#23 More riverside nonsense

Of Boats and Snakes and Such

Norfork a great place to launch your boat. But I wouldn’t recommend trying to sleep on the access area. For one reason, the Game and Fish folks don’t allow camping on their access areas. Secondly, there are way too many things going on and way too much activity.

However a neat thing happened to me at Norfork. I saw what I considered the perfectly designed boat for my river exploits. I pretty much decided I would have one the first time I laid eyes on a River Hawk.

As I was coming down the river from Buffalo City to Norfork, the weather was beautiful and the scenery magnificent. I was able to shoot several “keeper” pictures.

I was in a great mood. It was Sunday and the locals were out fishing on the river. It seemed there were very few guide boats out compared to what were obviously local folks in their garden-variety rigs. Sunday was the day the people of the mountains got to enjoy their river.

I would like to point out that to one non-local, ex-local, the river really does belong to those who live and make their livings in these hills. Folks who move in from up north or retire from Little Rock and Memphis have been welcomed. Tourists and rich fishermen are part of the scene now. But I don’t think any of the people who have come to the river late in life will ever understand the power this river has on the people who grew up along it’s banks. No matter where you go or who you think you have become in life, you will always have the White in your soul. Now at age sixty-two, I still refer to the White with a phrase, “on the banks of the beautiful White River.” I know that sounds strange but what is really weird is I hear the line coming from W.C. Fields voice. Ah Yes….I don’t know if it was a commercial logo for my hometown or what, but it stuck with me all these years.

I met an old fellow at one of the access areas along the way. We chatted as he and his wife readied their big jon boat to put it into the water. He told me something that really struck home. He said the people of this area loved living by the river. The river was very much a part of their lives. They were drawn to it, as we had been further downstream those many years ago. He told me a story about his father, a man who worked the rocky fields of the hills. The man moved his large family to a more suitable farm far away from the hills and the White River. He was a good farmer and worked hard. The new farm prospered and so did the family. Then one day he went to the man who owned the land and told him he was leaving and going back to the hills. The landlord was incredulous and asked why the farmer would leave prosperity to go back to poverty. The sharecropper told him simply, “ cause you ain’t got no river here”.

That sharecropper’s son told the story proudly as if to explain to me why after 50 years in a Wichita aircraft plant he sold out and came back home to the river. Here he was, as wiry and tough an eighty year old as I have ever seen. His wife could barely get out of the tall pick-up while carrying her oxygen bottle and nose-breathing apparatus. But you just knew you would have had to fight both of them if you told them they needed help in launching their rig. It was what they did and who they were. They had come home to the river and everything was right.

Most of the boats I passed were anchored with the people just kicking back. Most were having a cold drink while getting a little sun and trying to catch a few trout. A good many of the boats had families in them. Every time passing a boat with kids in it, I would motor fairly close and yell out to the kids. “Y’all be sure to remember today. This is the good stuff.” The parents would grin and wave at me. The kids would sort of look at each other and then wave a sort of questioning wave. I enjoyed doing it and did the same thing all the way to Norfork. I made it to Norfork around 6 p.m. Cotter to Norfork in six hours, I guess that wasn’t too bad for low water and not knowing what you’re doing.

Somewhere between Buffalo City and Norfork, I got a second look at a strange little boat. It was the same two guys I had seen at the Cotter Trout Dock. The boat looked to be a cross between a Cajun Pirogue, a canoe, and a jon boat. A real rock bottom shallow river man’s boat, she was shallow drafting and equipped with a transom for a motor. The beam was way wider than a canoe and there were three floatation filled bench type boat seats.

I was falling in love. I spoke with the fellows who owned the first one I saw. They were two big old country boys who just wanted a good fishing boat when they found this one. They were crazy about the little boat. I was looking at all the advantages not available to me with my canoe and motor set up.

They could stand up and cast. They could run a ten-horse motor or more. They were not afraid of tearing the boat apart when power was required of the engine. They had room to store all the gear as well as a small dry storage compartment. They were very happy about the way they could paddle it just like a canoe. They bragged on the little boat weighing a mere one hundred and twenty five pounds and yet it was fiberglass. The lightweight would qualify as light enough to fit my trailer and I wouldn’t have to buy another. That would save me six or seven hundred bucks and a bunch more tax money. The transom and sides were high enough they didn’t worry about waves swamping them. The list of safety advantages went on and on. I was impressed and admittedly my stiff backside must have been having some influence at that point.

