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Down the Mississippi

 

Down The Mississippi

by: Santiago Mostyn


Once upon a time, some kids I knew decided it would be a good idea to leave New York, travel to the mid-west, and build a huge raft on the Mississippi River. They brought planks of old wood, cans of old food,
and a peculiar way of looking inwards that encompassed the whole world. Ex-clowns from San Francisco came with crazy ideas for engines. Crusties from New Orleans brought music, and rope, and face paint. Others came out of their towns on the river to conjoin, play, and build. After three weeks, the kids -- expertise be damned -- pushed the raft onto the river, watched it float, revved the homemade engines up, watched them smoke and choke and go and -- piling themselves onto the deck -- they began to chart a course down the river.

Like certain other things in life, the trip was painful but good. The next summer everyone brought friends, who built more rafts, and took great care in chiming in on the rhetoric of the dream prospector's life.

"We are making a change!" they cheered. "Our spectacle is the future!"

But, little by little, the edges of their reality started to come undone from the things they knew were good to say. Some towns were still friendly, some towns now were not. And as the different rafts flowed downstream at different speeds, so the interests and the passions of the travelers began to diverge. Little groups began to form. And eventually, tired of the vapidity, a few young people broke off.

They packed lunches, and water, and walked away from the river, away to the nearest train yard, where they knew junk would be heading west, because where else but California does one go with dreams that have run dry? A day later the train came and they ran to catch it, throwing bags aboard, flinging jugs, clinging to the rungs, and clambering into the bucket, somewhat less forgetful of the world than they wished, in their raucous laughter, to be seen.

- Santiago Mostyn


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