Big River Ride Journal (Part 9)
http://www.pedelecs.co.uk/articles/22/1/Big-River-Ride-Journal-Part-9/Page1.html
Russell Scott
By Russell Scott
Published on 10/25/2006
It has been an extremely busy week for my two legs and two pedals. God knows how many revolutions they've done since entering the state of Arkansas eight or nine days ago. I stopped over in Blytheville, Osceola, West Memphis (just across the river from Memphis, Tennessee) and finally made it down to the little riverport of Helena, where the blues seems to be the town's Number One industry.
The world's longest-running blues radio show operates from there. It is hosted five days a week, 52 weeks a year, by 81 year old 'Sunshine' Sonny Payne - who has not missed a beat since its inception 56 years ago. Believe me, Jimmy Young has got nothing on this guy.
Sonny has a wry, dry sense of humour. From his personal version of Broadcasting House (a blues museum known as the Delta Cultural Center) he not only entertains his daily audience with some of the finest music ever to have come from this region of the Mississippi, he also titters them with his live interviews. I should know, because I was one of them last week.
Live on air, he introduced me as a British journalist, cycling the entire length of the river. Following a heavily-pregnant pause, he asked: "You doin' this just for exercise, boy?"
"God, no"
"Then why punish yourself like this?"
Good question - and one that I've asked myself more than once during the ride, which is now a little more than three-quarters through. In fact, I asked it of myself a few days ago when caught in blinding, relentless rain which left me as a sodden, steaming heap, and barely recognizable as a human being by day's end. But the upside to that was that it tested the eZee Torq's electrics system to the limit. I was sure that the electrics would short-out in such vile dampness - but they didn't. The bike cut through the rain as if it were melted butter, without so much as a single hiccup.
In Helena I came across a down-home chap by the name of Robbie Whatling - who has the distinction of surviving not one, but TEN plane crashes.
He was taught to fly at the age of 14 by his farmer father. At 15, he was flying cropdusters on the farm, without a license or any formal air training. Robbie has an easy, natural way about him that is indicative of the frontier way of thinking that still exists on this side of the river. His attitude is simple and borderline. The crashes he shrugs off as unimportant, irrelevant, only to be expected in the cropdusting business.
"Two of 'em were my own fault" he told me. "Ran out fuel both times, which was embarrassing. The others just came with the job. Clipping treetops and telegraph wires, going into wingstalls, that kinda thing."
Cropduster pilots are the nearest that civil aviation can get to fighter pilots. They descend to within six feet of the ground, spray in a straight line at 100mph, then climb sharply upwards, turn around, and swoop down again to begin the process all over again. These purpose-built planes are, as far as possible, designed to keep crash damage to a minimum.
But after the tenth prang - and following his father's death in a cropduster - Robbie opted for a career on the ground, refurbishing used or damaged aircraft. He now has a thriving business based at Helena Airport - that includes the painting and maintenance of Elvis Presley's two aircraft on display at Graceland back up there in Memphis.
He works seven days a week: five of them on bent airplanes, and two evenings a week as a semi-pro drummer with a rock band, aptly named....Borderline.
A great guy, and great company.
As indeed was my next encounter - a County Judge called Mark McElroy. I had met him at an Arkansas prizegiving bash the previous Friday evening and he invited me to stay at his house once I entered his jurisdiction of Desha County.
Like Robbie Whatling, there is nothing formal about the judge. As often as not he will preside over his court in Arkansas City wearing jeans and cowboy boots. He has married people in farm barnyards, and knee-deep in the Mississippi River. Mark is part of the frontier scenery; his land is their land, if you see what I mean.
He told me a story that I simply must relate. Back in 1903, a steamboat called into (the then thriving) Arkansas City. One of the passengers scrambled ashore and made for the nearest saloon, where he gambled away his entire savings that same night. Enraged, he set fire to the hotel - which spread through the town, destroying 50% of it.
"Justice was swift in those days" explained the judge. "A lynch mob came to get him at three in the morning - and that was that." But before they hanged the man, he threatened the crowd that he'd haunt the town forever - and for them to keep a close eye on the clock atop of the courthouse.
Sure enough, strange things began to happen to that clock. And they carried on happening. When Mark McElroy took over as judge, he asserted that something had to be done about "that goddam timepiece".
"It would jump an hour ahead, then two hours back" he told me. "It would strike 13 times at any hour of the day that it chose to - as if the lynched man was actually controlling it from beyond the grave. So I had it taken down and sent to an expert horologist in Florida. We paid that guy $10,000, who in return offered a three-year guarantee that the clock would literally work like clockwork from then on."
He paused, eyeing me with a casual smirk. "Within one day of being put back in place at the courthouse, it started doing the same stuff all over again. Well, that horologist came up from Florida time and time again, until he finally said to us that he could no longer honour the guarantee - because if all the latest technology that he'd put into the clock wouldn't cure it, then there had to be something to the man's curse."
And to this day, the courthouse clock does exactly as it pleases, exactly when it pleases. Which is fitting in a sense. I mean, where else would the Thirteenth Hour exist but alongside the mystical Mississippi River?
Tomorrow (Thursday) I cross into the state of Mississippi for a few days, and then into my final state of Louisiana, from where I'll write again next week.
Meantime, my thanks and best wishes to all.