I think I mentioned when I pulled into Buffalo City I had tired-tail syndrome. The tired tail had turned into a numb bottom and sleepy legs by the time I reached Norfork. The motor on the canoe was essentially hanging off the side of the boat. That meant the canoe would naturally try to tip over if something like a human didn’t offset the weight to the other side. There was a major problem in being made into a counterweight. The seat in the canoe was very narrow at the hips sort of like Jimmy Dean’s “Big John.” There was no room to “scoot over.” So in order to throw your weight to the opposite side of the boat, one had to lean away from the motor and sit on one cheek. When that cheek went to sleep you shifted your whole body and leaned even more away from the motor and sat on the other cheek. Now I know the Bible says we are supposed to turn the other cheek, but this was getting ridiculous. I had tried cushions and seats with back pads but nothing kept the posterior from napping after an hour or so.

All safety features aside, when I saw that big old boy sitting on a soft padded swivel seat and running his motor at will, I knew I had to get one of those little boats.

As far as the rest of it went, I was most impressed with the wide beam and the stability it lent to my river exploration effort. The only problem now was where to find a dealer or manufacturer. When I ran into the two young fellows just up river from Buffalo Shoals, they thought the manufacturer was out of business. I asked where they had gotten that one and they gave me a sort of hillbilly answer. He had traded a hundred dollars cash and a worn out chain saw for the one I was admiring. I shook my head. Smart. Wish I could do that in the big city.

At Norfork I ran into another boat almost identical to the one the two young fellows had fished from. This time the fellow told me it was a gunew or something and he thought it was made right up here in Steel. Not to look too ignorant, I pretended to know where Steel or Steele was but had not a clue. I remembered the Oates twins at C.M.A. were from Steele, Missouri so I thought it shouldn’t be a problem to find it. I knew as soon as I got to a computer I would Google the town and name and I would have my manufacturer. To fast forward a little I will tell you that didn’t work. The lady who runs the White Sands was able to come up with a Steel, Arkansas near Fayetteville but we couldn’t find it on any maps. Nor could we find a Chamber or any boat manufacturer there. So much for her Google.

After the Google failure I began to think all was lost on the inexpensive comfortable, safer boat idea. I would keep my eye out to see what I could learn as the trip progressed.

Well now the trip plans had changed and the new plan required me to camp here at Norfork. I knew the little rock beach fairly well having waited for Debbie there on my previous trip. I knew there were outhouses up on the hill and that was a welcome relief. I can’t believe I just used that word in this context.

The Fish and Game enforcement folks at Calico had told me camping was not allowed on the access areas. But they had suggested there might be land adjoining the access areas that would be OK to use. I was going to take them seriously or maybe have to draw up my own boundaries for their property.

In the case of Norfork there was an additional problem. There was absolutely no privacy available without going into very high weeds and underbrush. Here is where the rubber meets the road. Are you a true outdoorsman or not? Are you willing to wade into chest high weeds and brush in sandals and shorts, throw down a cot and sleep there?

The answer was not no, but hell no. I am scared to death of creepy crawlies. As Maureen Miller Johnson Brown, the black lady who helped raise my brother and me, used to say, “I don’t fool with no smooth shoulders, nuh huh.” She was serious and so was I. Once upon a psychology class at Tiger High, I was given a word test. When they gave you the word you had to tell the grad student the first thing was that came to your mind. When the guy said snake I did not hesitate and quickly said, “chopping hoe.” He was from somewhere in the northeastern part of the country. It was obvious he had no idea what I just said. He asked me to explain what I meant by the term chopping hoe. I explained it was an instrument used to chop the weeds out of a garden or a cotton patch. He asked me to describe this instrument of agricultural endeavors. When I described the hoe it seemed to perplex the MBA candidate even more. The next thing he wanted to know was how an agricultural tool had anything to do with a snake. My explanation seemed redundant to me but I told him anyway. When we were children, my parents, grandmother or Maureen Miller Johnson Brown would be watching over us as we played in our yard or at someone else’s home. We spent a lot of time in a wonderful White River community by the name of Bethesda. It really didn’t matter whether we were in a newly built post World War II subdivision or up in the hills at friends homes. There were plenty of copperheads, rattlesnakes and if you were near water, there were always the scary cottonmouths. Any of these “smooth shoulders” as Maureen called them, could kill a kid.

So whenever we kids or, more than likely, our dogs would spot a snake, there were no questions about the snake’s role in the ecology. Everybody yelled get the chopping hoe and cut his head off. If I see a snake today and it looks anything like a poisonous type, I going to shoot it or kill it someway or run like hell and possibly all of the above. They scare the hell out of me and I still believe we are to do battle upon sighting one another. On this matter, I quote Mammy Yokum and say, “I has spoken.”

The graduate student thought the people where I came from must be very unenlightened if we went around killing all those cute little creatures. I told him to go onto his next word or his little project was about to be over.