Rolling with the rhythm of the river

Aug. 7, 2003

Dear Pat,

The River Explorer is an excursion boat that makes the Huckleberry dreams of tourists from all over the world come true. When it comes up the Mississippi and stops in Cape Girardeau, my mom and dad and other musicians board to play for the passengers. It's a Dixieland lunch. Later that night, while the boat chugs upriver again, the instrumentalists don tuxedoes to play big band music with the Jerry Ford Combo. My mom changes into one of her "singing dresses," maybe something feathery and red or dramatically striped.

DC and I got to go along for the ride last Sunday. She had been on riverboats before and loves them. "When you get off, getting back in a car and driving feels crazy," DC told me. I wondered what she meant.

I figured most people on one of these cruises just want to relax and enjoy the scenery. Something about the rhythm of the boat against the current is induces sleep. But some people were on the river to learn. The afternoon lectures included one by an actor portraying Thomas Jefferson and another about the medicines Lewis and Clark's Corps of Discovery used 200 years ago.

DC and I chose the skydeck atop the boat and sun instead, but minutes after we flopped onto the chaises raindrops began to fall. High in the middle of the river, we watched the storm moving toward us across the treeline on the Missouri side. In minutes the rain was blowing sideways and lightning strobed against the suddenly gray sky.

Usually when storms come up we are in a house or building or automobile that shields us. On the skydeck we were for the moment exposed. The storm was upon is, and we were in it. Its force was thrilling.

Quickly almost everyone began running for the stairs that lead into the bowels of the boat and security.

How much more adrenalized the experience would have been for Lewis and Clark had a similar storm sneaked up on their keelboat and pirogue when they came up the Mississippi in November 200 years ago. The river would have been wider, the current less swift, but they might have had to paddle for their lives. They would have pulled over to the closest bank and sought whatever shelter could be found.

Drenched and cold, they might have decided to go ahead and set up camp. They had salt pork and flour for hardtack biscuits to eat and a ration of whiskey. Once the storm subsided they might have been able to catch fish or kill a deer.

On our boat there was prime rib and strawberry shortcake for dinner.

Out the windows near Grand Tower we saw fishing poles sticking in the ground on the Illinois side, herons and a little boy who had covered himself completely in mud. He looked like the Creature from the Black Lagoon. Mists rose from the trees.

This was the Mississippi much like Twain and Lewis and Clark saw. It still exists. You just have to find it.

When the time came for the musicians to disembark, the boat pulled over at a small concrete ramp in an area dark enough to look for UFOs. We carefully walked down the gangplank. Getting our land legs took a minute. We were still in the rhythm of the river.

DC's mom and dad picked us up in a van usually used just to haul equipment. It only has front seats, so DC and I sat in lawn chairs in the rear. We and the chairs slid across the floor at every curve.

Her father didn't speed, but after seven hours on the river, the hour or so trip home seemed to occur at warp speed. Now I understood what DC meant.

Love, Sam

Sam Blackwell is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.