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Mighty Mississippi
The Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist draws upon personal experience, talks with old timers, and old documents to tell the story of four centuries of life along the Mississippi River
204 pages, Hardcover
First published May 1, 1982
6 people want to read
About the author
Marquis Childs
28 books4 followersMarquis William Childs was an American journalist and author who served as a war correspondent during World War II.
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January 29, 2016
A fairly brief, evocative look at the history of the Mississippi River, and indeed the whole system of navigable rivers which feed into it. For those who have grown up in an era of expressways and air travel, it isn't necessarily obvious why many of the major (and minor) cities of the Midwest are where they are--Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Cincinnati, etc. But in reading this book it gradually began to sink in that all of these cities sit on a vast, interconnected, inland waterway--a pre-automobile, pre-railroad superhighway.
There were big hopes for this "western" region of the US--many advocates thought it was sure to be the seat of power in North America, one in which great metropolises would arise. Well, a great metropolis did arise, and that was Chicago. However, Chicago drew its success by and large from the railroads; and the great hope of the river system, St. Louis, was left in the dust. A major theme in the book is the siphoning of the heartland's wealth to the East Coast via the railroads, and the resentments and animosity that this engendered in the Mississippi Valley.
The Railroads vs. Rivers theme continues throughout much of the latter half of the book, culminating in a final chapter (which leaps about 45 years forward from the penultimate chapter, to the early '80s--when this book was published) involving a battle in Congress over commercial river traffic fees, advocated by railroad interests, to compensate the federal government for the money it spent (and presumably still spends) to keep the river systems navigable.
The scenes in which the author describes the river of his boyhood and young adulthood are perhaps the most haunting, as well as the most confusing--he spends one chapter describing a river town called "Winslow," Iowa and a number of wealthy logging families who resided there. Yet when I tried to look up Winslow on a map, it was nowhere to be found--the author apparently disguised his hometown of Clinton, Iowa, as well as the names of the logging families, without really indicating it--at least not in a way that was obvious to me.
With the confusing part thus described, I'll move on to the haunting: a passage that takes place during the author's youth in the 1900s, at a family friend's cabin on the Deer River (a tributary of the Mississippi, and perhaps not its real name):
The night cast a spell, too, a spell that one never knew in town. There was a quality of stillness accentuated by mysterious sounds that came from over the dark water--the splash of a fish, a far-off voice. From the verandah of the Jamieson cabin there was barely visible, through Hole-in-the-Wall, a government channel light burning very small and faint, like a minor star against the horizon. And behind you as you stood staring out into the night were the friendly reassuring voices that came from the cabin, the window that was a mellow square of lamplight.
Settling down to sleep you might hear the voices of the elders in the room beyond. And in the faint light from the door you could see on the wall the gun rack, a box of shotgun shells, an old hunting cap with earflaps that were tied over the top--things that told of another life, a sterner, masculine life, which went on at the cabin in the fall. You wondered how it would be to be part of that life, you knew you would be a part of it someday. You were aware of the mysterious all-pervading quiet and then you were asleep.
There were big hopes for this "western" region of the US--many advocates thought it was sure to be the seat of power in North America, one in which great metropolises would arise. Well, a great metropolis did arise, and that was Chicago. However, Chicago drew its success by and large from the railroads; and the great hope of the river system, St. Louis, was left in the dust. A major theme in the book is the siphoning of the heartland's wealth to the East Coast via the railroads, and the resentments and animosity that this engendered in the Mississippi Valley.
The Railroads vs. Rivers theme continues throughout much of the latter half of the book, culminating in a final chapter (which leaps about 45 years forward from the penultimate chapter, to the early '80s--when this book was published) involving a battle in Congress over commercial river traffic fees, advocated by railroad interests, to compensate the federal government for the money it spent (and presumably still spends) to keep the river systems navigable.
The scenes in which the author describes the river of his boyhood and young adulthood are perhaps the most haunting, as well as the most confusing--he spends one chapter describing a river town called "Winslow," Iowa and a number of wealthy logging families who resided there. Yet when I tried to look up Winslow on a map, it was nowhere to be found--the author apparently disguised his hometown of Clinton, Iowa, as well as the names of the logging families, without really indicating it--at least not in a way that was obvious to me.
With the confusing part thus described, I'll move on to the haunting: a passage that takes place during the author's youth in the 1900s, at a family friend's cabin on the Deer River (a tributary of the Mississippi, and perhaps not its real name):
The night cast a spell, too, a spell that one never knew in town. There was a quality of stillness accentuated by mysterious sounds that came from over the dark water--the splash of a fish, a far-off voice. From the verandah of the Jamieson cabin there was barely visible, through Hole-in-the-Wall, a government channel light burning very small and faint, like a minor star against the horizon. And behind you as you stood staring out into the night were the friendly reassuring voices that came from the cabin, the window that was a mellow square of lamplight.
Settling down to sleep you might hear the voices of the elders in the room beyond. And in the faint light from the door you could see on the wall the gun rack, a box of shotgun shells, an old hunting cap with earflaps that were tied over the top--things that told of another life, a sterner, masculine life, which went on at the cabin in the fall. You wondered how it would be to be part of that life, you knew you would be a part of it someday. You were aware of the mysterious all-pervading quiet and then you were asleep.
Displaying 1 of 1 review