SECOND AGE BY CARL FRANSON
My Year on a Mississippi River Shantyboat

Used with Permission. We have made some slight changes from the print version to make this piece more reader/online friendly. In his book, Carl was quite deliberate about choosing to call his shantyboat a "Floating House" rather than a houseboat. The term "shanty boat" accurately describes a "floating house."

You may purchase the softcover edition of SECOND AGE by visiting either of these links: Amazon.com or AuthorHouse

 

    "Our houseboat mover had put us as close to the Mississippi River as he could.

    "Our job was to get all the barrels under our floating house and get it all into the Mississippi River. Simple, right?
Wrong."

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Part I

             Introduction  I am now in my Golden Age writing about a long ago Second Age. To guide me I had a detailed map of the Upper Mississippi River and memories that flooded my mind with crystal  clarity. What I have written about covers a period of two years. Most of this time was spent among people of little wealth, making do with what they had.  Second Age is a reference to a time of  learning, of testing, and adventure!

            The Floating House   The decision to move our houseboat from Lake Johanna, five miles north of St. Paul, into the Mississippi River near the Washington Avenue Bridge seemed like a workable plan. We found a boathouse mover who could move our floating house to the river's edge. It was our job to get the barrels under the houseboat and get it into the river.

            Downriver   We were now ready to begin our southward journey in earnest . We were still surrounded by a busy St. Paul and could hear traffic on both sides rushing and rushing while we traveled quietly, and slowly we passed the entrance to Pig’s Eye Lake, Red Rock, and Newport, and Iver Grove and finally St. Paul’s Park, where one mile below, we tied up for our second night. We had traveled a distance of about twelve miles. That’s about what our pioneer people did with their oxen on their trek west.

            Across Lake Pepin to Wisconsin             Lake Pepin is a large, long, deep body of water with the Mississippi running in one end and out the other. Its destiny was to be one of the great water sports resort areas pf the Midwest. It seemed to have everything, both summer and winter.

            River Ice Begins     It was then that we saw ice building on the shore and thin ice forming on the river, then breaking up. It was thin ice scraping along the edges of the barrels that had caused the scratching. We now had a real problem to face. One way or another, we had to move out of that exposed, dangerous place and somehow find a safer one, or abandon it altogether.

            Winter in the Shelter of the Wing Dam         "Tell me, how in the world did you travel twenty-three miles through the worst and cruelest storm this part of the country has ever seen?"

            Spring Thaw   Well, the mighty Mississippi, like a bear coming out of hibernation, awoke with a start, broke its icy cover into millions of cakes, and shoved them all at one time downstream. This event then was its invitation to all the birds to return and now populate its surface, and they accepted by flying in huge noisy, busy flocks of all manner of waterfowl.

            Farewell to the Floating House   Now the work of the dam shut down and Saturday came. I would play for the last dance that I was to play for in my life. Sunday morning I swamped out and hunted the floor money. I was probably the only sober saloon cleanup man who ever lived, according to western magazines, and now that job came to an end forever.

Custom Search

 
Introduction

  Ancient philosophers, wise in many things, have informed us that there are four ages in a person’s life: first, that of childhood; second, that of learning, of testing, and adventure; third, that of service; and fourth, that of the Golden Age.

            I am now in my Golden Age writing about a long ago Second Age. To guide me I had a detailed map of the Upper Mississippi and could refer to a published book written by Clarence. Practically all other information has been lost.

            Finally getting started, I began to write this letter and was amazed and delighted that scene after scene would be recalled in my mind, sometimes with crystal clear clarity that would also arouse my feelings. I was literally reliving these experiences and one time I became so excited that I had to get up and walk around the room to calm myself and my beating heart. 

            You will probably notice an absence of specific dates. The timetables have been lost and I do not like them anyway; they are of no value here.

            What I have written about covers a period of two years. Most of this time was spent among people of little wealth and making do with what they had.  The ship period was among opulence, riches, the best of everything, and famous people. I liked a little of each and strove toward that goal in our Third Age.

            You will wonder why I didn’t write about girls.  Well, I was just so interested in traveling, adventuring, and pursuing my goal that I just did not want any diversions. Sure, the main topics of conversation and the jokes and the ogling was of the opposite sex, and I had desire and opportunity, but I kept “steady as she goes” as a sailor would say. Who is to say that my actions were wise, but for me, I thought I did well.

