Essentially the Only One

A swing railway bridge at Sabula, Iowa. Taken at the beginning of this month's vacation.

I dithered a while hoping it would open, but there was little river traffic, so I left it. The holiday came and went, but on the final day of our journey, just outside of Louisiana, Missouri, I came across this opened bridge of the same design. Not the best view, but there was a satisfying symmetry nonetheless.

In the days before Walmart, the hub of most small towns in the United States was the high street general store.

Here you could find anything you could possibly need and lot more besides. There aren't so many left these days, but a great example is Horsfall's Lansing Variety in Lansing, Iowa.

Even getting into this shop is a challenge. The entrance leads directly into an aisle packed from floor to ceiling, and the maze simply continues. Household goods of every type, toys, crockery, picture frames, repair hardware, toilet seats, vacuum cleaner bags, greeting cards, candles - shelves and boxes everywhere.

Within 30 seconds of entering I had lost my wife in the labyrinth, and I blundered around like Theseus expecting any minute to be set on by a plastic Minotaur with Made in China inscribed on its behind.

I lay down my hand and found myself holding a can of black spray paint that was exactly what my son needed for a school project. Now I had to pay for it. I had to ask someone that I hoped was a shop staff person to find out where. He was, and I did - a small hole left clear in one of the towering display shelves.

As I was waiting two browsers scuttled by me, breathing heavily and muttering about claustrophobia. I was happy to follow them out, leaving my monopod behind in the process. This was alarming - not because I thought someone would steal it, but would I ever find it again?

But I did, and settled down on the hot sidewalk to wait for my wife to emerge. A woman biker sat on the doorstep of one the sealed entrances, blocked by boxes of candles, chatting away on her cell phone.

Several minutes - I think it was minutes - later my wife came out and told me that there was another branch of this same store just three buildings further up the street. An overflow, she said...

Jack dropped me back at the boat with a mug full of Bloody Mary mix; within 20 minutes he and his wife were back with a large jug of the stuff.

Soon we were all sitting on the front of the boat almost arguing about religion, with Jack and the Captain's Wife prodding each other dangerously. The crew worked hard to maintain the peace, and no blows were landed. The subject turned to food, and Jack recommended Friday night 'all-you-can-eat' at Clancy's Supper Club on Main Street.

I was certainly taken with this, as were the Captain and his wife, and we headed off for an unexpectedly fine meal of cod, salmon and steak. The Captain's Wife interrogated the neighboring table, and met her match in two charming gentlemen who owned a house at the far end of the road from town. So charming in fact, that, when I left my reading glasses on the table they recovered them and chased us from restaurant to ice cream parlor to our boat to return them to me. We wondered why we were being shadowed all over town by a pick-up truck; it was a pleasure to enjoy such a fine resolution to the evening.

But now we had to wait for the remaining four members of the crew who were driving out from Chicago at the conclusion of the Kanye West concert. Their E.T.A. was about 4:30 a.m.; not exactly congenial to waiting up. However that's exactly what the Captain's Wife and the Cabin Boy volunteered to do.

I was going to sleep. Just before, though, a roar from the river brought us all out on deck to see a river barge pass by. Brightly lit with recognition lights, and with a powerful searchlight projecting forward to the water beyond the prow of the frontmost barge, it presented a gorgeous sight. Fiendishly difficult to photograph, though. Below to the right you can see red and orange lights of the tugboat and the stabbing blue of the searchlight as it illuminates one of the bridge supports.
I still have some of that Bloody Mary mix. Hmmmm...

It took us all day to drive from St. Louis to Lansing, Iowa, and we arrived as the sun was setting.

Fortunately, Lansing is not an expansive town and we found S&S Rentals on Front St. without any difficulty.

The Captain and his skeleton crew were already aboard, but only ahead of us by about half an hour.

All of us were tired but there were bagels and fruit to eat, cocktails made, and by the time darkness fell we were feeling considerably mellower.

I walked out into the night air with a beer and my camera to enjoy the view and breathe in the clear air. It was warm, and a few mosquitos bit, but nothing to fuss over (and certainly nothing at all compared to last year's Ontario jaunt).


We selected cabins to sleep in - tiny, closet-like rooms that fit together as snug as a wooden brick puzzle. The beds were comfortable and the gentle rocking of the boat lulled me to sleep in no time at all.

Next morning we decided to head into town for breakfast before setting out on the river.


The cabin boy and I walked along the single track railway that led up to Main Street, an aging line that seemed too decayed to convey the giant trucks of the Canadian Pacific railway that trundled by every few hours or so. But it did.

We stopped at Milty's Restaurant for a delicious breakfast of eggs and coffee, enlivened further by discussions of politics with the waitress.

Then it was back to the boat to meet Jack who was our trainer and guide for our first sortie onto the Mississippi.

And an involved training it was too, with an hour spent going over controls, equipment and charts before we even left the jetty. Necessary, though. A lot of traffic went up and down the river, ranging from canoes to giant commercial barges, and all of it had to be negotiated in our surprisingly hard to control houseboat.

Ours was a single engine craft, adequately powered but not particularly responsive to the wheel requiring considerable concentration on heading and steering.

The Captain was selected by Jack as the boat's master, and we went through all the drills. This included learning how to beach the boat perpendicularly to the shoreline, hold it steady, and secure it with sand anchors.


After a few tries, the Captain got the hang of controlling the unwieldy craft, and we took Jack back to the dock to unload him and set off downstream and back for a short exploration. This gave me, the cabin boy and the rest of the crew a chance to steer the boat. It was not easy.

While the channel was clear this was not a problem but when we came close to a large barge we needed to be careful.

But we didn't hit anything, and by the end of the afternoon we felt pretty good about our abilities.

Our first night at S & S Boat Rentals in Lansing was spent moored to the company jetty. Upstream we could see the Lansing road bridge, the Black Hawk Bridge.