Joe & Isaac's Adventure: Episode 3 - Chapter 4

Memphis is my favorite big city on the river. We arrived early in the evening and were looking forward to getting off the boat. We made our way to Riverside Park Marina, but found the office staff had already closed up. We found an out-of-way spot to tie-up the boat and called a cab. At a nearby motel we got hot showers and a good night's sleep. The next day we took care of business at the marina and called Grandma. Isaac's grandmother (my mother-in-law) lives in Memphis. An hour later Uncle Carl arrived at the marina to pick us up. We had a nice visit with Grandma and then that evening Uncle Carl took us back to the boat. We wanted to stay on the boat that night because we had arranged for a mechanic to look at our engine early the next morning. Carl enjoyed visiting the marina. He is a very politically active libertarian and a newly successful author. Carl's new book Net Assests has been nominated for the Prometheus Award. Carl was very intrigued by the small community of folks who actually lived at the marina on their houseboats. The idea appealed to his libertarian politics.

We had developed what we thought was a minor problem with the engine. It was shifting from neutral to drive with more of a jolt than we had learned to expect. The day before we arrived in Memphis Isaac and I had taken the throttle control apart ourselves and weren't sure we got it back together just right. The marina told us they would have a mechanic there to help us by 8:00 am, but we waited in vain. In fact we waited well past noon and eventually ran out of patience. We decided to push on and take a chance that our problem wasn't too severe; the marina at Greenville was just under two hundred miles away.

As I mentioned earlier, this was the section of the river that frightened me the most. On the west bank were miles and miles of deep forest and swamp, on the east bank were miles and miles of farm fields. We were in the Delta flood plain and understandably very few people actually live here. We traveled past mile after mile of forested river banks with very little in the way of landmarks that we could use to verify our position. If not for the mile markers on shore we would have had to give up trying to keep track of where we were. There are only two bridges that cross the river in this 180 mile stretch between Memphis and Greenville; the first at Helena and then Greenville. To further illustrate just how empty this area is; in the 321 river miles that make up the Arkansas state border there are only two towns on the west bank of the river, Osceola and Helena.

Shortly after we left Memphis Isaac and I saw what appeared to be a bright golden light on the river's east bank. It seemed to stand alone in the forest. As we got closer we could tell it was a tall glass building. We were puzzled at first until it dawned on us we were probably passing Tunica Mississippi -- the gambling center of the South. Memphis is the largest city in the south-central river valley and although it sits on the Tennessee Mississippi state line, the city proper is in Tennessee which, along with Minnesota and Wisconsin, prohibits gambling on the river. Tunica, a little one-stop-light town, is just a short drive south of Memphis on highway 61. It is a bizarre place to visit from the road and an even more bizarre place to see from the river. Most of the complex was hidden by trees, but as we came alongside we could see a castle-like structure that we were sure was one of the casino buildings.

Soon the bridge at Helena came into view. We had reached the southern end of Crowley's Ridge; between Memphis and Vicksburg it is the only high ground. Rising hundreds of feet above the valley floor, Crowley's Ridge provides the townspeople of Helena safe haven from the Mississippi's rampaging floods. The river was running high, the Ohio was high and so the lower Mississippi was hovering right at flood stage. This was a disappointment for Isaac and I because the many sandbars and sandy beaches that are typical to the lower river were under water. Our options for stopping and camping on shore were as a result severely limited. We would have to stay on the boat. That night we slept in a flooded forest. It was just a little unnerving to realize that we were trapped by the water, even if we pulled the boat over to the shore, there was no shore, just water reaching back as far as we could see into the trees. Isaac had hoped that he would be able to catch a few fish on the trip down river, but the high water made the fishing poor. This evening, like most, produced nothing.

Greenville was a welcome sight. The marina at Greenville is big, well operated and staffed with friendly people. We tied up the boat and called a cab to take us into town. As we drove over the levee onto Main street I could see the old store front where Hodding Carter had published the Delta Democrat Times. I had a copy of Carter's book The Lower Mississippi with me on this trip. I was thrilled for the moment to be there at the very street corner where this great man had worked. I said out loud, "so here we are Where Main Street Meets the River." I was curious to see if the cab driver would catch the reference and respond. She acknowledged we were on Main Street but didn't seem to react with any recognition to the title of Carter's autobiography. I was a teenager when he died. I believe the real curse we've all inherited from tasting Eden's forbidden fruit is that each new generation is born just as ignorant as the last. You'd think we would improve over time; learn from our parents, but we don't. How can someone live in Greenville Mississippi and not be familiar with the life and work of arguably Greenville's most famous past resident? If I had to level just one criticism against our contemporary culture it would be our collective amnesia of even recent past events let alone history of any kind. A few years ago I had a student in class who was born in the 1960s. During a class discussion it became obvious to me that this fellow didn't know that the Korean War had ever taken place. I asked him if he had ever seen the TV program Mash and he said, "yes." "So where did you think they were?" I asked. He stared back at me silently with that blank face anesthetized by long hours of watching TV reruns.

Greenville is an anomaly of sorts. It's a decent size city on the river and in the flood plain. Today it's protected by a levee, but that levee is the highest ground in town. The other Delta cities of any size all benefit from natural high ground that keeps them out of the reach of the river's flood waters. Between Memphis and Vicksburg there is no high ground on the river -- that's nearly three hundred miles of emptiness. I guess someone had to stake out a spot in the middle and try to hold on. Greenville's history is a tragic tale of one disaster after another; drowning and rebuilding and being washed away yet again. It's no coincidence that the greatest natural disaster in U.S. history, the 1927 Mississippi flood, is locally known as the Greenville flood. That year the Mississippi inundated acreage approximately equal in area to the state of West Virginia with Greenville right in the middle. You can read an amazing account of the flood in W. Percy's book Lanterns on the Levee. Percy led the Red Cross relief effort during the disaster.

The next morning back at the marina I asked after a mechanic. We still wanted our engine looked at. The office attendant made a call and said a mechanic would be with us within half an hour. Right on time an older gentleman arrived and asked us what we needed. We explained our concerns and he decided that our problem was simply that the idle was set too high. We moved the boat to where he could get access to the engine and in ten minutes time he had corrected our problem. I asked him what we owed him for his efforts and he said, "nothing." Talk about deja vu; it was just like last summer. I started laughing out loud and I suspect I appeared a little odd. The mechanic started walking away and I stopped him. I then told him he had to listen to a story and I recounted our experiences of last summer with mechanics who refused to take payment. At that point I managed to stuff a ten dollar bill in his shirt pocket.

It was still early morning and so we headed out toward the river, but the weather wasn't favorable. Greenville has a sheltered harbor -- Lake Ferguson appears to be a horseshoe cutoff that was formed when the river straightened itself many years ago. The city is well off the river but directly connected as Lake Ferguson's southern end opens into the river. The wind was blowing with enough force to raise whitecaps on the lake. Isaac and I, noting the conditions on this much smaller body of water, decided we weren't interested in seeing the river proper. So we decided that a day of fishing in Lake Ferguson was a prudent idea. Turns out our judgement was sound. The wind persisted throughout the day and we were set upon by a few minor thunderstorms. That evening a light rain began to fall and so we decided to head back into town for awhile. We enjoyed a nice dinner in town and then spent the night out on the lake. The next morning we left Greenville on our way to Vicksburg.