SHAPED BY WATER
THE MISSISSIPPI REMAINS THE SOUTH’S MOST VITAL ARTERY
WHEN I WAS IN MY LATE TEENS, I WORKED some summers and weekends as a longshoreman on the docks and derrick barges of the New Orleans riverfront. The pay was great, and the work, though hot, was not as hard as people thought.
From that experience, I developed a sense of romance about the Mississippi River. Like Huck Finn, I came to associate it with freedom and frontiers and race and card players and lighting out for the territory. I once tried to write a novel about it, which was truly bad and still sits in a bottom drawer of my desk.
During my
