an
air conditioning unit perched outside! We figured it was the Deep South's
version of a trendy loft apartment.
The last morning was a pretty sad one mostly because the beer was running really low and maybe because it was our last day out. Katy grabbed one of the last beers and still wearing her pointy-topped straw hat, jumped into the water. She kept saying "This is my Vietnam fantasy! This is my Vietnam fantasy!"
Breakfast, breaking down camp and loading the boats proceeded in the comfortable manner we had practiced all week: deliberate, plodding, and slow. Bob provided us all with three-foot long red, white, and blue striped Pixie Sticks. Loading was made more difficult by the treacherously rocky bank.
We set out deciding not to rush. We estimated that it was about 20 miles to St. Francisville, where allegedly a U-Haul truck awaited. So we got out in the current and laid back and talked about what a great trip it was. By midmorning the sky was a soft gray and everything seemed quiet. The river felt tranquil.
A few times we noticed that we weren't moving relative to the shore because we drifted out of the current, so we actually had to paddle a little to get back in. Eventually we got bored and started paddling anyway. We should have known that things were a little too tranquil. The sky darkened. The headwind picked up. Soon the sky ahead went from dark to black. We could see the rain a half mile ahead and coming towards us.
Mark pointed out that in a few moments we would all be drenched and perhaps we should prepare. We had been through storms before and never prepared much then but we were more experienced now. We got out the big blue tarps and folded them to cover each canoe, from behind the person in the bow to the legs of the person in the stern. The tarps hung slightly over the side so the water didn't drain into the boat.
The rain and wind hit us hard. This was by far the strongest storm of the trip. The wind blew right in our faces. Mark and Leo assumed the aerodynamic position of bicyclists, leaning forward into their own laps. The noise of the rain on the tarps was deafening. We had to yell just to talk to the person at the other end of the boat. The water poured off the end of the tarp like a spigot. Fortunately, large waves never developed.
The head wind probably kept us from making much progress towards St. Francisville during the storm but it only last about 20 minutes. Then the wind died down, the rain slowed to a trickle, and everything was gray again. It wasn't long before the hot sun came out.
We passed this totally weird encampment
of houses--and a school bus--on stilts. Mark and Leo paddled over to get
pictures. We later heard there were some houses on stilts near the river
that were supposed to be refuges from floods, but this was like a whole
trailer-park town. There were no signs of life, just these weird little
things on stilts. They stood probably 10 feet above the water, though it
was hard to tell from where we were. The same day we also saw a grain elevator--two
tall round metal buildings that looked like Siamese twin since they were
connected at the middle--with a deck, windows, and an
air conditioning unit perched outside! We figured it was the Deep South's
version of a trendy loft apartment.
Eventually we figured that we should try and get in around the early afternoon, when we had told U-Haul to expect us. So we paddled. By the time we saw St. Francisville it was around 2 p.m. Significantly, this was Sunday.
We saw a ferry dock and we pulled up just short of it in this kind of industrial yard. We pulled in right next to some guys pulling out on a tiny motorboat. Fishers. The mud was super slimy and the water didn't look too clean. There was a huge rusted out pipe laying on its side and partly underwater--judging from what we saw above water it was big enough to drive a car through. Later we talked to someone who actually did drive a car through, when the water was lower. Leo and Mark paddled through it, too.
On shore a huge old tractor, a crane and lots of other unrecognizable heavy equipment rusted away, looking like dinosaur skeletons in a museum.
Eric and I went to the dock, where cars were driving off the ferry into town. We asked this one nice looking guy and I guess his mother how far the U-Haul store it was. We were hoping maybe it would be right around the corner from the take-out, like the Port Gibson U-Haul was from the put-in. It was three miles and the friendly people didn't offer us a ride. We decided to walk in while the gang cleaned out the canoes and took out the gear. I know from a little experience hitching around before that a good way to get a ride from people who don't look like they pick up hitchhikers, is to ask for directions and then look civilized while they try to figure out whether you're an ax murderer. I thought my strategy had failed but then we started walking and a few minutes later, the same guy and his mother offered us a ride--even though we must have smelled horrible and our shorts were still wet from our last swim but I guess they couldn't see that. We jumped in the back seat which, thank God, was covered with this kind of see-through plastic so they could wipe it off easily later. They weren't very talkative but they did tell us how to pronounce Pt. Coupee (coop-eee), and they said it was a parish (a county) and that it was on the other side of the river from where we saw the ghost town.
Then we got the signal of doom. They said they thought the U-Haul was closed. We had warned the crew that it might take us awhile to get the U-Haul, since our first U-Haul was both late and available in a different city than the one originally promised (we were supposed to pick up the first one in new Orleans and instead we had to go to Slidell, a $35ish cab ride away). Later Leo told us the crew didn't really believe we had a U-Haul waiting anyway, so they weren't disappointed when it took us four hours to return.
