Tuesday, January 21, 2014

River Jesus

Well, after saying goodbye to New Orleans, we left off for another night in Clarksdale to visit our friend John Ruskey of the Quapaw Canoe company. John guides folks down the Mississippi on long trips in canoes he makes himself in his own canoe workshop. John's actually the whole reason we know Christopher Staudinger, who was one of John's guides on a 300-somethimg-mile-long trip the last person who operated this blog blogged about. You can find all that out by hitting the "previous post" button page after page after page.

Here's John right here in his kitchen making a cup of coffee:


And here's one of those excellent canoes John's known for making right here in John's canoe workshop. How did you learn how to make canoes, John? There's only one way, Oliver, you just do it.
Well folks, now you have it.

On the left in this picture is the mould on which he builds these "stripper" canoes. One strip at a time. Each strip is only an inch or two thick. You can see in the picture after this one some strips being bent into shape on the wall.


The finished product! This thing is huge! Look at all those seats.

This here big old log is going to grow up someday to be a dugout canoe! 

Kind of like this guy over here!

Or maybe this guy. He's shaped like a frog. Don't give him the wrong look or he'll capsize you in a heartbeat!

John Ruskey's got all kinds of crazy shit he's picked up along the river all these years. Take a look at this mud fossil, says Ping!

Or this whole pile of fossils!

What's this?

Or THIS??

???

Here's some canoe-making tools

Chomp chomp!

A clever boot-drying doohickey

And look at all those books! Every single one of them's about rivers. That's John Ruskey's life right there. Folks call him River Jesus. He certainly looks the part!

Fun fact: Before John Ruskey devoted his life to the Mississippi River, he was a famous blues guitarist right here in Clarksdale! Rumor has it he sold his soul to the devil and has been paddling up and down the Mississippi looking to find it ever since! I made that up.

But he was a famous blues guitarist. I didn't make that part up.


Chris's family sent us a King Cake from New Orleans to share with John. Well... guess who got the baby Jesus?
Just my luck.

What is Clarksdale known for aside from the famous River Jesus John Ruskey? Mississippi Blues of course! Didn't you read my earlier blog post? Well we just had to stop by the Ground Zero Blues Club in Clarksdale, which is owned incidentally by big time blues fan Morgan Freeman. It's a funky sort of place where you can get down to some funky sort of music.

We saw the ancient Leo Bud Welch crank out some blues on the electric guitar. He's 81 years old, but can still play like his momma done died


Not that he can do much else. He could barely get off the stage himself or take off his own hat without help. He's about to go on a European tour for the first time in his life!

But boy could he play that guitar. Ping just couldn't stop dancing!




Here's me with Bud Welch himself!

One for the photo album!

Well, I'd love to have given our St. Louis adventure it's own blog post, but I only got one picture worth showing you guys, and it's Michael Clark's supersweet dog, Dolly. Mike's another river friend, one of the most experienced paddlers on the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers. Such a sweet dog! And thanks to Michael for hosting us! This whole trip we only had to get motel rooms once thanks to all our great river friends!

Well, this might just be the last blog post in a while, so thanks for following us on our adventures! After a brief stay in St. Louis, we went back up to the Twin Cities. On the way up it started raining like no tomorrow, something that only got worse and colder the further North we went and started freezing, but we only came close to death a handful of times! The first time an 18-wheeler almost ran us off the road as I was passing it. I shredded the hell out of the grass by the left lane swerving past it. Lucky things hadn't gotten icy yet!
That was even more terrifying. If you didn't know, I didn't grow up in icy climates. I grew up in Washington, DC, where the whole city shuts down in the event of an inch or two of snow while everybody waits desperately for it all to melt. I made it about 45 minutes of slowly sliding back and forth across the lanes before I gave up and got Ping to take over. At one particularly slippery point we saw a car in the other lane swerve off into the ditch between the two directions of highway and come this close to hitting another car in the same ditch! Maybe that's when I asked Ping to take over.
Well, to say the least we were very, very happy to be back home again.
Thanks for following us on our adventure, though! To end, I'd like to extend another thanks to all the kind people whose kindness and hospitality made this trip possible, especially Mary and Ed Staudinger, John Ruskey, Mike Waddle, and Michael Clark. See you later on down the river!

3 comments:

  1. awesome, Oliver! I love your devil joke.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I loved the devil joke too Oliver... And its actually partly true! You guys brought blessings to us. Thanks for stopping for a visit!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. And thank you! Hope to see you some time, later on down the river!

      Delete