Rollin on the Might Mississippi, Verse 2

Just can't say enough about the big playground called Ole Man River, it seems. He just keeps rollin along, and so do my fingers on a keyboard, talkin about him.

The Mississippi River at Memphis is a wide piece of water, I tell you. I have been in Scotland, Edinburgh, to be exact. I tell people that the Forth River at Edinburgh is about as wide as the Mississippi at Memphis. The only other wider aspect is that the bridges at Memphis are wider than the stick of metal across the Forth River that they call a bridge. Evel Knievel's twin drives the tour buses over there, and you do best to close your eyes when you do the crossing as a passenger. If you keep your eyes open it's a good way to get prematurely gray hair! Now, back to Ole Man River.

A few more useful facts might be in order in talking about life on the Mississippi at Memphis. When the water level is rising, the Ole Man adds to his functions the job of liquid dumpster, because he picks up all sticks, and anything that else that will float off his islands, and carries them to the Gulf of Mexico. I am told that gets so laid back with all the alcohol and garbage put in him that by Baton Rouge he has no intelligible current. He's so full of booze and branches, he moseys the rest of the trip down.

When he's rising, tho, like I said, he's pickin up EVERYTHING that floats, which makes it a good idea to stay off, because if you are in a boat with a planing hull, you're actually riding on top of the water. The trees and whatnot have a habit of snatching prop blades off of outdrives, outboards, and whole propeller shafts, props attached, of course, out of inboards. It's a real good idea to put NOAA's website for river levels on your favorites list, so you can keep track of his doings. Better yet, if he's headed up, stay off, period!

There are times you can look forward to exploring his usually off limits areas, because he is so high you will have no problem clearing his dikes. Makes for interesting exploration, this does. You see stuff you can't at lower levels, like a beautiful cypress house on the old channel, located on raised ground, so the Ole Man can't get to it. The owner has a dock and a driveway for access. Makes sense.

There are what are called oxbow lakes outside his levees, where he used to roam, but he left em for better paths. What a heartbreaker, the Ole Man. Horseshoe Lake in Arkansas is a good example. When the Ole Man is down the water table is down, and the docks and ski boats are sittin on the ground. When he's up, everybody with a house on the lake has a nice still water playground to ski on and swim in. The floods up north have done lots for the folks playing at Horseshoe this year.

The Memphis harbor in front of downtown is a still water harbor, being originally the mouth of the Wolf River. But companies upstream were pumping raw sewage into the Wolf, stinkin it up bad. Add to that, the city wanted to make vehicle access to Mud Island a reality, so they caught the Wolf at a turn south and made it go straight into the Ole Man, creating a mile long still water port for some businesses. As you travel up the harbor, you see two marinas, a Coast Guard station, a bridge with a trolley hanging from it, the Mud Island Amphitheater, and some very rusty parallel lines of steel leading from the top of the bluff down to water's edge- a long since abandoned barge construction company and launching ramp. You also see some parts of Harbortown; the community built on the sandpile called Mud Island. There are some high dollar houses there.

The park in front of town is called Tom Lee Park. When a tourist flatboat was out on the river one time, the river was up high. Someone noticed a cow floating by and mentioned it out loud. The herd of people moving to that side of the boat to see the cow flipped the boat like a pancake. Tom Lee saw it happen and went right out and rescued as many as he could. That's how he got his due, a city front homage to his heroism, complete with statue at the north end.

The Delta Steamship Company, out of Cincinnati OH, has a group of luxury ships called the American Queen, the Mississippi Queen and the very first of em all, the Delta Queen. The Delta Queen is a disappearing novelty, because it's made of wood, while the other two are out metal. The US Congress has had to be petitioned to let the Delta Queen be an exception to a Coast Guard rule against wooden boats carrying overnight passengers on the inland waterways of the US. Time has finally run out on that, and the Delta Queen will make its last overnight run soon, if it hasn't already. An aunt of mine says that when you think Delta Queen accomodations, think Queen Elizabeth II it's that nice inside.

On the maiden voyage of the Mississippi Queen the boat got to New Orleans and started the trip back up. About Baton Rouge, she had trouble. Couldn't grunt her way upstream in the current, for too many paddles in the wheel. They took out every third paddle, I am told, and she was able to make the trip.

I once heard the late, great Jake Meanly of Memphis talk of flanking. He explained that since the river makes a right angle turn south of the three bridges crossing the Ole Man together there a barge goes into that turn downstream with engines in reverse, hard to starboard, or inside of the turn, throttles high. Going through the turn would make the rear end of the boat fan or, fishtail. That's called flanking, because without the rearward effort of the engines, the boat would end up sideways in the current. If it's a long barge load, one or both ends could get stuck on a jetty or sandbar. So, they have to try very hard to keep the whole thing straight as it makes the turn.

New Orleans has a railroad bridge called the Huey P. Long Bridge. Huey has a roadway hanging off on each side, outside of his superstructure, so cars can cross on him, too. Memphis once had the same arrangement on one of their railroad bridges, but abandoned it when they built the auto bridge, the Memphis Arkansas Bridge to the south of the two railroad bridges. The steel for the side roads is still there, though. Crossing the Huey P Narrow, as some call him, is a test of nerves. Its something you dare with NO alcohol in your system. To add to having no visible steel around and above you, only under you as you drive, bridges at New Orleans have a 100' minimum clearance off the water. Talk about driving on a trapeze! To think they once did that here, too, only closer to the water. If you drove off, you had less time for one last prayer on your way out.

Once, as a kid, I saw a model of the city in our museum, complete with river. I got lost, because in the model, the river branches out in two directions. The model was built in 1937. At the time, the river DID branch in two directions. The island in the middle was called President's Island. Memphis thought President's Island an impressive piece of real estate, and wanted to be able to access it. To do so, they put a large pile of dirt in the Old Man's way and made him go west only. This pile of dirt was topped off with a roadway and a railroad. So now, they had a large still water lake they called McKellar Lake, after one of their US Senators at the time. This still water Lake McKellar, and President's Island made for a HUGE industrial park, with piers they could build out onto the lake affording shipping via barge, truck and rail. One company, Chicago Bridge and Iron, got into the act, building Ichabod, a 1200-ton capacity crane for building and loading nuclear plant equipment, which was built in their plant there. Ichabod, when built, was the largest capacity crane on any inland waterway in the US. The accident at Three Mile Island in 1979 pretty much killed the nuke industry, and took out CBI-Nuclear with it. Now the US Navy uses the building for submarine technology testing. But President's Island was a stratagem for the city. Not the entire island is as high as it is, just a strip near the lake. Most of it is part of the floodplain for the river.

As you can see, there is no end of river lore in this head of mine, but it's giving me a headache getting it out, so I'll quit now. More to come.

Research: Once again, this is all off the top. No research, just tales I have heard.