Author's program note. If you were a real boy, like my father and like me, you never saw a river you did not want to know better. But it had to be a river... a thing of shimmering possibilities, always moving, always beckoning, never the same, not even for an instant.
This thing called to you, and sleep was always difficult when you were near a river traversed by people from far away places, who went where they liked, when they liked and had real lives like you could only imagine. And you did imagine, early and late... until the chance arrived for you to do more than imagine... to have instead the chance to see for yourself. For that is what you always wanted... and now that you are grown... you want it still, don't you? For when the river has seized your brain (as every river aims to do)... the river owns you for life... and you can never see one, a proper river mind, that does not, siren-like and luring, call you to come see what you know so well you have missed for so long. For this article, I might have selected as incidental music Jerome Kern's iconic tune "Old Man River" from the 1929 film "Showboat." But that tune is too dark and challenging for my purpose... and while Paul Robson's rendition is brilliant, it forces you to dig deep and think about things you might not want to think about just then.... for dreaming is what you want to do on the river... a very different thing from cogitation and ponderation.
Instead, I chose a song of the late nineteenth century, "Polly Wolly Doodle", first published at Harvard, my own alma mater, right across the street from where I am writing now. It appeared in a Harvard student songbook in 1880. It's a bouncy tune (what else would Shirley Temple have sung in her 1935 film "The Littlest Rebel"?); the kind of organized nonsense a boy would sing with the unabashed glee of unburdened mind, thrilled as he was to be on the river and away from mom who made him wipe his feet and wash his hands before dinner. You didn't know what a "polly wolly doodle" was, but you knew you would like it... You'll find the words and lyrics in any search engine. Go ahead, sing it. It'll lift your spirits and put you in just the right mood... the river mood.
Any river, not merely some river, no matter how great.
This is a tale about rivers, all rivers, not just some river, no matter how renowned, celebrated, powerful and captivating. This may rile the spirit of "Old Man River," the Mississippi, the greatest river on earth, but, with bold temerity, I remind this river's spirit that it is so great because all the rivers of this great continent pay it the full tribute of their every drop. And so this, while always being homage to you, is also tribute to all who share your sinuous attributes...
River folks
The Marshalls and all their branches, for all they were kin to statesmen as great and as different as Chief Justice Marshall of undying Supreme Court fame and a much later General of the Army and saviour of Europe George C. Marshall, had the itch to go West. And so, in due course, they came to see the great Mississippi flow from the vantage point of Stronghurst, Illinois, a piddling river town which even today can call hardly a thousand souls its own. But because of the river, which could take them anywhere, they put down deep roots in a town from nowhere. And that river, its people and its cultures, bit deep.
My grandfather Harvey Lant, who died when I was young, must have felt that bite for he took his only son over ta' Burlington, 'cross the river, ta' where the great river queens held raucous court. It was because such royalty (especially the cassino boats and the showboats) were gaudy, meretricious, of salacious intent and always deep in the ways of river trickery and hoodwinkery that the real ladies, the God-fearing, church-social ladies, the stalwarts of our lives, never went with their menfolk when they had determined, as my ordinarily mild grandfather now had, to see the great river and its ways close at hand. The queens and the ladies did not know each other.
Grampa had invited his nephew Richard, my father's cousin, to be a part of this strictly male, and as it happened unique event. The boy was anxious to go, would go, but as my father recalls, the youthful disdain and contempt abiding after 7 decades and more, he was "mollycoddled" by his stern mama Grace.... a woman of iron habits and high degrees of strictness, strictures, scriptures who made sure he would not go. My father, just 8 himself, recalls to this day the rue in that little pinched face as Richard was left behind and they set off.... Years later, when he was a wealthy man, this cousin confessed he remained deeply regretful, for the river had eaten in to him, too, at least a bit. Still... "Had he really wanted to go..." But with the mollycoddled, you could never tell....
And so this became because of one woman's worrying nature, a once-in-a-lifetime journey where one discovers along the way one's father... his values... and, the most important thing of all, his love for you...
Burlington, Iowa, now boarding for all the destinations on earth.
Even today when only the vestiges of Burlington's high-flying past remain, it is still possible to see this city as it wants to be seen... as a place of international demeanor and outlook, a place to connect anyone to anywhere he wants to go; not some hick town in the corn belt, but a grand destination, entirely familiar with gourmet foods (fresh local, too), the best wines of epoch vintages, high stepping musicales and painted ladies no better than they should be. This was possible because of the river and only because of the river. And grandfather thought my father should see it.. and I admire him the more for the thought, for perhaps he left behind a smoldering spouse, who would well and surely give him her unvarnished opinion later... in dinners a little overcooked... in favorite foods suddenly unavailable.. in linens changed less frequently and sour towels left a day too long ... in dark glances and meaningful asides... all this and more primordial evidences of unmistakable distaff disapproval, unanswerable, yet deeply felt and always clearly understood.
But that was later...
Now, in the midst of Depression ravaged Illinois, with the land stalked by fears of every kind, they were en route to the Burlington Iowa bridge where you could see the river, broader here, and the fleet that would sail in your mind's eye for your whole life. And it was all happening in a place called Burlington, named after one of England's most stylish milords, a place that launched steamboats of beauty and renown.... and the railroad grandchildren Jeffrey and Kevin would take to the zoo in Hollywood, Illinois. But that was years from now, and unimagined.
What was the name of the ship? The odds were it would be queen of..., belle of..., then one of the grand river ports whose names resonate... St. Louis, Cincinnati, Natchez, New Orleans... he thought it might have been the Delta Queen, and I hope it was; though my research showed that she was in Stockton, California those years. That was the ship presidents selected for a little cruise... and always the pictures for Life magazine.. Truman, Carter and Hoover did it... but Hoover did it later when the nation hated him less for doing so little when so much was required.
One day down to Cairo, one day back up.
You can imagine the joy of this boy, the only son, so lucky so little touched -- yet -- by the economic maelstrom ... Here's a hunch why his father was so insistent about going now. Like millions of fathers across the land, Harvey followed the dismal news and in this year of grace 1932, there was more to fear than fear itself. And so he decided that his son should have this treat before his ability to bestow such a gift was submerged by events. And so there was a great urgency about the matter...
Thus, from the Texas deck of a great queen, threatened like everything but majestic now, lightly passengered, theirs to enjoy, they followed the route of Huck and Jim to Cairo (Kay-Row), which made locals chuckle when the out-of-towners said Ki-Row, llinois...
Huck missed the turn to the Ohio River... and thus sent them into the Deep South, living hell for Jim as a runaway slave. This day the captain did not err; I doubt they would have minded if he had, and so they went to Cairo, a place of dark beauty and diabolic secrets.. My father remembers nothing of that but recalls his father holding his hand as they moved along the swift Ohio... and the look in his eyes that day... a look he did not understand until he had an 8 year old of his own...
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About the Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Dr. Jeffrey Lant is also the author of 18 best-selling business books. Republished with author's permission by Ruthsella Corasol http://WorkingAtHome101.com.
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