PREVIOUS CHAPTER       SECOND AGE BY CARL FRANSON                  FINAL CHAPTER      My Year on a Mississippi River Shanty Boat

Farewell to the Floating House

Final Chapter, Chapter 7
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Coming up in the World

The summer days sped by quickly. Money-wise I was doing really well, and saving almost everything I made. Sometimes I would even splurge by buying a haircut. I also now took my dirty clothes to a laundry: I was coming up in the world.

Daley was also doing well and was planning to expand by completing the upstairs rooms, and moving up there with the two bedrooms. An outside stairs had already been built when he changed his plans.

Autumn had now come, and we had still not decided whether to resume our trip or go back to school. Clarence had made a trip to St. Paul, Minnesota, and when he returned, Virginia was with him, and the happy looks on their faces told me that they were now married. That pretty well settled the question of the trip.

There was another month’s work on the dam before winter shut all construction down, and I dilly-dallied whether to quit then to make the first quarter or continue to work and go back to school after Christmas. I worked. 

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 My old cardboard suitcase

By then I had become quite a part of Daley’s, and we were working more and more together. I therefore told him that I was going to leave the area when the dam closed down and would probably go back to school. He was happy because he had had a good offer by a buyer for his place and would now go ahead and sell. About two weeks later, Clarence and I got together and worked out a deal satisfactory to both, and I packed my old cardboard suitcase. It was difficult to leave our house, now theirs, but I wished the lovely Virginia and Clarence the best of the river and went to stay with Daley. We would not meet again for many years and much water had passed under the bridge. 

Strangely enough, I missed most our long and sometimes heated discussions we used to have on any and all subjects. We were both reading good books and found much to talk about. I never, then or now, cared for, really liked or understood most poetry, but prose was a different matter. We seemed to have the uncanny ability to needle each other into a fever of mental gymnastics. I think we were helping each other expand our horizons. It was great while it lasted.

Swept away in a bread truck

Friends from up and down the river were also in my thoughts. I really liked them, they were such a colorful people, independent, resourceful, talented, and though poor money-wise, were rich in many other ways. I had learned many things from them.

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.

An empty bread truck from LaCrosse headed to Minneapolis for a load of fresh loaves, stopped, and I climbed on with my accordion and suitcase.

Daley had been a wonderful person to me. His sensitivity to all things around him and his uncanny ability to convert this to action continued to amaze me. Our parting was brief and warm.

It was nice to be home with the folks again. Irving was the last of ten children yet with them, and he would be leaving soon. Many of my former grade school fiends had married and were already into their line of life’s work. I visited for hours with my mother, who took in every word, it seemed. After chores, Dad would come in and both would listen to the accordion, and they even danced a Swedish polka. It was great, but I became restless.

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Shanty Boaters Arise!

 

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