In mid-July, I set off on an epic journey towing a three-ton houseboat across country to float down the Mississippi River and gather the lost narratives of people who live and work on the river from the deck of my recreated shantyboat.
With help from numerous people who work and live on the river, my goal was gathering the first collection in an ongoing digital archive of personal histories — the lost stories of river people, river communities, and the river itself, including the personal chronicle of my research journey. I interviewed Upper Mississippi artists, boathouse residents, scientists, researchers, historians, business owners, and adventurers. I used digital and social media to present and connect river people and and their stories to those far from the river. In the works, is an interactive web documentary.
This boat was the primary artistic focus of the project serving not only as the expedition vessel but the project library and archive. The shantyboat is a rustic houseboat, a traditional wooden-hulled barge-bottom flatboat lovingly recreated by me and friends over a period of two years out of largely reclaimed materials.
The expedition was six months in the making, not counting the two years creating the boat. In early June, I got a lot of stuff together, set up meetings with river people, did a successful Reddit AMA, borrowed video and audio equipment, and launched a very successful Kickstarter campaign to help fund the project. In late June I flew to Minneapolis and St. Paul for a week of trip reconnaissance. I met with some remarkable people, many of whom were later interview subjects:
- the National Park Service chief for the Mississippi River area,
- the top riverboat pilot on the river,
- a radical history professor from Macalester College who knows tons of people’s history about the Twin Cities and beyond,
- a professor from University of Minnesota who works exclusively on river projects and is exploring the possibility of a permanent home for the Secret History Archive,
- a reporter/fisherman who knows the river and was ridiculously entertaining,
- an artist who coordinates other artists and experts for amazing river events,
- a choir that sang river songs to the flooded Mississippi River, and
- lots of people who grew up on the river and know decades of personal and local history.
In the final weeks before our journey, there was so much to do, setting up appointments, fundraising, getting the tech together. Last minute work on the website, included an expedition blog and an interactive map, that I ended up fiddling with for weeks on the trip.
We worked day and night to complete the boat. People asked us, "You're planning on testing that in the water before you haul it across country, right?" And we said, "Uh, yeah…. if we have time." We didn't have time so when we put the boat in the Mississippi River, it was the first time it had ever been in the water. And it floated perfectly.
The trip across country was fraught with mechanical troubles and frustrating. Thousands of dollars went into truck repairs. It taught me an important fieldwork lesson: Rent a car; never use your own vehicle.
Once we were in the water, we held an open house to which the local press came. Everyone we met was so excited about our project, about exploring history, about the river, about the archive we were creating. There were so many art works I've created and community organizations I've helped put together and tried to bring attention to with varying success, but with this project the moment we rolled into town, people were excited to help us out in any way they could.
Here in Minneapolis and St Paul were the first round of interviews. I was shooting with equipment borrowed from DANM, a Canon 5D Mark II DSLR with a pro lens, a focusing loup on the back and a Sennheiser shotgun mic mounted in the hotshoe and a Zoom H4 recorder. Near the end of the first interview, the 5D shut off and wouldn't turn back on. Battery? Nope. Card? Nope. Soft reset? Nope. Hard reset? Nothing would get it to work.
But as we ran into trouble we equally ran into pockets of ridiculous generosity. In one town, people read about us in the local paper, went down to the river missed us and then went to the next town down river to find us and then became our instant friends and saviors. They brought us buckets of Wisconsin beer and called friends, cousins, strnagers to find a mechanic to fix our ailing engine. People gave us money, gifts, books, and more beer than we could drink.
In finding connections to river people, I discovered an interesting thing: People’s connections to others are unevenly distributed, clearly revealing “connectors,” people who are the nodes of social connectedness.
So just for instance, when I originally put the word out that I was looking for river people in the Upper Mississippi, a friend recommended an old work buddy who recommended an an artist acquaintance who in turn introduced me to everyone I met in Minneapolis and St. Paul. A similar thing happened when I met Alex, a housemate of a friend who has personally introduced me to entire galaxies of people up and down the river.
As I completed interviews I'd spend the next day editing them and creating excerpts to post on the website for the people following the expedition from afar. For example, a chance meeting with Lauren resulted in a great interview here. An interview with a St Paul history professor yielded this amazing excerpt about the creativity of poverty.
In general, I was happy with my footage. My goal was to make visually beautiful interviews, working outdoors, and using the river as a meaningfully connected backdrop. I used depth-of-field to isolate the subject from the background. The sound from the Zoom 4H was great and still needs to be paired with the video.
The project yielded nearly 20 hours of interviews. I shot more than an hour of atmospheric and establishing footage, mostly at people's homes and locations along the river.
One of my goals was to uncover the invisible stories of native people, people of color and women. This is where the compiled archive so far is weak. In upcoming fieldwork, I will focus on having more POC voices, native people and people in their 70s and 80s in the archive.
I’ve found it takes about three days to set up interviews when I get to a town. One day to get settled a bit, one day to meet people, and then another day in which to schedule interviews. Each of the interviews is one to one and a half hours long with lots of intense concentration and even more preparation. So two or three interviews is a long day.
On the day before we were leaving La Crosse I met a man who’d lived in his boathouse on the Black River for 65 years. It kills me that I didn’t have the time to interview him, though we did sit for a while and watch the sunset.
Jim told me about new money coming into the La Crosse boathouse community. “You know, the other day, a guy came down here and asked me if there were any boathouses for sale. I told him, I didn’t know of any.
“He asked me if mine was for sale. I told him, ‘Nope. I’m not interested in selling.’ He told me that everyone has a price so I should throw a number out there.
“I thought about it, and told him, ‘Half a mil.’
“‘Half a million? Dollars?’ he said, ‘Don’t you think you’re a little high, pops?’
“I told him, ‘That’s what it’s worth to me.’ And honestly if he’d come up with the cash then and there, I still wouldn’t a sold. What do I need money for, when I have this?” he said, gesturing at the sunset on the water.
“Hey, you wanna ‘nother beer?”
We survived storms on the river that very nearly killed us. We survived barges and fog and cell phone drownings and our own ignorance.
We hoped to get as far as the Quad Cities where there were people I’d met online that I was excited to get to know in person. We hoped to get as far as Galena where Bronwyn’s people were anticipating welcoming us heartily.
We hoped to get as far as Dubuque and the National Mississippi River Museum and our contacts there. We hoped to get as far as McGregor, IA to meet fellow shantyboater Tim Mason. We hoped to get as far as Lansing to meet the contacts that Ken and Sara passed on to us. But maybe it seemed fitting that we stopped in the little Minnesota town of Brownsville where boathouses line the banks north and south of town.
I think the thing that we wished we had more of was time. Not a month, or even two, but a whole season, to drift and meet people and talk and learn. for as long as we needed.
One thing is clear about our journey: One trip is not enough. There is so much to do, so many people to meet, and so many stories to hear.
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