Now here’s my story… 

 

Part I

 The Floating House

           In the beginning, there were three of us: Shorty, Clarence, and me, all students in our second year of college at the University of Minnesota at the Saint Paul Campus.  In this winter of 1931 we were living in a rented summer cottage on the shore of beautiful Lake Johanna, which was approximately four miles north of Saint Paul, Minnesota. We had two cars; mine was an old model A Ford with a rumble seat.

 This enchanting lake was perhaps five miles either way and surrounded by trees to the north, a country road with many cottages to the west, and to the east a Catholic school for emerging priests where, in addition to the handsome buildings and grounds, they had a short, finely crafted wooden bridge connecting to a small island. This small island was heavily wooded, and at the top of its hill and accessible by path only, stood a small but majestic chapel whose melodious bells we could hear at the cottage. 

To the west, and across the road, was the Ernest Sanders Farm. Great people---we made arrangements to buy a quart of milk from him each day for ten cents. So each morning, when he was hand milking his cows, we would go over with a dime and a one gallon pail. Many times we would return with almost a full bucket. On one or two occasions we milked his herd for him, so I guess in the end, we all came out even.

A short distance around the lake to the south another rancher named Tony Gauzer lived, and it was through him that we gained a road to the lake shore for our building project.

We three had been together, more or less, through all four years at the School of Agriculture and two years at the college. We had experienced dormitory life together. Then we three, plus five other male students, rented a whole house for three semesters. Our minds were hungry for knowledge, and we would get into long and sometimes heated discussions about many things, but especially about religion. And in some cases these would go on until the wee hours in the morning. Then the next day we would go to the library and get more ammunition for the argument that was sure to occur that night.

 

For my part, I took to visiting a different church, with a different ritual, every Sunday. The most intellectual church to me was the First Unitarian Church held in the Palace Theater on North Avenue in Minneapolis. Dr. Dietrick was the lecturer. But a church service I have never forgotten was held in an old warehouse. The pulpit was a large barrel on which a kerosene lamp was placed. The pews were just benches without backs, and the roof beams were blacked by coal fires. We sat off to one side on a kind of raised floor. As the poor, mostly colored people arrived, they seemed so depressed and beaten down that our hearts went out to them, but when the minister took over and the singing and praying went on, it seemed as if by magic their cares and woes went away.  At the time, I then thought this must be one of the better religions, because it was practicing the law as discovered by our great religious leaders: that love is a greater power than hate.

 

We had just paid another month’s rent, and believe me, money was hard to come by at that time. So we conceived the idea of building a house on the lake to get away from renting. About a week later we made our decision. Our idea was a house on the water, not a houseboat. For this purpose, then, we decided to use fifty-five gallon empty oil drums which were free for the asking at that time. Those would float our house nicely.

 

About one mile west of the university there was an oil distributor with a huge stack of these empty barrels, and I secured permission to take as many as I wanted. I was able to put one barrel in the rumble seat, then tie one on each front fender of the model A. Three each trip, after school or work on Saturdays. In this manner we moved eighty-eight drums to the lake shore, except on my last trip a motorcycle cop stopped me a mile from our house, and made me unload the two fender mounted barrels. They obstructed my vision, he said, and of course he was right.

Now came the question of lumber.  In the early history of Minnesota it was the custom for logging crews to cut the trees in winter and skid them to the nearest navigable waterway or stream and there pile up the logs on the ice (mythology says Paul Bunyan and his blue ox “Babe” did most of the work). In the spring, when the ice melted, the logs floated into the Mississippi River and down to Minneapolis. About one mile north of St. Anthony’s Falls (where the huge sawmills were once located), a barrier to catch and hold the logs was built. Every year, however, a few logs would sink to the bottom and stay there. Meanwhile, the supply of logs had dried up, and the large mills closed and were gone when our need for cheap lumber arose. As it so happened, an enterprising father and son team had devised a means of hooking onto these sunken treasures and hauling them ashore to a very small saw, where they put out one board at a time with their own labor. It was from these two that we ordered all of our dimension lumber which they delivered about the time I had our last barrel home.

It was now January, and the ice was thick on the lake. Roy became the chief architect and master carpenter, furnishing the know-how and the tools and skilled labor.

