Departing into five-thirty AM’s utter darkness, our boat pierced a depthless, wooly-grey fog soup. The best way to navigate with severely limited visibility is to align the bow with your destination, then slowly proceed while looking backward to keep your wake straight and hope you don’t run into anything. However, even to river veterans, such visual conditions can be bewildering (As a teen, I’d headed upriver into a similar dripping haze to go fishing, only moments later to pass beneath the Blackhawk Bridge downstream from our dock).
But our pilot, my father, knew this portion of the Mississippi River as well as he did the streets of Lansing, a picturesque riverine community of one thousand citizens located on the extreme northeastern corner of Iowa. Except for five years of WW II Air Force service, Dad had lived here his entire life.
Seated on the boat’s middle bench with my back to the bow, I glanced at Dad. Hunched against the elements, he held one flap of his parka hood across his face to shelter him from the cold. However, tears blowing from dark eyes toward Dumbo-sized ears streaked his leather-skinned, tomahawk-nose, and sun-blotched face. His lips retracted in a grimace to reveal a carnivore’s yellowed, worn, yet prominent and strong teeth. His appearance was one of intense concentration and determination.
I shared my father’s five-foot-ten and 165-pound physique. Although my son, twenty-five-year-old Johnny, matched our dimensions, he was a muscle-cut physical specimen with a broad, friendly, freckled-faced, orthodontically perfect smile and large, sparkling cobalt eyes that mirrored mine. To my relief, Dad, whose haircut preference was unaltered since The Big War, hadn’t commented on my son’s shoulder-length, curly, reddish-brown locks or his single gold earring.
At seventy, now eight years retired, Dad was trim, fit, and highly active, hunting, fishing, mowing his large, terraced yard, and shoveling the frequent northern Iowa snows. At forty-eight, I was an energetic dentist, avidly hunting, regularly playing basketball and tennis, working out, and jogging.
John Junior, the oldest of my four children and only son, had become a champion powerlifter. He’d begun lifting weights as a high school wrestler and football player, but while attending law school at Southern Illinois University, he’d worked out in the same gym as varsity football players. Realizing he could perform as well as these much larger scholarshiped athletes, he’d grown serious about the sport, especially its dietary and supplement aspects. A few years later, competing at 165 pounds, he’d bench-press 403.5 pounds and finish second nationally in a Las Vegas, NV tournament that used lie detectors, rather than urine testing, to ensure banned substances had not aided participants.
Every type of animal pursued demands a unique approach. For quail and rabbit, one follows their dog’s movement intently, as when game flushed, shooting must be quick and accurate. Deer hunting primarily consists of sitting twelve feet up in a tree stand and seeing them before they detect you. Luring ducks requires setting decoys (Dad used fifteen) and flawlessly camouflaging boats and hunters. If a single duck in a circling flock detects movement or sees a flash of metal or white skin, all will flee. Being skilled with a duck call is also essential, and in that art, Dad excelled.
After successfully navigating the bay, we’d hit the mouth of Big Lake dead-center. But after a few minutes of crossing this broad expanse, having no idea where we were, Dad was forced to land on a willow-covered island, where we hunkered down to sip coffee and wait for improved visibility.
We were embarking on a long-awaited and unprecedented three-generational adventure. Dad had navigated the river since boyhood, and I’d grown up an enthusiastic swimmer, skier, fisherman, and duck hunter. But after settling my family two hundred miles south of Lansing in Keokuk, located in the far southeastern corner of Iowa, I hadn’t been on the river for years. Johnny had pursued squirrels, quail, rabbits, and deer with me since he was a teen; but this was his first hunt with Grandpa, and he was thrilled.
Finally arriving at our willow blind in full daylight, ninety minutes later than planned, we set up on the northern end of Big Lake, but the large morning fights had passed, and only a smattering of ducks were flying. By ten AM, Dad had killed three drake mallards, while Johnny and I had been skunked, so we decided to head home and rest before our afternoon outing.
Beneath a peacock blue sky, that early November sunny and windless day, with temperatures reaching into the fifties, was pristine. Once again, Dad was driving, I was in the center, and Johnny was in the bow. I was lost in thought, my head down, when the boat suddenly turned sharply, flipped, and flung us face-first into frigid Mississippi waters. The accident occurred so quickly that no one made a sound.
Spitting and choking, I came to the surface and grasped the inside gunnel of the overturned craft. We were all on the same side of the boat, and I grabbed my father’s forearm to support him. Our shotguns had settled in the crook of my arm, but as we were all wearing water-filled chest waders, I feared our chances of surviving were meager, so I let the weapons drop.
My childhood home sat on the river’s edge, and I’d played on and in the Mississippi since I was a youngster. I worked five summers at the Lansing Municipal Marina, where drowning victims were retrieved and body bagged. At least one such death occurred every summer I was employed at the marina; most years, there were several. Having seen too many bloated bodies, I knew these great waters were always dangerous, yet I’d been careless. For example, waders should be rolled down to the knees for safety when not in use, but like wearing a life jacket, I’d never known a seasoned river rat to follow this precaution.
We’d flipped while cutting across another boat’s wake, and thankfully, that vessel bearing two strapping, youthful hunters had seen our misfortune and returned speedily. My four-year-younger brother, Jim, a physician at Gunderson Clinic, located forty miles north of Lansing in LaCrosse, WI, and two colleagues had been hunting close enough to see us leave and had followed. They overtook us in minutes, and after their arrival, Dad, who’d remained silent but looked stricken, was boosted into the strangers’ boat, driven to the harbor, and escorted home.
Though highly motivated, neither Johnny nor I could raise our legs above the surface, so my brother and his friends couldn’t leverage us into their vessel. They towed us, along with Dad’s upside-down boat, to the nearest shore, where my son and I crawled onto solid ground. After much straining and cursing, our chest waders were peeled off and drained of water. Dad’s boat was uprighted, and we towed it behind as we slowly motored home. I shook uncontrollably, partly from cold, partly from shock. I was told Dad remained silent but vomited several times. At least physically, Johnny appeared unaffected, although he may have been too overwhelmed to react.
We’d been traveling down the main channel of Big Slough and had overturned directly across from a large beaver lodge, so the location of our misfortune was easy to identify. Members of the Lansing volunteer fire department (my Uncle Ralph was chief) dragged the slough’s smooth, muddy bottom with racks of hooks customarily used to locate submerged bodies and snagged all three guns housed in soft cases. We eventually recovered all our possessions except one thermos. After showering and changing into dry clothes, my son and I quietly drove home.
Hunting and fishing boats are designed for stability and safety. I’ve never heard of one flipping. Dad would never discuss the potentially fatal accident, but my best guess is that he lost his grip on the throttle as we crested the wake, which allowed the outboard engine to turn too abruptly.
My resolute father continued to fish and hunt on the river as he always had before until suffering a stroke at age 95. Although I made no conscious decision, I’ve never ventured onto the mighty Mississippi again. Neither did Johnny. However, I realized we’d been incredibly fortunate. If there’d been severe wind, rain, snow, cold, or some mixture of all four, which are common in November, the outcome could have been very different. If the two powerful young men traveling ahead of us hadn’t seen our plight and immediately responded, or if my brother and his colleagues hadn’t followed….
But perhaps we survived because bred, born, and raised river rats are tougher than a boiled owl and notoriously difficult to kill.
Over a thirty-year nonfiction writing career, Dr. John A. Wilde has had six books and 240 articles published, the majority of the latter appearing in international magazines with approximately 145,000 subscribers. All are related to his professional career.
