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Show RTVER The Tennessee entered the Ohio at Paducah, Kentucky. I walked into town to see if I could buy some tarps. Yes, I'd only noticed my total lack of shelter while setting up camp on my first night on the river. I found a great old-time southern hardware store filled with tools, feed, and seed. The owner, a white-haired Kentucky colonel, talked for a while, shaking his great white mane when I told him what I was doing and where I was bound. I wandered around the town. Paducah was a classic Southern town that looked as if its finest hour had come about fifty years ago. On a side street, I ran into an blind black man playing Baptist hymns on a battered Martin guitar. The instrumenf s cracked top matched the lined face of the old street singer as he thumped his way through "How Firm a Foundation." Back on the water I drifted past the Paducah riverfront, which was lined with shipyards welding barges together. I rounded the last point of the Tennessee and got my first look at the blue Ohio River. It was as bug as the Mississippi, but this was a very different river. It took the better part of an hour to row across it. At nightfall I landed on the Illinois shore. I climbed to the top of a low bluff to see what there was to see. I found an abandoned red-shingled farmhouse: in the early springtime the deserted fields were already filled with weeds. A rusted International pickup truck stood forlornly by the side of the house, which was falling in on itself. Large parts of the roof had collapsed under the weight of winter snowstorms. Still, the place was dry and I even found an old mattress that looked like it would do one more nighf s work. I went back to the boat and hauled up my gear and watched the sun set from the porch. -147- |