First, we tightened all the plugs in the barrels, then rolled them out onto the ice and lined them up in four rows, all eighty-eight of them. Next, we carried out the long stringers and fitted them over the barrels lengthwise so each twenty-two were held in a slot. Then, crosswise, we nailed planking, and when that was completed, we had a platform. Onto this platform we now built our house, leaving a walkway on each side and rear, plus an open porch in front. We used regular two by four construction for side walls, but for the roof, Roy had cleverly cut the top of two by twelves in a bow shape. When roofed, the rain would run off.

Yet another enterprising man had derived a system to sew twenty thicknesses of newspapers together on both sides. He had gone bankrupt and was selling his stock of newspaper insulation very cheaply. This was used in the ceiling and the walls.  It was heavy but worked very well. Somehow we acquired enough material to complete the outside, the doors, windows, and enough plywood to build and complete two large chests of drawers and four bunk beds.

I kept going to school and working all of this time but still got in a lot of hours building our house on the water. Now it was just a matter of time until we picked up all the different items we needed: a beautiful wood cook stove from the dump out of Anoka, two mattresses from Goodwill, and others.

It was March, the smell of spring was in the air, a few warm days had occurred, and one late afternoon when I drove into our bay, here was our house floating as proud as a swan on a small ice-free puddle of water. What a sight and what a sensation. We’re also sure glad we had thought to put out an anchor rope, because if all the ice had melted, we could have had our house blown anywhere around the lake.

 Well, all the ice finally did melt, and we pulled the house westward about one hundred yards and anchored it in a bed of cattails or bulrushes, and put down a gangplank to shore. Then we got busy moving from our cottage rental, just in time, as our rent was about due.

    Almost immediately we became enthralled with our new lifestyle. At dawn the red wing blackbirds, clinging to the swaying cattails, would sing their hearts out. A large oak tree close by provided perches or nesting places for robins, canaries, a hoot owl, and of course the mournful mourning doves. All of these exercised their voices for our pleasure. Then there were the ducks and geese with nests and the hatching of young close by, the long legged sky pokes and cranes, and then at eventide, the chorus of frogs. We cherished every single minute there.

 

            Now college was over for the summer, and we were working full time. My immediate boss was Dr. Wilson, and he furnished the brains and I the muscle. I was really interested in this project of developing new corn, oats, and barley varieties. After a day in the hot sun, wearing usually nothing but swimming trunks, it was sure pleasant to arrive home and just go to the back of our house and jump into the cool lake.

            By now we had built a flat bottom scow or boat, propelled by two oars. It was great sport to row over to the school’s island, where they had built a rather large float with three diving boards, one about twenty-five feet high. On a very dark night, and on a dare, I dived off this board into total blackness. Once was enough.

            On one occasion we landed on the island and took a path to the chapel. It was about eleven p.m. and the frogs were singing their last rendition for the day. There was a sort of fog in the low places, and spider webs each wore a bit of moisture which was reflected by the partly clouded moon. As we came into the clearing wherein the chapel stood, a single brilliant ray of moonlight enveloped this sacred shrine. We stood in wonderment, then returned to our house, each with his own thoughts.

            Thus the summer passed. Tony Gauzer, our farmer friend just south of us, loved to grow a big garden so we had all the veggies we could eat, his compliments.

 

 

Custom Search

 

ONTO THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER

            One day in late summer, a deputy sheriff arrived and served a notice to us to vacate the lake. They had received a complaint and had passed a special law to make the notice legal. We could have purchased a lot and moved to dry land, but having tasted our new life, we did not want to do that. We also could have moved to another lake, but eventually they would move us off that, too. Our solution was to move to a navigable river, namely, the Mississippi.

            Having made that decision, we had to find a place to launch, and almost at once found a spot just below the Washington Avenue Bridge on the St. Paul side of the river.

            We were also really lucky to find a retired house mover who would take on this task just so he could say he had finally moved his last house. We arranged to let him know where and when to come, and then he would bring out the timbers, jacks, cribbing, etc. Our shore was too muddy, so we had to move the house across the lake where there was a gravelly, sandy beach next to the road. Again our luck held. A south breeze sprang up. We pulled in the gangplank after work that night, untied the house lines, used our pike poles to push free of our wonderful cattail spot and across the lake we went, gently pushed by this slight breeze.

We calculated that we were going to miss our target so tied our rowboat to the front and made most of the correction that we needed by rowing. As we approached shore we used our pike poles to position us into the exact place we wanted to be. It was about three a.m. when we finally arrived, but we had taken turns sleeping so were in pretty good shape.

