Leaving hotel calafornix

I wish I could remember what song was playing on the radio. It looked like I was getting sucked towards the extremely rough area and I started to paddle away from it. Something wasn’t right with this picture, I kept seeing white flecks of foam come out of the river ahead. I stood up and was horrified to find a river wide horizon line. The army corps of engineers had installed a rock weir/low head dam on this side of the island to force water around the other side in the channel. It was a five foot drop and the Mississippi was just pealing over the top and crashing down over the rocks. I was way out in the middle of the river. For a few seconds I attempted a dash to the riverside, I wanted to get off now. It was obvious I’d never make it and realized why the tug had stopped downstream, he was watching me. This was the first Island I’d passed on the Miss. It became apparent that my only chance was to paddle towards the rough water. There was a gap in the dam about a hundred feet wide and the Miss. poured through it like a tongue. I just couldn’t believe this was my only option, this tongue of the Miss. was a catastrophe.

I actually made it to the far side of the tongue and started my slide. As I slid over the lip I discovered a throat area that manifested itself as a whirlpool about as big around and deep as a house, it even had a monstrous sucking noise that crackled like the worlds drain. This is an incredible thing to see from a canoe. What a rush! It seemed like I just skirted around this Mississippi monster. Black smoke poured out of the tugs stacks. I never attempted to shortcut the Miss. again and absolutely stayed in the channel. If I wanted to get to the backside of an island I went around the tail not the head.

The river was very low, almost a historic low. This made for great sand bar camping but river travel by small boat was a little more dangerous because the Army Corps projects were exposed. There was ice on the Mississippi in the morning. The wind increased as the river turned to the west and revealed a storm approaching. Off in the distance a white speck of foam grew larger and turned into a boat. The aluminum net boat barely altered course and quickly drew near. Thor is a river god, I thought as he approached heralded by lightning bolts. Looked like Thor at least, blonde hair, beard, blue eyes, lots of lightning. He was very excited, “Where you coming from”? The Mon. “Man, I’ll bet you’re having fun.” You bet! His eyes widened and he showed me what he had in his gill net. “It’s the last one, I know it is, I’ve been fishing on this river for twenty years and I’ve never seen one. It’s the last Mississippi paddlefish and I caught it. I’m going to eat it for dinner, it was meant to be.” More paddlefish power to you pal. We lamented the condition of the river. He recommended I seek shelter immediately. I was heading that way, it was big storm.

Just past Carthrusburg, Missouri is a bridge, one of the few that span the lower Mississippi. Upstream of this bridge camp was made below an Army Corp knuckle. In the freezing morning breakfast is made and devoured. Several downstream barges are seen working their way down and under the bridge. Two upstream tugs and barges sit making almost no headway a mile or so downstream of the bridge. Camp is cleaned up and everything is loaded. Another fine crispy day on the river as the canoe slides past the eddy created by the knuckle and towards the main bridge channel. It appears now the upstream tugs are making their move. Looks like they were waiting for the downstream tugs to clear the bridge. Hmmm… It seems we may pass each other just under the bridge. It doesn’t seem like that big of a deal. Hey wait a minute this looks like it could get rough. Upstream barges plow under bridge full throttle. The channel narrows here and the river quickens its pace, a bottleneck. Oh shit! The stern wave behind the first tug is 8′ to 10′ and is sliding to the outside of the river bend like it always does, with me in its direct path. Calculations are made, I should have slept in this morning. It’s too late to get off the river now. By the time the seriousness/danger of the situation is fully realized, it’s there. Grin and bear it, make it look convincing while you’re at it.

Ideally, the six point rack won’t slip off the bow. It appears unavoidable. Better take the stern waves at about a 45 degree angle. Quite a show now, from the bridge of tug it must look comical. No attempt to distract me is made. Surely the pilot is readying the rescue crew. The canoe slips over the first of many stern waves. They just keep coming unlike bow waves that travel in fours. Water over the side, some waves appear insurmountable. Facing capzation a dash is made to an adjacent countercurrent and is made. Enough time is gained to prepare for the next tug which is on the heels of the first. Slip out of the countercurrent and into the next set of waves whose amplitude is jacked up by the proceeding mess. Hold on, paddle, paddle, paddle keep your paddle in the water and lean on it like a crutch. Lean, brace, lean! Jeez, somehow I made it through that mess. I looked up as I came from underneath the bridge and there was a buzzard circling above.

