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Show RIVER V. THE OLD MAN The bad weather broke the very afternoon our comrades left us and the rich warm sun let Rosie and me know that we were South at last. I remember the next three or four weeks like a dream, drifting down all those miles, through the thick Indian summer air and the rich southern countryside. We hit some hard water as we were leaving Caruthersville. The Missouri shore was lined with wing dams-projections of rock that slow and channel the current away from the banks-and for a while it looked like we too might end our voyage at the Caruthersville junkyard. Whitewater marked the dams and I cranked the engine, hoping I could pull away from the shore and get out into the current. The trusty motor worked its one-cylinder heart out and when the current finally dragged us over the end of the dams there was enough water for the raft to slide over the rocks and make it out to the channel. We drifted a ways down the river till we spotted a ferry crossing on the Tennessee shore. We'd lost our maps in New Madrid so we had no good way of knowing where we were. We put in to see if we could find a place that sold white gas: after we left Caruthersville Rosie had noticed that we were low on fuel for the stove. The ferry crossing was a pretty laid back place. The ferry itself could only handle two or three cars at a time and it apparently had to wait a while on the Missouri side for that many vehicles to show up. We found a few folks waiting for the ferry to return to shore, including an old country doctor. When I walked up he said, "Well, hello Huck Finn." "Hello," I said. "Can you tell us where we are?" "Yessir," he said. "You're near, a place called Cottonwood Point." - 9 1 - |