Chillicothe, Missouri: As We Remember

There are a lot of things I've done in my life, and afterwards ask myself why. This story is about one of those times. The Grand and Thompson Rivers have always called to the young men around Chillicothe. Bring your fishing pole, swimsuit or not, boat, or “just come see me”, it cries out. Well it was one of those calls my cousin and I heard one evening. We wanted to build a raft, which we did. I had an old canvas tent which we set up on it. The tent was too big for the raft and there was no place to drive the stakes. It was a sad looking sight, but it worked! We forgot how shallow the river really was and the raft was heavy!  By the time we made it to the far side of the river where the channel was deeper, we were exhausted. While I didn’t know what my cousin was thinking; I was getting uneasy, maybe all this was a mistake.

 At sunset, the weather quickly changed for the worse. It started to rain and the temperature dropped steadily. Our plan was to make it to the Hwy 65 river bridge and call it a day. By the time the sleet started we have gone about 1/2 mile. Freezing and wet we got under the tent for some shelter. Still cold and miserable, we remembered a hermit who lived on the river bottoms in a cabin nearby. Through it was dark we managed to stumble through the mud and sticks to his cabin. He was very kind to let us in and we talked most of the night. The wood stove’s heat dried our clothes and the little sleep we got that night was a blessing. Morning came and we thanked him and said we would come back to visit. I was a very cold winter day. I was sure glad our clothes were dry, because we were not dressed for this journey.

 Back on the raft we still could not see the Hwy 65 river bridge. Progress was very, very slow towards our goal. We constantly moved from one side to the other to stay in the channel; boy I wished that river ran straighter! Of course our plans to do a little fishing didn’t pan out that trip. The bridge finally came into sight! But it still seemed to take an eternity to get up to it. We planned to dock on the north bank under the bridge. Now as luck would have it, we didn’t make the north bank because the current pushed us onto a log pile that set on a sandbar in the middle of the river.  

We were stuck. We decided to leave both the raft and that old tent and head for shore. I set my course to go straight across. But my cousin (who said he knew the river well) thought that we should go just little way upstream on the sandbar and we would find an easier crossing. I noted that we will still have to cross through the water to reach the bank when we get there and then walk back.  I was tired, and wet, and cold and had enough of that old river. So I set out to go directly across and the water came up to my knees. He decided to follow, he took one step and nearly disappeared! Now that was funny and we laughed all the way to the bank. A farmer in an old flatbed truck happened by right then and stopped. He appraised the risk of picking up two cold, wet, and dirty young men that had seemingly come from nowhere. And we were still laughing. The laughing part made his decision easier; he said “get in the back”. Now I'm here to tell you that the distance from the Hwy 65 Grand river bridge to Chillicothe was 100 miles of pure cold.  DB

Looking West from the Hwy 65 Grand RiverBridge