I went to work at the University that day while Clarence stayed at home to receive the house moving equipment. We were to jack the house up on the cribbing he brought and then move the barrels to the beach. This turned out to be quite a challenge, because the wind had whipped up, and it was difficult to hold the house stationary. Also, we needed to start with some cribbing in the water, but it kept floating away. However, the next day was Sunday, and between the two of us, by hook and by crook we succeeded in raising the house and getting cribbing all in place.

The next day at daylight the mover and a helper arrived with two trucks. One truck was a large flatbed and on it we loaded all of the barrels. The other was an old chain drive Mack truck with solid rubber tires and was equipped with a power winch. In barely readable, formerly gold letters on the rusted doors was the once proud sign “Harris & Son, House Movers”. From the back of this towing truck, he unloaded dollies. These had steel wheels with approximately eight inch wide rims. We were in for a nasty ride. By use of the power winch and a crowbar, he very expertly maneuvered the dollies into place under our house, removed the cribbing and lowered the house onto the dollies. After loading the cribbing and jacks, he backed his truck to the front dolly and slipped a clevis pin in place.

Checking it all out once more, he said, “Let’s go”. It was nine a.m. and we were off to a whole mess of unplanned adventures. Our original pan was to live in the house on the river and complete our education, but circumstances intervened, and we never did get back to college.

We were riding in the house and had barely started when we realized we had to practically tie everything down inside. We placed our dishes onto our beds, along with everything we had that was breakable. Our cook stove even started to dance around, and the stove pipe came down in a cloud of black soot. The noise and the vibration from those steel wheels was really something as he pulled us along with two wheels mainly on the rough shoulder of the road, because the house was about fifteen feet wide, and he wanted to leave as much clearance on the road as possible for traffic.

Soon we turned onto Raymond Street, past the University campus, where there was more traffic, and cars were parked on either side making the passing very narrow indeed. I glanced up to see the dormitory, on a small hill to the left, and remembered my first day six years ago when my new life as a student had begun. Then suddenly a dry metal to metal screech emanated from beneath us, so loud, in fact, that the driver stopped at once and came back to find an axle and wheel hub hot. Nothing to do but jack up the axle, remove wheel, and inspect. Thank gosh, although it was badly scarred, he got a bucket of old fashioned axle grease (black and sticky), and gave it a liberal coating. Meanwhile cars were piled up ahead and behind, and honking started and tempers flared. All of this did not bother Mr. Harris at all; he just took his time, and when he was fully ready, jumped into the tow truck and we again began our march.

Como Avenue was a wide and busy thoroughfare with a stoplight. When we came to cross over it and two sets of street car tracks, I thought our house would shake itself to pieces. Soon we were on University Avenue, a wide, smooth street, and rolled along in great shape, but there was more. We now turned to our right onto a short, rough street and crossed over about six sets of railroad tracks. He really did slow down for these or we would have simply disintegrated. We now turned onto Washington Street, going west, and the bridge over the Mississippi River was just ahead maybe two blocks. Our destination was across this busy avenue, down a short road to a fairly level spot on the river’s bank. We proceeded up this avenue, then began our left turn onto this last short road when it happened.

    A lynch pin in the first dolly had worked loose: the truck moved forward, but the houseboat stayed. We were stuck crosswise across this busy avenue, and that’s when the police arrived and confusion reigned supreme. It took Mr. Harris almost an hour to realign the holes and get the linch pin replaced. All this time, the police were handling traffic, including a speeding ambulance, two screaming fire engines, and a funeral convoy. Finally hooked together again we moved off, with great relief, onto our last road, down to our flat spot, where he turned the house around and backed it to the river’s edge. It was about four p.m. but we all just sat there for a while to get our shattered nerves together. Then we jacked up the house, put the cribbing in place, removed the dollies, unloaded the barrels, and we were moved, as far as Mr. Harris was concerned. He would return to pick up the cribbing and the balance of his money in a week. We were sure about the cribbing but not so sure of the money.

Our first task was to put things back in place and clean up the mess, especially the black soot, which was now over everything. We had tied the stove in place, but it had continued to dance and the legs wore scars into the floor that remained through the years.