The map said I was on the Brandy Wine chute and the main flow was close to the west side of the river. I marveled at the speed I was making and could just see the city of Memphis downstream. An empty barge and a 20’ sailboat were coming downstream. I slipped into an eddy and paused because the sailboat was headed directly for me and I figured they were sliding up to say hello. I was wrong, they didn’t see me. I’m nearly invisible, paddled out of the way and shouted for their attention. There were two guys in the sail and one shouted, “Hey, it’s that guy in a canoe”! As they were tacking over, they told me that everyone on the river was talking about me and they’d been told to keep an eye out. They’d been looking for me since Louisville. I challenged them to a race into Memphis, last one there buys the first round. They laughed, a minute later I was smack in the middle of the river with a sailboat on the left of me and barge to the right as the radio turned out some Stealers Wheel, “Here I am smack in the middle”. I don’t know if the tug captain was listening to the same tune but he kept sounding his horn at the appropriate time. I was laughing so hard. I like when phyciotrists ask me “Have you ever thought that the radio plays certain songs just for you”?

When coming down the river into Memphis one must pull behind Mud Island where the pyramid is to easily get into town. The two “clowns” got there just a second before I did. The dockmaster stepped out of the shack, Holy Shit you got to be kidding me, it’s Richard Petty “The King”. He looked just like the stock car legend, the hat and sunglasses sold the look. I asked him if he thought it was crazy to paddle a canoe down the Mississippi. He said, “No, actually it looks you might be having more fun than anybody in the world! Come back here and I’ll show you crazy.” He led me around to the back of the floating marina and showed me a Datsun floating on four steel drums. “This guy tried to drive down the river.” He explained to me that originally the car didn’t have two outboard engines on the back but when the guy put the floating Datsun in the river the points got wet, the engine wouldn’t run, and he had to take it back to the barn for a redesign. The river came half way up the door, and apparently the skipper had gotten tired of sitting in waist deep water, so he gave up. This was hilarious. I asked dockmaster “Petty” if there was anywhere to crash out for the night around here. He said it was illegal to camp on the floating dock, but he was leaving at five. I asked him what time he got there in morning. “Six O’clock sharp.”

Me and the boys went into town, Beale Street. We went into a pool hall and had a couple of beers. The skipper of the sail was a teetotaler, the mate however was a little off color and suggested some green. Well, what are we waiting for? “I don’t know anybody here, and neither do you.” You wanna see something funny? Come on outside and check this out. We stepped outside and before the door closed there was a hustler running across the street to our side. Before the mate or the hustler knew what happened, I’d talked the fella down from twenty to five, AND got him to give me change for a ten, we were holding. Suddenly the hustler started examining the ten and said, “Hold on here, you got the green and the Finn, this ten might not even be real!” I assured him it was and even offered to take it back. He started to give it back to me, and caught himself. I’m floating down the river in a canoe from Pittsburgh. “Pittsburgh?” You had to see the look on this guy’s face when he realized what he thought was going on. He hustled back across the street. “How’d you do that?” asked the mate incredulously. Too easy, pal. Of course the Teetotaler swore I was running with the devil. This made him very uneasy. The mate rolled his eyes.

At Six O’clock Petty showed up and when his foot hit the dock I rolled off the dock and into a sitting position in my canoe. “You didn’t have to do that.” He came out a few minutes later with some coffee and a danish. I took the $1 city bus tour, skipping Graceland, even though there was an old woman on the bus that insisted I needed to go to Graceland. I paddled out in the afternoon. I am the King, honey.

COUNTRY JESUS SONG

It was raining and I was camping under the Helena bridge. This is the last time I did this as the cars keep me up at night. I’d just administered my nightly shot of whiskey when a rat the size of a dog ran out into the open. I switched up to buckshot and put the rat rounds away. These creatures are nutria, they’re big, look like rats, and are good to eat. Apparently there were photographers on some of these bridges taking pictures of me. A few months later my old friend Jorge Mayorga called me from Chicago and told me he was walking down the street one December day and couldn’t believe it when he saw me on the front page of the Chicago Tribune.

