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Show RIVER There are more than twenty-five hydroelectric dams above St. Louis and we had to lock through about a dozen of them. The locks, with their massive gates and crusty lockmasters, were always interesting. We pulled up before a lock and waited until a green signal light gave us the go ahead. The great gates slowly swung open, the towboat locking through lumbered out, and we'd steer the raft into the lock's concrete box. The gate shut behind us and the water would begin to drop. At Keokuk the lock had a drop of thirty-six feet, leaving us at the bottom of a concrete canyon looking up at a small rectangle of sky. The lower gate would then swing open and we'd chug on down the river. These dams make the upper river more like a series of lakes than a true, living river, especially in low water, and though they were not truly ugly, the dams always gave me the feeling that they were strangling the river. Occasionally a factory or an entire industrial complex dominated the riverbank. Stacks belched smoke into the air and sewage drain pipes poured into the river, but mostly the upper river had a charm and beauty that will not be destroyed until the last tree is hacked down. The old Iowa river towns- Muscatine, Burlington, and Keokuk-were built at the turn of the century and preserve a unique style. Muscatine was especially fine. Perched upon its rolling hills the town looked like a pre-earthquake section of San Francisco. Only one building in the entire town appeared to have been built since 1920. Muscatine looked like a dowager princess dropped in the middle of a cornfield. On our occasional forays into the countryside I began to appreciate special beauty of flat land. We saw it at its best, autumn ripe and harvest heavy, after the furnace heat of summer had burned away and before the cold hand of winter had gripped the land. It was golden. We found corn and tomatoes, apples and -68- |