| OCR Text |
Show RTVER newspapers, but up on top it was like being back on the plantation. There were acres of close-cropped grass and clusters of oaks and elms surrounding a white wooden mansion house that was 150 years old. The house had served as a hospital in the Civil War battle of Columbus and was now a museum. The park had been built by the WPA and was filled with fine depression-era stonework. On the highest bluff a round stone kiosk overlooked forty miles of the Mississippi, and to the west the plains of Missouri rolled away to the horizon. I set up camp on the covered porch of the museum. In the near dark on my last trip up the hill I met the old boy from the ferry landing. His name was Ernest and he'd procured a six pack and a pint of cheap bourbon from the local bootlegger. We went up to the museum and sat on the porch and set to drinking. He wouldn't let me pay him for the beer, even though he didn't drink any of it. I suppose he just wanted somebody to talk to. We talked for hours, starting with Ernesf s life story. He'd been born on the Missouri side sixty years ago and he'd never been more than ten miles away. Ernest was especially fond of the place because he could get into trouble on one side of the river and get out of it just by crossing to the other side. Having kin in both states, he could always count on time and blood relationship to cool out his Missouri troubles while he laid low in Kentucky, or vice versa, although he told one convoluted story about the time that his cousin the Kentucky sheriff arrested him, put him on the ferry, and deported him (so to speak) into the waiting arms of the Missouri sheriff (his brother-in-law) who re-arrested and put him back on the ferry bound for Kentucky. Ernesf s life story only took about a half-pint of liquor to tell and then the talk changed to bootlegging and sex. He told me several tales about some mighty -152- |