I’d just come past the Arkansas River and was out of vegetables. I should have got more from the Memphis grocery store. As you might imagine one can devote a lot of thought to dinner while paddling down the Miss. in a canoe. It looked like I was making 52-20 whiskey gumbo with no fresh vegetables. The sun was setting and I started looking for a place to get off the river. I’d been thinking about vegetables all day when I came upon some floating on the surface of the river. There were sweet peppers, cucumbers, tomatoes, and other veggies. It looked like someone had thrown a basket of vegetables in the river. I took what I figured on eating over the next few days and let the rest flow down to the sea. This is fun stuff.

After a delicious 52-20 whiskey gumbo with vegetables I kicked back and reveled in what appeared to be an energy field emanating from the forest across the river, beautiful. After being on the river for a few months I was really getting into the flow of the force. Considering the dream trip I’d manifested or was experiencing, I figured I’d give psycokinensis a try. I spent the next five or six hours that night sitting there trying to bend a spoon with my mind. This felt like the natural thing to do at the time. I didn’t try and use any leverage or force besides that of my mind. This is a fun thing to try and accomplish especially out here down by the river. It didn’t work and to be honest the way things had been going I thought it would. The next morning I loaded up my stuff chucking the fork and spoon in my bag and throwing it in the boat. The next evening when I pulled out the utensils the fork was bent ninety degrees. I hadn’t thought of this result.

Christmas Eve I made it into Greenville Mississippi. As I was pulling the boat up out of the river a fellow warned me about disappearing sandbars. Apparently, when the river rises the sandbars don’t slowly disappear. They instantly vanish instead, undercut by the river, and if you’re on it when this happens you can kiss your ass goodbye. I walked to the grocery store, this town has some unbelievable characters, right out of blues song. In addition to getting dry goods and vegetables I ate many hot tamales along the way. Spicy meat rolled in cornbread is a Christmas Eve treat in the South. I stopped at the local tavern above the river landing.

Greenville is an example of what happens to a small town that opens itself up to the Casinos. The locally owned establishments go to hell because the people who spend money spend it at the casinos. The locals themselves lose their money at the casinos too. Most of the money made at the casinos leaves town. This is all obvious. It’s bad for the town. I was hustling pool at a place that was just hanging on. A couple at the bar told me it was no night to hustle pool and invited me back to their place. This couple was very nice to me and the guy ran his own Barbeque catering service. What luck, it was a delicious feast. They went to sleep and I was still eating. When their daughter came home around midnight she was surprised to find me in the kitchen. I guess she was expecting Santa, found a guy who looked like JC, and I turned out to be a river hustler claiming Santa has a souped up red Master Craft and was last seen on the Mon. She spent the night at her girlfriend’s house.

I just try to be truthful with people. I checked out this fellows rolling barbeque in the morning and then he gave me a ride back to the river. Of course he wanted to talk about the obvious, I stuck to my guns and said I believed in the force, plus I met “Jesus” in high school and had Hari Krishna lunch with him every week at the Plaza of the Americas. This guy was surprised there was actually a canoe down by the river and I wasn’t full of shit.

The river was rising. One fine day on the Miss. I came upon a couple guys cat fishing in a big john boat. They had an anchor line out that was hanging straight up and down. They said the line was over 150′ as they spun around in an eddy with a twelve pack of Mountain Dew and the bottom of the boat filled with 50 lb. catfish. These were two good ole’ Arkansas boys and their whistling guffawing southern banter was unreal. They warned me about trees on the river when the water rises. They said that the buoyant trees get sucked to the bottom of the river occasionally and often breach the surface completely after rising to the top. They added that the river was rising. They also warned me about 2000 lb. Razorback Hogs that were known to eat people and warned me not to stay on Cottonwood Bar as these creatures had been seen there.

