LETTERS FROM HOME: THE ART OF TURNING A FLOODWALL INTO A TOURIST ATTRACTION

Jan. 22, 1998

Dear Julie,

On a recent trip to Kentucky, DC and I were nosing about in downtown Paducah when we came upon a work of art on a wall. A floodwall.

A talented Louisiana artist named Robert Dafford is painting the story of the city on its floodwall. The eight murals completed so far consist of charming scenes from Paducah's yesteryears: An old fire station, a long-defunct strawberry festival, the city market, even one depicting the city's floods.

The artist best known for painting a 16-story clarinet on the side of a Holiday Inn in New Orleans began the Paducah murals two springs ago. He and his crew of artists have six more to complete in a block-long stretch before they start on 20 maritime murals planned on the other side of the floodgate.

A festival has already been organized. The murals are spotlighted and actors in costume seem to emerge from the scenes.

Last year, 3,500 people attended. Paducah's floodwall has become a big tourist attraction.

Floodwalls are a necessity for Paducah and Cape Girardeau. It's just as necessary to try to soften the concrete ugliness into something more pleasing to the eye. So far, our floodwall murals have come from the Chamber of Commerce School of Design.

They don't tell visitors and river travelers what Cape Girardeau's really about. At least, these are not the images of Cape Girardeau in my heart.

My images of Cape Girardeau are little boys and girls playing a pickup game of baseball or softball, and walking the sawdust midway at the SEMO District Fair. They're watching the fireworks explode over the Mississippi from atop the courthouse hill at Riverfest, and moms applauding all the bands -- no matter how sour -- at the university Homecoming Parade.

You want history? In my pictures, steamboats are arriving from St. Louis and New Orleans, and people are filling sandbags to help their neighbors keep the latest flood off the porch.

A long section of our floodwall is occupied by the Missouri Wall of Fame, which true to its billing consists of portraits of famous Missourians, from Mark Twain to Marie Oliver, a Cape Girardean who designed the state flag.

This provoked a good deal of controversy when it appeared, mostly over the choices of who to include. This always seemed to me almost beside the point.

How different to ask an artist, as Paducah did, to capture the history and the essence of the city, to tell visitors and remind the residents of who we are and who our ancestors were.

These are visions of our ordinary lives, past and present, what Garrison Keillor calls "the pleasure of the familiar." The stuff that breaks your heart.

Like long angles of geese flying unexpectedly overhead, sitting on the grass on a satiny summer evening at Capaha Park as the municipal band plays "Stars and Stripes Forever," people walking at the edge of the river simply to watch the current swirl. Or to look at the murals.

Love, Sam

~Sam Blackwell is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.