River World Field Trip, Alton, IL to Lake Charles, LA and back on a working towboat, 1956

It was a murky evening in a dangerous stretch. Lights on shore were hard to see, reflectors were hardly of any use at all. We navigated in a black and uneasy world of water and twists of the river, hunting for the lights, swinging the searchlights, groping our way. We passed the upbound, loaded JOAN SIMPSON near the mouth of White River, and were passing the time of day — or night — when the captain of the SIMPSON gave an exclamation, and quit talking fast. We looked back, and there was the SIMPSON somewhat out of the channel, crosswise, and a barge had suddenly broken loose. The tow had run on an unknown sandbar and the force of the impact had snapped those huge manila lines and steel cables, had tossed lines and ratchets overboard in a sudden burst of freedom, and was heading crosswise down the river.  We stood by to help if needed, but didn’t want to get too close and go aground ourselves, or get in the way. It was a tense few minutes as the loaded gasoline barge went on its way, the towboat edging after it, – and the deck crew trying to lasso its timberheads, the lines falling short and landing in the water, while the rain beat down. But at last they caught the runaway, and gentled it around to get back into the tow ahead, so we went on our way, relieved that a sister ship was out of danger.

Past the mouth of White River, where Captain Griffin grew up as a little boy, whose parents had a small sternwheeler which carried freight from the KATE ADAMS up the shallower White the back-country settlements. He told how his greatest moment was when the freight was loaded and unloaded, and his father took him on the beautiful KATE ADAMS for an ice cream cone.  He told how when he was very young, the geese in the barnyard attacked and beat him with their wings. Of how there was a wild-hog killing in the neighborhood, and how the dogs went wild at the smell of blood on the ground, and would attack anyone who came near. Of how he had a shotgun and aimed at a squirrel, and when the gun kicked, he was upended into a barrel of whiskey mash, and went home with his pants reeking of whiskey … but he got the squirrel.  He told of how the small barge they owned had several cases of soda pop aboard to be taken to the grocery store, when it hit a snag and upset, dumping the precious pop into the river. He and his brother dived and groped, for the bottles until they got almost all of them. His brother climbed up on the offending snag to drink a bottle when he found he had climbed up beside a water moccasin, and there was quite a to-do until his father rescued him — then spanked him for snitching the pop.

Looked for deer along the shores, but there was no glint of eyes, not even frog-eyes in the rain.  Past Rosedale, Mississippi, the lights far back now and not on the river, A heavy wind shoved us continually toward the revetment until we sometimes came too close for comfort.

At Eutaw Bar Lower Light, suddenly at 10 p.m. a flight of white pelicans was roused from the sandbar and flew up in the beam of the arc light. They circled in the glare, until they were too far back of us for the light to follow, but one pelican got separated from the rest, stayed with the beam, and came down in confusion on the front of the lead barge, where he loomed like a white monster.  In fact, he looked huge.  I dashed down to get my flash, but before I could get out to the barges Bill and Vick had crept out to try to catch the pelican — what would anyone want with a captive white pelican on a boat? — So he got up and flew before I got there. This irked me considerably, because I am quite sure I would have had a picture otherwise.