River World Field Trip, Alton, IL to Lake Charles, LA and back on a working towboat, 1956
October 24, 2015April1 10, Tuesday
Rain poured all night and was still at it in the morning. A spout was pouring water off in front of the captains’ doors, and there were various splatterings as I slopped down to breakfast. We were above Plum Point Reach, Mile 795, at 6 a.m. Plum Point Reach, where the worst snags on the river used to be until Captain Shreve cut them all out with the HELIOPOLIS on that first trial of the first successful snagboat. The river was smooth and innocent now.
On the Arkansas side the banks were a tangle of heaped brown vines of some kind. Sandbars and shores on either hand, and there were groups of scaup ducks getting up and flying as the barges shoved among them. Herons stood on sandbars, seeming to have taken up the fishing franchise on the length of the Mississippi, Green trees freshly fallen in and floating showed that the river was still relentlessly at work, always and forever, chewing out shores and dumping trees and earth into the water. Slant snags on sandbars and shores were loaded with cormorants, like black candles on free-form candelabra, nearly spaced and just a little grotesque, sitting there.
The river was full of boils, strange coiling boils, probably indicating submerged obstacles of some sort. The water was still rising, covering up a lot of sandbars, and only willows sticking out to show where some were. We passed a little dab of an island which a few months ago was half a mile long, but was being eaten up by the river. The NEW ORLEANS, the CASABLANCA. Past stone and concrete revetments.
Past the site of Fort Pillow and the first Chickasaw Bluff, red and orange-stained earth. An egret standing white in the rain, the river misty ahead. The grocery order was telephoned in to the Memphis Boat Store. The first dogwood on the Chickasaw Bluff. A sheer bluff at mile 770 … between Sunrise and Hatchie. The HARRIET ANN, and the SHAWNEE, the COMMERCIAL CLIPPER loaded with autos, and the TUNIS.
And there was amazing Memphis rising from the river. After so many interminable miles of anonymous willows and cottonwoods, sandbars and open river, the miracle of a city is the more confounding, with skyscrapers and fine big buildings, a landscaped waterfront with dogwood in bloom, and the little MEMPHIAN, the storeboat, scudding out to meet us. The storeboat threw a line or two around our cavels and chugged along with us as the boxes of food were unloaded. Then Vess got on with the two old armchairs from the guest room (which had been out in the rain all night), and the last we saw of them was when they sat on the tail end of the MEMPHIAN, heading for the harbor.
We passed the big steamboat, the MISSISSIPPI, which is the Inspection boat used by the U.S. Engineers, quite an historic old thing and much beloved on the river.
Under the high-line-towers, one of which now stands in the water, yet only a year ago its pier was on the left shore. Passed the GUADALCANAL and the VALLEY TRANSPORTER … and pretty soon it was dinner, which featured roast beef today, and broccoli and cherry cream-cheese pie, plus the usuals. I was unaccountably sleepy after dinner and lay down for a bit, went to sleep, and woke up at 2:30, I dashed up to the pilothouse to see what had been doing, and Ilar went down and got me some coffee. Since Captain Brazie doesn’t indulge in coffee, the pilothouse doesn’t get the usual coffee service unless the guest(s) request it. So. I came awake enough to see our approach to Helena, Arkansas, another place I had missed before by daylight. It was cold and very windy, with more rain. We inched down along the revetment south of town, and shoved in close enough to put a ladder ashore, so Bill Vickers, known as Vick, could scramble on, as relief for Vess who had gone off at Memphis with his chairs. At 3 pm. left Helena. 4 pm, mist and very poor visibility, so the radar was put on. The river was the color of coffee with cream. Waves were white capped from the heavy wind, and many black snags were floating, some of them huge. We went past Islands 62-63 — or where they used to be — where Shreve cut out the “sleepers” with his snagboat. Then the river turned smooth again, in its many moods, ice-like, big and broad and mirror-like, with now and then a boil or an eddie which scarcely disturbed the water until you saw how it was tormented from below. Down the chute of Island 63. The point of a sandbar was black with ducks. Now there were oily swells rising and falling, like the sea, and a sudden flight of tree swallows scudding through the rain, the clouds low.
We approached Jackson and Sunflower cut-offs, which eliminated two big and useless loops at 5pm. Passed a tow with logs, the FRANK PHIPPS assisted by the tiny KIT CARSON. And then supper — large sirloins so big there was hardly room for anything else on our plates, but there was also corn, potatoes, beans, salad, and jello with whipped cream.