Keep up to date with Quentin's travels by reading his blog here on Pedelecs, by visiting his site below or listening to the once-weekly broadcast on Radio 5 Live Up All Night programme.
| | It has been an extremely busy week for my two legs and two pedals. God knows how many revolutions they've done since entering the state of Arkansas eight or nine days ago. |
Part 09: Lake Chicot, Arkansas, 25 October 2006.
It has been an extremely busy week for my two legs and two pedals. God knows how many revolutions they've done since entering the state of Arkansas eight or nine days ago. I stopped over in Blytheville, Osceola, West Memphis (just across the river from Memphis, Tennessee) and finally made it down to the little riverport of Helena, where the blues seems to be the town's Number One industry.
The world's longest-running blues radio show operates from there. It is hosted five days a week, 52 weeks a year, by 81 year old 'Sunshine' Sonny Payne - who has not missed a beat since its inception 56 years ago. Believe me, Jimmy Young has got nothing on this guy.
Sonny has a wry, dry sense of humour. From his personal version of Broadcasting House (a blues museum known as the Delta Cultural Center) he not only entertains his daily audience with some of the finest music ever to have come from this region of the Mississippi, he also titters them with his live interviews. I should know, because I was one of them last week.
Live on air, he introduced me as a British journalist, cycling the entire length of the river. Following a heavily-pregnant pause, he asked: "You doin' this just for exercise, boy?"
"God, no"
"Then why punish yourself like this?"
Good question - and one that I've asked myself more than once during the ride, which is now a little more than three-quarters through. In fact, I asked it of myself a few days ago when caught in blinding, relentless rain which left me as a sodden, steaming heap, and barely recognizable as a human being by day's end. But the upside to that was that it tested the eZee Torq's electrics system to the limit. I was sure that the electrics would short-out in such vile dampness - but they didn't. The bike cut through the rain as if it were melted butter, without so much as a single hiccup.
In Helena I came across a down-home chap by the name of Robbie Whatling - who has the distinction of surviving not one, but TEN plane crashes.
He was taught to fly at the age of 14 by his farmer father. At 15, he was flying cropdusters on the farm, without a license or any formal air training. Robbie has an easy, natural way about him that is indicative of the frontier way of thinking that still exists on this side of the river. His attitude is simple and borderline. The crashes he shrugs off as unimportant, irrelevant, only to be expected in the cropdusting business.
"Two of 'em were my own fault" he told me. "Ran out fuel both times, which was embarrassing. The others just came with the job. Clipping treetops and telegraph wires, going into wingstalls, that kinda thing."
Cropduster pilots are the nearest that civil aviation can get to fighter pilots. They descend to within six feet of the ground, spray in a straight line at 100mph, then climb sharply upwards, turn around, and swoop down again to begin the process all over again. These purpose-built planes are, as far as possible, designed to keep crash damage to a minimum.
But after the tenth prang - and following his father's death in a cropduster - Robbie opted for a career on the ground, refurbishing used or damaged aircraft. He now has a thriving business based at Helena Airport - that includes the painting and maintenance of Elvis Presley's two aircraft on display at Graceland back up there in Memphis.
He works seven days a week: five of them on bent airplanes, and two evenings a week as a semi-pro drummer with a rock band, aptly named....Borderline.
A great guy, and great company.
As indeed was my next encounter - a County Judge called Mark McElroy. I had met him at an Arkansas prizegiving bash the previous Friday evening and he invited me to stay at his house once I entered his jurisdiction of Desha County.
Like Robbie Whatling, there is nothing formal about the judge. As often as not he will preside over his court in Arkansas City wearing jeans and cowboy boots. He has married people in farm barnyards, and knee-deep in the Mississippi River. Mark is part of the frontier scenery; his land is their land, if you see what I mean.
He told me a story that I simply must relate. Back in 1903, a steamboat called into (the then thriving) Arkansas City. One of the passengers scrambled ashore and made for the nearest saloon, where he gambled away his entire savings that same night. Enraged, he set fire to the hotel - which spread through the town, destroying 50% of it.
"Justice was swift in those days" explained the judge. "A lynch mob came to get him at three in the morning - and that was that." But before they hanged the man, he threatened the crowd that he'd haunt the town forever - and for them to keep a close eye on the clock atop of the courthouse.
Sure enough, strange things began to happen to that clock. And they carried on happening. When Mark McElroy took over as judge, he asserted that something had to be done about "that goddam timepiece".
"It would jump an hour ahead, then two hours back" he told me. "It would strike 13 times at any hour of the day that it chose to - as if the lynched man was actually controlling it from beyond the grave. So I had it taken down and sent to an expert horologist in Florida. We paid that guy $10,000, who in return offered a three-year guarantee that the clock would literally work like clockwork from then on."
He paused, eyeing me with a casual smirk. "Within one day of being put back in place at the courthouse, it started doing the same stuff all over again. Well, that horologist came up from Florida time and time again, until he finally said to us that he could no longer honour the guarantee - because if all the latest technology that he'd put into the clock wouldn't cure it, then there had to be something to the man's curse."
And to this day, the courthouse clock does exactly as it pleases, exactly when it pleases. Which is fitting in a sense. I mean, where else would the Thirteenth Hour exist but alongside the mystical Mississippi River?
Tomorrow (Thursday) I cross into the state of Mississippi for a few days, and then into my final state of Louisiana, from where I'll write again next week.
Meantime, my thanks and best wishes to all.
Keep up to date with Quentin's travels by reading his blog here on Pedelecs, by visiting his site below or listening to the once-weekly broadcast on Radio 5 Live Up All Night programme.
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