August 3, 2007
The sinister river
The collapse has redirected local attention here to The Mighty Mississippi, such a cliché until an event like this. As it flows through the Twin Cities, it appears as a smooth, lazy flat surface of brown silt--at least from the banks. But the river is deep and it is wide and it is fast, hard to channel, with a backlog of water tons and tons strong pushing it down and around the curves of the limestone canyons that have to rise sixty feet high to contain it.
I love the river. As it flows through Minneapolis it cascades over St. Anthony Falls, it's largest drop along the way, generating enough power to run the mills a hundred years ago and now sheeted over concrete aprons and through sluices. Just above the collapsed bridge it froths through another lock, and the water flowing under I-35W is nine feet deep or so, fast, and unpredictable. It's at this moment still shifting cars and concrete and rebars. Further down the banks grow higher and conceal hobo camps, cruising sites, houseboats, clandestine fishermen, punks drinking, queer photographers, fields of poison ivy, wild turkeys, white-tailed deer, muskrats, and raccoons, pot smokers and campfires.
Now we're focused below the surface, to those sinister feet of fast-moving water and below that the feet and feet of mud and silt.
Posted by jason at August 3, 2007 8:07 AMI happened to look up the lyrics to "Down by the Riverside," only to discover a cultural crux.
My own recollection is Patsy Cline's politely (except when she sang it) erotic version: "I met my little brown-eyed gal/Down by the riverside. . . ."
Diamond Rio upped the ante on this version: "I took my baby out and bought her a ring/Man, we planned a wedding come spring/ . . . Told me she would be my bride/Down by the riverside."
There's a gospel version, sung by Elvis Presley and many others: "I'm gonna lay down my burden, down by the riverside. . . ." This one obviously has roots in slave songs.
Randy Travis added a Prozac intro and changed a key word: "I feel so bad in the morning/I feel so bad in the middle of the day. . . . I'm going to lay down my heavy load down by the riverside."
Speaking of heavy loads, there's a Boy Scout version which probably doesn't get sung much these days:"Gonna lay down my sword and shield/Down by the riverside. . . ." This Boy Scout version eliminates much of the overt religious and ethnic content.
The gospel and Boy Scout versions have the "ain't gonna study war no more" refrain, while the romancing versions obvously don't.
I propose a new version:
I laid my Hummer upside down
Down by the riverside
Down by the riverside
Bridge support pierced my crown
Down by the riverside
Down by the riverside.
No dick-suckin for me tonite
Down by the riverside
Marijuana packet by my side
Washed away in the tide
Schoolbus kids get screen time
And I lay in the slime
Down by the riverside.
[Copyright 2007]
"hobo camps, cruising sites, houseboats, clandestine fishermen, punks drinking, queer photographers, fields of poison ivy, wild turkeys, white-tailed deer, muskrats, and raccoons, pot smokers and campfires."
That's like a snapshot of perfection, a real Walden-esque reverie, glimpse of a dream...