Of course the head wind increased and the sun dropped like a rock as I tried to paddle past this Razorback/Cottonwood Bar. There were rocks on the other side. I pulled the boat off the sand and into the trees of this bar and made camp. My guard mouse wouldn’t let me peacefully sleep through the monster that came upon us at four in the morning. I awoke to the sound of my mouse skittering along the fiberglass hull and ricocheting off of the side and up into its hole. The creature out in the dark shook the earth and sounded like it was ripping bushes out of the ground. I switched up from buckshot to slugs, held my sawed off like a teddy bear and went back to sleep.

At sunset I paddled a short distance up the Yazoo and was at the historic Vicksburg landing. I pulled my canoe up on the cobble stones and was immediately set upon by some spirited folks. They warned me about rising water and disappearing sandbars, again. This warning came with a terrifying story. These guys were out playing football on a sand bar. One fellow went out deep for a pass, the sand bar melted out from under him, and all that was left was a football floating on the river. I walked up to town, hustled some pool, met some fellows, and went and did a drive by of the historic civil war siege area in the pouring rain. Vicksburg surrendered to the north on July 4^th. They didn’t celebrate the 4th for another hundred years. I felt determined to get to Natchez Mississippi by New Year’s Eve, and asked the fellows I was hanging out with to drop me off at the landing in the rain. They couldn’t believe I was heading out into this weather on the river at night. I told em’ I had a hot date in Natchez and paddled down the Yazoo to the confluence and crossed the Miss. to a huge sandbar on the other side.

I woke up earlier than usual and got on the rising river and kind of battled a slight head wind. There was starting to be some trees floating down the river and the sand bars were vanishing. There was a cold front moving through and the wind was still south westerly coming around to the west. I came around a bend heading west in the evening trying to sail my canoe into the breeze. A flock of geese were landing on the river and taking shelter on the south side of a bunch of trees and I took this as a sign that the front would push through overnight. I pulled in and thanked them for showing me the best place to camp. It was calm here. Natchez was over 55 miles away and tomorrow was New Year’s Eve. I’d never made more than 25 miles in one day. I was determined to get there before the Evening.

Mouse alarm clock got me up at five in the morning and the instant the sky got lighter I pushed off from shore. The geese had come back after the sun set and would have rather slept a little longer. As soon as I got out of the tree lee the wind blew out of the north. It steadily increased as the sun rose, now it was pushing me. I was moving fast and eating fruit pies. About 10:30 I noticed some guys in a SUV driving down the levee. It looked they were waving at me. They pulled a little downstream, got out, and started jumping up and down, hollering, and waving their arms around in the air. I was a half mile away, but decided to paddle over and see what the fuss was all about. Maybe these guys knew something.

The river boils up and as you travel from boil to boil stay on the side of the boil in the desired direction of travel and the river will push you there with minimal effort. Basically, read the river, determine which water is relatively moving in the desired direction and keep your paddle and boat in this water. Within a few dozen paddle strokes I was at the river side. The two guys asked how I got there so fast with no motor. I explained the above. I asked them why they were signaling me. They said they thought my engine was out and I was in trouble. Hmmmm. This is when it’s nice to have a sawed off shotgun in the milk crate in front of you. I asked them how far away Natchez was and they said it was just around the bend ten more miles. It was hard to believe but when I paddled around the bend there she was.

Two creatures were swimming across the river. I paddled closer thinking they were deer. As I got closer they looked more like pigs. I got right up next to them, the things were South American Tapirs, it looked like a spotted fawn and its mother. I knew this but didn’t know why they were swimming across the Miss. I watched them get out of the river on the west side. Mythologically they represent the thunder god. I pulled up to the Under the Hill Natchez at noon. I’d gone over 55 miles, more than twice my best previous day, before noon. The sun took its time getting there, too.

I walked into The “Under The Hill Saloon” looking like James Bowie who I didn’t know much about except he had a knife named after him, married the Texas governor’s daughter, and got sick and died during the Alamo siege. There were two guys sitting at the bar when I walked through the swinging doors. Ivan, wearing a rabbit fur Russian trooper hat said, “Five dollar cover charge”. He wanted a Finn. This is hilarious. I told him I’d trade him a funny story for the cover. He agreed, and I told him about the Tapirs crossing the river I’d just seen. He and “Catfish” Jim told me it was deer I saw. I told them it was definitely a couple of Tapirs, but they argued for deer. This might be the coolest saloon in the Universe, definitely the oldest in this country.

