Our Part of the Mississippi River

Jane Varley

I knew the river. I was born when it crested in 1965, the big flood that forced families from their homes and caused businesses to close. Fire in a warehouse. Sunken, fractured playgrounds. Houses tipped over. I knew the river had a wilderness beneath the surface with beavers, otters, snakes, turtles, and salamanders. There was a legend that alligators made it all the way up from New Orleans. I knew the river flowed past our factories: furniture, bread, windows, meat, beer, salt. When my grandfather was a boy, he worked at a factory on the banks, collecting mussels for buttons punched out from the shells with translucent plays of color. Sometimes, they’d find pearls. The river glided by our steeples, Holy Ghost, St. Mary’s, St. Pat’s, Holy Trinity, and Sacred Heart. I knew the river after Grandpa took my dad, a city boy, out on a boat. They caught walleye, crappie, northern pike, three kinds of bass, bluegill, perch, and catfish. One day, they caught a giant catfish, and the photo made the paper. Both men held up the stringer, their hands entwined at the top like prayer. I knew the river had wing dams and submerged rocky gates jutting sideways to scour a deeper channel. Dangerous also were undertows, where submerged streams converged and made a backward flow. On summer afternoons, water stained our suits and hardened our hair. We jumped from the train bridge for the night, swimming in the shadow of Pickett’s Brewery. White beams on the barge tugs lit us up. Train whistles slid through the air. I knew how the river froze over in winter, and bald eagles came to fish the churning waters below the dam. You could ice skate on the sloughs, and once, I saw a fish frozen just beneath the surface. I skated around and around it. I knew the river was wide to the north. At the overlook, you could take pictures that made it look like a lake, and on the northern horizon, the bluffs looked like mountains. I knew the river and felt the river. Like home. Like a dream of other places.    

Jane Varley is the author of three books in three different genres: creative non-fiction [Flood Stage and Rising—U of Nebraska], poetry [Sketches at the Naesti Bar—Finishing Line], and memoir [You Must Play to Win!—McDonald & Woodward] with NCAA Hall of Fame fast-pitch coach Donna Newberry. She has a Ph.D. in poetry from the University of North Dakota, is a professor of English, and is the head of the Arts & Humanities Division at Muskingum University.