Our ride dropped us off at the U-Haul "store" which was actually just the side job of the people who also ran some kind of flower store. Of course it was closed. Not just Sunday but Monday too -- which U-Haul had never mentioned when we called to reserve the truck, or when we called from Natchez to confirm the reservation. There was a sign on the gate of the house attached to the store, with some phone numbers for weekend deliveries. Eric and I walked a few blocks to a big grocery store and started calling. I left a message with one of the numbers, and got someone at the other number to tell me the name of the guy who ran the U-Haul store. He also gave me the phone number. I got an answering machine and left the number.
Finally we called up U-Haul's handy toll-free number. All the operators are trained to answer the phone with something like "Good morning/afternoon U-Haul. We do have the best equipment at the right price. How may I help you?" Which was really annoying to hear anytime, but especially at that moment. Finally we got a female operator who said that our truck had been rerouted to Baton Rouge, 25 miles away. It was 3:30. If we could pick it up by 5 p.m. it was ours. in Port Gibson, when we dropped off the first U-Haul and reserved the second one, I told the operator that we could not pick up the truck if it was rerouted to another city, since we were in canoes and we wouldn't be able to drive anywhere. I went over this point a lot hoping that would make a difference. Of course it hadn't. I told the operator how this was really inconvenient since we had no way of getting to Baton Rouge. She wasn't interested. She only repeated when the Baton Rouge store closed. We asked if U-Haul could bring the truck to us and she said No. We called the Baton Rouge U-Haul to see if they had any ideas and they put us on hold and said they couldn't figure out how to help, but we could call back when they closed at 5 p.m. and maybe something would happen.
Eric and I spent the next couple hours in a sort of panic. We thought about staying in a local B & B, but it looked too nice for six people who hadn't had showers for a week. Everyone except us had to fly back the next day, and we had all been looking forward to showers and a victory dinner in New Orleans that night. We were determined to get with that truck Sunday night if we could. We experimented with several options. Buses were out because there weren't any and probably it would take too long to get there. Rental cars were out because the only rental places were closed Sunday. We decided to try hitchhiking. We figured that if we wanted to make it we had to get a ride in the next 15 minutes. So we stood out on the road to the highway and stuck our thumbs out.
Eric was really excited about this part because he'd never done it before. So we took turns sticking our thumbs out. Only a few people pulled over mostly because they were just curious. Two of them looked like really mean teen-agers and luckily they were only going two miles so we had an easy time turning them down.
[ERIC: When we said we were going to Baton Rouge, people looked at us like we were crazy. I believe some of them might have never been there, even though it was only 25 miles away. I was hoping hitching would be like in the Capra movie "It Happened One Night" but I was disappointed.]
At this point, we figured whatever we did, we should start heading back to the crew since we'd been gone for a few hours. So we walked towards the dock. We stopped at a gas station to see if they had a map, so we could look up another town that might have some kind of rental truck business. We had left our road maps back at the dock. The women behind the counter looked at us like we wanted to buy a telescope or something. Not only did they not have maps, of course they didn't have maps. What did we think they were a gas station? They didn't say that but their stares did. We also looked in a five and dime, but they didn't have maps either. We bought some sodas and chips for the crew.
[ERIC: Mark had told us many times to "think third world. Don't expect anything to work right and be very happy when something does." I applied this advice and extrapolated a little bit more. A third world government might be screwed up but usually the people are nice. Maybe even in bureaucracy like U-Haul, an individual can make a difference too. If we can quit dealing with people at the end of 800 numbers and deal with local people, maybe we can get help.]
We cooled our heels at the gas station phone booth. We sat on the cement in the shade and watched the ants and felt like derelicts. A drunk guy came by and used the phone. A big Cadillac came and went. It rained a little and the wind blew.
In order to protect people who helped us out at personal risk to themselves, we can not repeat here everything we did to get the truck.
We walked back to the dock, and it had rained. Miraculously, the crew had not only cleaned out the canoes and wrapped all our gear in tarps, they had failed to find the bar that was just 50 yards away.
[BOB: After they took off, we unloaded the boats and then Mark and Leo picked them up one by one and turned them upside down to drain them, one of which I got a good picture of. Cleaning the boats out took a lot of time as there was an amazing amount of junk in the bottom of each. The sun was REALLY hot, and I think I got as much sunburn emptying the boats and sorting through the stuff, as I had the whole trip. Then these amazingly dark clouds started rolling in very quickly and we loaded stuff back into one of the boats and redid our tarp cover trick. Then we put on our ponchos and hunkered down on our beach chairs to listen to Muddy Waters and ride out the storm.]
