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Show RIVER deep and a mile long were tied to the Kentucky shore. A swarm of tugs crossed and recrossed the river, picking up barges that they hauled out to "make up tows" for the towboats treading water against the current. As I drifted past a highway bridge and down to the park, I came so close to one tug that I could see the grin on the pilot's face. There were clumps of fishermen, old black men and young white kids, clustered on the Ohio side of the park, so I swung around the point and landed in the gumbo on the Mississippi shore. I hopped around, grinning, excited: I was back on the Mississippi River. Cairo Point is marked by a navigation light, Mile 0.8. There wasn't much to it, just a pole with a light and marker mounted in a pile of rocks that cascaded down to the water, but it marked the southern-most piece of Illinois and the junction of a considerable amount of famous water, so it was easily the most remarkable piece of geography for miles around. The view was something to see: two great rivers, the blue Ohio and the dark and muddy Mississippi, flowed together and swallowed the southern horizon. The point drew tourists like a free ice cream. About a dozen longhairs and blacks were standing on the point, the longhairs in old army jackets, the blacks in leather and berets. They had watched me round the point and do my river dance. I pulled my boat up on to the shore and went over to talk to them. "Who are you guys? The Cairo Chamber of Commerce?" Some of them laughed, but not too hard. "Hardly," said one of the longhairs. "We're Vietnam Vets Against the War." -14- |