I explained I had a hot date tonight and needed to get a haircut. Ivan and I got a ride to the “Rebel Yell” barbershop and I said I wanted my hair shortened and my sideburns long. I didn’t know it but this is the Bowie look. The barber paid no attention to my request and left the hair long and cut the sideburns short. He said this was definitely the look I was after. This guy just didn’t get it or perhaps he knew more than I did. Either way I didn’t complain. We returned to the saloon and enjoyed some hot tamales, culinarily it is Christmas Eve every night at Natchez under the hill.

The night was a smashing success. With a couple of hours to go to the big moment a gorgeous young woman walked into the place and sat down next to me, she said she had been checking me out. She was so beautiful, and very intelligent. She was my subconscious and conscience dream girl. She said she liked me too. We had a couple of drinks that I continued to put on the open tab some guy had given me. We shared a few dances together and rang in the New Year with cheers and hugs. I was a hero, the locals were noting my fortune. “Do you know who she is?” they asked when she went to the ladies room. “She’s Lynn Fortuneberry, daughter of possibly the richest oil tycoon in Texas. She’s the premier debutante in the Deep South!” They couldn’t believe it. After midnight she asked me to escort her to her car which I did. I got the best kiss of my life down by the Mississippi River, thanks Lynn. It was a long kiss and when I got back to the bar I was a new man. This was obvious, the locals at the bar paid their respect to me in various ways and I tried to be humble about the whole thing.

I fell asleep down by the river where Bowie got in his knife fights and I got a great kiss. I was the first guy in the saloon the next morning when the janitor unlocked the doors. No one had puked in the restrooms on New Year’s Eve in this joint, this says a lot about the place. I checked the ladies room as well. Free coffee and doughnuts here, which I was enjoying with Ivan, “Catfish” Jim, and the proprietor Andre, when a hot blonde stuck her head in the saloon and explained she was a reporter looking for a story. Andre, not surprised, laughed, cocked his head and pointed at me, “There’s your story”. We all stifled a snicker cause this was getting funny. It turns out Ms. Reeves was a reporter from The Sun Sentinel, my home newspaper and had gone to school with my Uncle whose first and last name I shared. The guy’s at the bar ate this up, especially after last night’s performance. A gave her a good story that made the front page back home. She said her grandfather was employed as a navigation light keeper on the river when he was shot in the back of the head by some vicious men while performing his duty. Perhaps they were small boaters tired of all night big boat wakes.

The Cock of the Walk is a phrase in American lingo to describe a person that was coined here on the sand bar under the hill. When a fellow wanted everyone to know he was the big rooster he’d put a cock feather in his hat. I was still there the next day. “Catfish” Jim took me to the post office where I got a hundred bucks in a letter from my dad. He gave me a ride to the store and we picked up some groceries too. Back at the saloon I had a beer with the guy in the Russian rabbit fur trooper hat. The weather channel was predicting that an extremely large weather system would hit the area in a couple of days.

The Russian rabbit fur trooper hat fellow wanted to know what I was going to do. I told him I was intent on hooking up with some herbs in town. He thought this diminished my trip somewhat and tried to exorcize this desire from me. I explained to him that I’d already met the best in this business on the Ohio. He wanted to know who I thought I was going to get it from. “You pal,” I replied. He couldn’t figure out how I knew he was holding. I looked at his Russian rabbit fur trooper hat and smiled.

The crew at the saloon warned me to stay left further down the river as the Mississippi river was trying to flow into the Atchafalaya Swamp on the west side and the Army Corp. was battling the old girl. I left in the afternoon and camped a few miles downriver. The next day I stayed to the river left and thought I passed the river control structures in the fog that was building up. I didn’t have a map. I pulled in for the night on the west side across from the Louisiana State Penitentiary as it started to rain hard. I got a good distance away from the river and stretched out my tarp. I was just falling asleep when I heard something approaching camp. I listened and could tell it was about 50 lbs. and had four feet. As it uncautiously approached the excitement level increased. It was just outside the tarp. I fingered the sawed off. It came in as a wet hunting dog. I knew there were hunters nearby.