Monday morning found us cruising down
the Missouri River on the Lewis & Clark riverboat. The reason:
we signed up for a class through the Osher Institute called “The
Mighty Missouri River.” So what could be better than floating down
it listening to Tracy Potter. I've come to one
conclusion about the river and the areas adjacent to it. There's a
heckuva lot of history around here.
Tracy told an interesting story about
the man piloting the boat. When he needed a pilot a couple of years
ago, he advertised all over the country. A man from Key West applied
to come up during our tourist season, and then he heads back down to
Key West to run fishing boats down there. Sounds like a good fit.
At the point where the boat started to
turn around for the return trip, it seemed to stall. I thought, “Uh,
oh, we're hung up on a sandbar.” Anyway, Tracy asked him later
what happened. The pilot said he was just experimenting on how slow
he could go and still maintain his position. He needed to know
because in a couple of weeks , he would be parking it in its winter
berth and needed the knowledge for controlling and steering it in the
Missouri River's strong current. What with the sandbars constantly
changing in the river, it was a safe guess about being stranded out
there. (At least I thought so.)
Later this week, Thursday, we will
spend the afternoon on the grounds of Fort Lincoln for another class
tour. And on Saturday the North Dakota Historical Society sponsors
the Governor's History Conferece, the topic being the
integration/segregation at Little Rock, Arkansas. One of the black
students involved in it will be the featured speaker.
