How the Mississippi shantyboats helped construct a tradition
“I have no idea a lot about gods; however I believe that the river Is a powerful brown god—sullen, untamed and intractable” – “Dry Salvages”, T.S. Eliot
Lengthy earlier than Wes Modes started planning a journey down the Mississippi, he began constructing a standard barge-bottom houseboat in a California yard out of rustic reclaimed supplies (e.g. outdated fences and rooster coops). As soon as his shantyboat was full he hatched a plan to move it throughout the nation from Santa Cruz to Minnesota to start a “Huck-Finn fashion” journey down the enduring American river.
Following within the footsteps of Harlan and Anna Hubbard, whose eight-year journey down the Mississippi and Ohio rivers was chronicled in Harlan’s ebook “Shantytown”, Modes launched his personal float 70 years later. His “Secret Historical past of American River Individuals” is an element private journey and half analysis/multimedia challenge, amassing tales of “river individuals” alongside the banks.
Full with lofted mattress, compost bathroom and full-kitchen (propane-powered camp range and plumbed sink), his 10-by-8-foot houseboat cabin serves as each floating dwelling and cell workplace for his summertime sojourns.
After two summers on the Mississippi, Modes (together with first mate Lauren Benz) got down to deal with the 652-mile Tennessee River from Knoxville to Paducah, Kentucky. We caught up with him in Knoxville, which he identified can be the setting for Cormac McCarthy’s semi-autobiographical shantyboat novel “Suttree”.
Practically in every single place he goes, Modes has found that the instances of shantyboat dwelling have largely disappeared. “I simply completed an interview with any individual,” he defined from Volunteer Touchdown in Knoxville. “He was saying when he was a child rising up within the sixties there have been individuals dwelling alongside the banks of among the creeks and the river, however by the mid-to-late seventies these individuals had been all gone. And by the eighties that they had renewed the riverfront and by the nineties… all these individuals who used to reside alongside the rivers in little do-it-yourself shacks and shanty boats had been as a substitute displaced.”
Modes makes use of crowdfunding to assist pay for his journeys (this summer time: the Sacramento River) the place he hopes to inform the tales of people that don’t normally make the historical past books. “I believe that’s type of like this concept of postmodern historical past wherein you’re inspecting the little tales of individuals, the tales of you and I, the relationships in our lives, and the adventures we’d had and the hardships we’ve endured. These are a type of historical past that’s simply as legitimate and simply as reliable as historical past with a capital H: historical past that makes the dominant narrative of the individuals who typically are the victors and the individuals who win and the individuals who write the historical past books.” from the video introduction
