PIT STOP

Missouri: Up and down the Mississippi, all the river towns have their flood gates closed. Almost all of the green spaces and parks along river banks are under water and you need a boat to get to your boat. But I guess high water is a way of life on the big river, no less than mosquitoes on the screen and catfish on the menu. In Muscatine, Iowa we had to detour uphill and across to get into town. Nauvoo, Illinois is high and dry on the bluff, but quaint and picturesque, full of tradition and story. Mormons settled here in early 1840’s. It’s had to imagine a population of 12,000 but the Temple they completed in 1846 would be considered a mega-church today. The Mormon story reads like fiction; nothing like that could ever happen, so one would think. They literally took over the area and the locals turned hostile. Their trek west is well known and Nauvoo remains a simple, little town of just over a thousand, mostly Roman Catholic, with an RLDS shrine that could accommodate them all with room to spare. I could go on but I do have a Mormon bias and it would be unfair for me to take that liberty. 

Every place we went on the Great River Road tour was new to me except at the end. I’ve been to Hannibal, Missouri many times and I like it. The old buildings are well maintained and you don’t see darkened shops or boarded windows. It’s a busy, big town-small city. No one should have to be told that Hannibal is the boyhood home of Samuel Clemens - “Mark Twain”. There must be a dozen businesses there that bear some form of his name. There are several museums, the restored Clemens’ home, and other Twain characters homes, then gift shops, bars, restaurants, that would have no appeal if not for Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. Twain was 43 and 49 when he published those two works. Assembling and associating quotes from letters, stories and his auto biography, one can not mistake or dismiss his complete rejection and loathing for slavery and the culture that propelled it. If he weren’t already a hero in my eyes, that would have made it so, pushing back against the culture that had shaped his character. We do have a need to belong and loyalty cements that sacrament but few ever challenge the system that nurtured them. There is something surreal about standing on the spot or tracing old, disappeared footsteps of your heroes. I stood on the levee; of course there were no levees on the Mississippi when Sam Clemens tied up his steam boat there but he was most certainly there. I was 170 years late but I was there and aware. Hero is a weighty title for ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances, flawed for sure but that comes with the human condition. They don’t have to change the world, only yours. Don’t pick your heroes lightly. 

Flood gates on the levee were closed but water was seeping through. Standing up on top it was easy to see flood water, five or six feet deep against the flood gate, above the curb on the 1st Street side. That leakage was not serious but it pooled then ran down a seam to a drain in the street where it disappeared. The irony was irresistible. Billions of tons of water waiting like a predator, ready to rush through any gap and the little spill coming around the seam was going down into a drain. If the drain is several feet below the bottom of the flood gate, where does the spill go? Somewhere they had to be pumping water back over the levee. But the sight of flood water going down a drain was novel and stuff like that makes me smile if not chuckle. 

The Great River Road adventure took eleven days and now it’s history, with photos to prove we were there. I’m in the turn-around mode, doing laundry, paying bills, getting the car serviced; it’s sort of like a geriatric pit stop. I won’t smoke the tires but we will be back on the road in a couple of days.