Our next task was to get the barrels under the house and all back into the water. This sounds simple to do, but it wasn’t. We began by digging out an inlet from the river parallel with the back of the house, into which we would place our first row of barrels. The dirt we threw into the river, where the current quickly carried it way. We decided that four barrels only was very little to buoy up the house, so tried to widen for another row, but ran into rock. We had a round, used telephone pole which we planned to use as a roller, and two planks to lace on the ground for it to roll on. When the cribbing was removed, then the house would rest at a sloping angle to conform to the sloping land. We carefully removed cribbing and lowered the house onto the four barrels and the round roller. Nothing happened. It just sat there at an angle. We tried using pry poles and even pushed with the car, but nothing worked.

We now dug a hole with great difficulty in the rocky soil on the upper side and put in it a post, against which we placed a jack and which did push the house up out into the river, enough for us to place another row of four barrels. The house now sat so low in the water at the back that we could not get the barrels under it, because of their buoyancy. Again began the laborious process of jacking the house up on the river end enough to slip the barrels under their respective slots. Then we’d go to the front and jack the house

  

once more out into the river, enough for another set of barrels. We repeated this process about ten or twelve times, and now one of us had to get into the dirty, filthy, cold water to guide each barrel into place. Finally, with about forty barrels in place, the house slid into the water. As the barrels rolled up in each slot, all of them were at the front end, while there were none at the back, and the house sat low in the water. Also, the river current caught it, and we had to place guy wires up to hold our now floating house in place, in order to install the remaining barrels, after we had turned it around.

Our problem now was to submerge each barrel enough to slip into each slot. Each empty barrel would require approximately four hundred pounds downward pressure to fully submerge, so we thought we were needing maybe one hundred fifty to two hundred fifty pounds to partially submerge. We devised a two prong lever system, and working waist deep in water, we forced each barrel into place. Each barrel was easier to install, as the previous one had added to the buoyancy, and soon they were all in place, and we were fully afloat and on a level keel.

There was a small spring of cold water falling from a low cliff to the south of our landing. Under this, we soaked and scraped our bodies of the river filth and really rejoiced that our landing job was now complete, and that this was the last cold shower.

TIME OF DECISION! FLOATING DOWN THE RIVER.

Now came a time of decision. We had had a beautiful summer. We could or would not stay, even though full of work and with not much time or money for play. Both St. Paul and Minneapolis were still discharging raw sewage into the river, and the spot we had unwisely chosen was absolutely putrid. We could or would not stay there longer than necessary. We had been in school for six years and may have lost a bit of our hunger for knowledge, but I think we were really smelling adventure ahead, “keening the wind” as a hunter would say of his dog. We therefore decided to take a year off and go down the river with our floating house. That was a good decision, and now our enthusiasm knew no bounds and we immediately began making plans.

Continue to Chapter 2... Floating Down River
"We could hear St. Paul traffic on both sides of us... rushing and rushing.... while we traveled quietly and slowly past the entrance to Pig’s Eye Lake, Red Rock, and Newport, and Inver Grove and finally St. Paul’s Park, where one mile below, we tied up for our second night. We had traveled a distance of about twelve miles. That’s about what our pioneer people did with their oxen on their trek west. "

Return to the Table of Contents

Purchase a softcover edition of SECOND AGE by Carl A. Franson!
http://www.rootlets.com/secondage/secondage.html or at either:
Amazon.com or AuthorHouse

Shanty Boaters Arise!

 

Ok, River Rats! Here is your opportunity to speak up! Bill Foden of New Jersey is wondering how many "minimalist" houseboaters are out there - folks who have built their own houseboats and enjoy drifting, or have lived on them for extended times (in the tradition of Harlan Hubbard). Click envelope to drop us a line.

Did you enjoy reading this story? Do you have stories, pix, or sketches of your own shantyboat adventure? Click envelope to contact us!

Return to www.greatriver.com

 

 

Looking for more great Mississippi River content?
Use   to search www.greatriver.com

	Web www.greatriver.com

We are rated #1 by   for Mississippi River Travel, Great River Road,
Waterway Cruise Reports and many many other related
Mississippi River and Travel topics!!!!!
Advertising on www.greatriver.com puts your business in front of over 35,000 UNIQUE ADDRESSES each month.
More than 2,600 different sites link to greatriver.com

    © 2000 Website Design by Great River Publishing
Stoddard, WI 54658-9801

Phone 608-457-2734 or click on envelope at left to contact Great River Publishing