The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

95 years old, my old man is. We called him the Old Man back when he was younger than we are now. The guy still drives, still lives in his house, still shops, still manages to fend for himself. Our mother died a year ago after a steady decline that finally landed her in the assisted living apartments nearby and kept Dad tethered to home when we used to haul him on long trips to everywhere from the Suwanee River and the Gulf to fishing trips up in Ontario. About 15 years ago we rented a houseboat and took three weeks to pilot the locks and dams of the Mississippi from mid Wisconsin and Minnesota down to where the bluffs level out in Illinois and Iowa. By the time we motored the boat back into port, it was snowing, the docks were being pulled in for winter and the boat looked like the ghost of the Flying Dutchman, curtains fluttering out a broken window, one outboard with a bent prop, the other breaking down. Great trip!

So we decided to go back, this time head north on the Mississippi, a Huck Finn adventure repeated, just my brother, myself and the Old Man, Dad and the River. If all goes well, I should be back in a couple of weeks. All of us. For the time being I plan to be Incommunicado. I know it isn’t the Amazon, but it is the Mississippi. Old Man River.

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