RAMBO
[BOB: (Note: Kate later bought the 'Best of Muddy Waters' CD, and we listened to part of it when I visited her in November. I just laughed and laughed as I heard each song. Muddy Waters will forever be linked in my mind with this trip. Kate said she'd listen to it when she read the various installments of this trip report on her computer.) Then the storm went thru as quickly as the first one, and we spent more time yet sorting through stuff, or rather I spent time sorting through stuff being on a mission of sorts while the rest of the crew hung out in some shade and looked at me like I was crazy. I got Kate's and my stuff sorted out from Eric's, particularly the cooking and camping gear which was well mixed, and was later glad I spent the time here doing it, as we were able to separate our stuff out of the truck in about 15 minutes, when it came time to catch the plane, which of course we were running late for. We also emptied the garbage, several big trash bags full, and explored the amazing array of abandoned cranes. It was like a crane cemetery. There must have been a dozen of these huge rusting cranes with big shovels. It made me think of this children's book we had growing up where this steam shovel was used to dig the foundation of a building, but then gets trapped in the huge pit it's dug. The story ends happily, when they use the steam engine to heat the building, so it gets to continue to work happily away, (and avoid the steam engine grave yard)].
So we came back yelling we had good news and bad news. The bad news was the truck was going to be at least an hour in coming, and the good news was the bar. Seeing as the crew's last beer was warm and nearly 12 hours ago, they were totally jazzed. They all went galloping to the bar which had pool tables. Mark played and of course saw some babe there who he asked to hold him for luck. He said she slung her arm around him and told him, to his shock, he insists: If I grabbed your balls you'd probably miss your shot. The gang drank heartily while Eric and I watched our gear. Later we stopped in for awhile.
[BOB: We had a great time at this bar, if only for a short time. We still had visions of really hitting the town in New Orleans later that night, but this turned out to be our farewell shindig. They had (cold!) beer, pool tables, and even some beautiful women thrown in for good measure. We were as loose a group and as close to one another at that point as any group I've been around. It was like a cast party at the end of a really good, but hard show. We all felt really bad to have to leave.]
Eventually we ran out to the dock and the truck had just arrived.
During all this we met a few people at the dock. There was a couple where they guy was an oil rig worker and the woman stayed at home with their kids. He was back after probably a 21-day shift and he had nine days to blow his money before he went back, which it exactly what they intended to do. They told us about their drinking binges and they said something about how they should take the kids on the Mississippi sometimes because they'd really like it. They said they were there several weeks earlier when the water was so low they drove their car through the rusted metal pipe.
Mark asked a kid, probably in high school, who had come to look at the water if he would take our picture. The kid said No Thanks. Of course Mark wouldn't let him off the hook, and told the guy how we weren't asking him to be in the picture, just to push the button. He still didn't want to do it. Mark persevered and he did.
We loaded everything in and drove home. We were so hungry that we gave up on our plans for a gourmet French Quarter dinner. We settled for chicken McNuggets in a strip mall and they tasted AWESOME. We rolled into New Orleans, probably around 10 p.m. or so.
[ERIC: The front porch of the
hotel was full of people watching us. I jumped out of the truck and nicely
dressed young woman from the hotel came over looking like she was going
to tell us to leave. I told her emphatically that we were guests of the
hotel. She was very friendly and knew exactly who we were (apparently the
stories about us passed around the hotel) but just wanted to tell us that
we could only park there for 30 minutes.]
At least a few of the crew hit the bar before we even had the truck unloaded. We piled most of the gunky river-sopped gear into our room (Joan and Eric's) to enhance the honeymoon feeling--we were the only ones staying beyond Monday.
We took showers and we talked a lot about the great drinking we were going to do. While everyone was still showering Eric and I went to my mom's room (she was in New Orleans for two days on her round-the-country train tour; she had arrived the night before, while we were at the ghost town, and this was her last night. When we checked in the woman at the counter went on and on about how everyone in the hotel loved my mother, who apparently had drawn little pictures as thank-yous for the maids). She told us her adventures since we had last seen her in Pittsburgh. The highlight was how she almost choked on a chicken bone on the train into New Orleans (she said she got nervous looking at the vastness of Lake Pontchartrain, a lot like I got nervous when driving my human cargo across. I guess it runs in the family).
After half an hour or so Eric and I went back out into the hall to catch up with everyone. Mark and Leo had decided to party in their room and they had got the hotel bar to sell them beers even though the bar was closed. Bob and Katy weren't moving fast either. We all collapsed.
The End.
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