beside their old towboat, concealed from the river, illegally burning contaminated fuel on the bank. Suddenly the characters we were encountering on this trip had taken a tilt toward the adventures of Huck Finn. I felt powerless to admonish the polluters. But through the morning mist, as we made our way into the main channel, hope bobbed to the surface, because we were headed to Chester, Illinois, the home of America’s legendary enforcer, Popeye.
The mist evaporated, and we sliced up a lunch of mangoes and cheese and crackers. A few hours later, Chester’s first icon appeared. Hugging the river on the north edge of town is Menard Correctional Center, one of Illinois’ oldest prisons. Poised on the bank beside the prison walls was a camera with a familiar face behind it, snapping photos of our crew as we managed the sweeps and oars. Downriver just past the highway bridge, we disembarked at the Port of Chester.
The Port of Chester is nothing more than a concrete slab to launch fishing boats. It has no Popeye Marina or Olive Oyl Cafe, not even a sign denoting this home of Poopdeck Pappy’s favorite son. The photographer, magazine publisher Gary Figgins, chauffeured our dirty, hungry crew to a local buffet to gorge ourselves in Popeyian fashion. Stuffed to the forearms, we launched Justus McLarty and the Big Getter back into the Mississippi’s main channel, and he sailed solo downriver out of sight.
The raft story doesn’t end there, of course. Justus hadn’t even reached the Ohio River yet. Little did he know that downriver a ship was sinking, an oil slick was spreading, and a hurricane was brewing, poised to pound New Orleans. And although I warned him that below the Ohio River, the levees were so high that the scenery would be limited, Justus reported that the Lower Mississippi turned out to provide the most beautiful landscape of all.
So what happens to a houseboat when the owner reaches the end of an odyssey? As a bona fide big thinker, Justus had a plan. He pulled the boat onto the bank and deflated the pontoons. He got out his wrench, unbolted the decks and took the frame apart. Like a one-man carnival, he folded the whole thing into the back of a rental truck and drove toward the West Texas sunset. He beat Hurricane Katrina by a few days.
True to his great-great-grandmother’s advice, his ideas for the Big Getter keep getting bigger. He wants to travel a giant circle around the eastern third of the United States, as foreshadowed by the two boaters on Hoppy’s deck.
Such a journey will test his limits. He’ll need a stronger structure to withstand waves. He’ll get a bigger motor to battle ocean currents and open seas. He’ll need to carve out a year away from work, and the comforts of a landlocked home. He might have to kiss SNL goodbye.
No problem for a big getter whose getter is bigger than his wanter.
Since his journey to the gulf, a disaster hit Louisiana, one bigger than 10,000 sinking ships and more lasting than the effects of Katrina. Stretches of beach east of Gulfport, Mississippi, were coated in a reflux of tar balls from the world’s worst oil spill, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill of 2010. If Justus ever makes his trip along America’s gulf shore and eastern seaboard, he’ll probably find plenty of oil. The end is near.
Burma Shavings
I hitched a ride back to St. Louis, and hopped a train home. Same train. Would it be
