Houseboat Girl Read online

  Houseboat Girl

  Lois Lenski

  For my beloved river children

  DEFINITIONS

  chute—a channel at the side of a river, or a narrow waterway between an island and the shore.

  johnboat—a square-ended, flat-bottomed river skiff, propelled by either oars or an outboard motor, well-adapted to use on slow-moving rivers and sheltered lakes.

  revetment—a river bank paved with asphalt to prevent erosion.

  seine—a large net, one edge provided with sinkers and the other with floats stage plank—a long board from a houseboat to the shore—a gangplank.

  towhead—a low alluvial island or shoal in a river with clusters of cottonwood trees.

  CONTENTS

  Excerpt from Journey Into Childhood, an Autobiography by Lois Lenski

  Foreword

  CHAPTER 1 River Calling

  CHAPTER 2 Down The River

  CHAPTER 3 Mayfield Creek

  CHAPTER 4 On The River Again

  CHAPTER 5 Still On The River

  CHAPTER 6 Down, Down, Down The River

  CHAPTER 7 O’Donnell Bend

  CHAPTER 8 A Visit To The Store

  CHAPTER 9 To Go Or Stay

  CHAPTER 10 A Trip To Town

  CHAPTER 11 A House For Patsy

  A Biography of Lois Lenski

  Excerpt from Journey Into Childhood, an Autobiography by Lois Lenski

  THE BIG EVENT OF THE 1940s was the award of the Newbery Medal to Strawberry Girl in 1946. No one was more astonished than I to receive it. Had it been given to my book Indian Captive, the Story of Mary Jemison, which I considered my major and most scholarly work, I would not have been surprised. I had envisioned a series of Regional books, for I knew there were many regions little known and neglected in children’s books. The series was barely started, and I had already daringly broken down a few unwritten taboos, I had written more plainly and realistically than other children’s authors, I had taken my material and my characters direct from real life instead of from the imagination, and my Regionals were not yet entirely accepted or approved. I was an innovator and a pioneer in a new direction, and I knew I had a long and difficult task ahead to earn the acceptance which I was not expecting so soon. But the award focused national attention on Strawberry Girl and the books to follow, so I was very grateful.

  The convention of the American Library Association was held at Buffalo that year, and at various meetings and receptions, I received invitations from librarians to go to many parts of the country—Seattle, Utah, California, Kansas, Texas, Oklahoma, Minnesota—to write about their region. Afterwards, the award brought much publicity, including requests for personal interviews and radio appearances, for personal appearances at libraries and schools, most of which I was unable to accept. Those that I did accept were strenuous and wearing, and I was glad when the flurry subsided, and I could retire to private life again.

  An entire book could be written about my experiences in other regions during the 1950s—in San Angelo, Texas, for Texas Tomboy, in Perry, Oklahoma, for Boom Town Boy, in McLaughlin, South Dakota, for Prairie School, in Remsen, Iowa, for Corn Farm Boy, and other places. The list goes on and on, always a new environment and way of life to be studied, and always good people who shared the intimacy of their lives with me, each region more exciting and stimulating than the last, each region calling for one’s deepest powers of observation, understanding, and compassion.

  As soon as I return from a region, I have a big job to do. I have to copy all the notes I have taken, classifying them under various headings, making them readily and quickly accessible. Then I make an outline for my story, listing the various incidents I wish to include under the different chapter headings. I write my text in longhand first, and often revise it in longhand, then revise again as I type it. (The subject has, of course, been approved by the editor in advance.) I send the typed manuscript in, to be read and approved, copyedited (improving or disapproving of my punctuation!) and sent to the printer to be set into type. If any changes are suggested by the editor, the manuscript or portions of it may be returned to me for this purpose. If any changes in format are contemplated, I am always consulted. For many years, with Lippincott, I worked directly with the head of the manufacturing department in planning all details of type and format. It was in this way that a beautiful format was devised for the Regionals.

  While the manuscript is at the printers, while I am waiting for the galley proofs, having kept a carbon of the manuscript, I am working on the illustrations. For the Regionals, these are graphite pencil drawings on 3-ply Bristol board, and are reproduced by high-light halftone offset. The drawings for the Roundabouts are ink drawings, reproduced by letterpress.

  When the galley proofs reach me, two sets are sent, one for me to read and correct, and to answer editorial or printers’ queries; the other set for me to cut up and paste into a blank dummy, allowing space on the proper page for each illustration, of which I usually make about fifty.

  After I wrap up a large package containing original manuscript, the original illustrations, corrected galley proofs, and the printer’s dummy and ship it to the publishers, my work on a book is finished. The rest is up to the publisher. I see and hear nothing more until months later, when a book package arrives out of the blue, containing the first copy, hot off the press, for me to hold in my hands and marvel at. There is no other thrill so great for an author-illustrator as seeing the first copy of a book he has labored over and believed in and deeply loved.

  From Journey Into Childhood by Lois Lenski © 1972 by permission of Sterling Lord Literistic for the Lois Lenski Covey Foundation, Inc.

  FOREWORD

  A RIVER IS AN invitation. Since the beginning of time, it has always drawn men to its waters.

  To the great Mississippi and its tributaries, they have come for many reasons—to explore it as conquest, to find a market for their products, for cheap and convenient transportation, or for pure love of the river itself. The pull of the river is a mighty one and has attracted all sorts and conditions of men—explorers, raft and keelboatmen, steamboat and packet boatmen, deckhands and sea captains, wanderers, adventuresome sportsmen, criminals and gamblers. Fugitives from the law gave the river people a bad name at a time when many river towns were outside the reach of the law. Fortunately, with better policing of our waterways at present, the river is no longer a convenient hideout for lawbreakers.

  Last but not least, the river has always attracted the family man, who makes his living from the river itself. He traveled—and still travels—in a floating house, drifting lazily on the current or using motorboats to shove in and out of tight places. He usually sells his houseboat down river, and if he returns to the north, uses other means of transportation.

  The “shantyboater” takes with him his wife and children, his cats, dogs and chickens, his fish boxes, boats, nets and fishing gear. He is a simple but colorful type, a man of character and courage. He knows the pull of the river, he meets its challenge for he is no weakling, and his love for it is so great that he is never happy to be away from it for long.

  Such a man is Henry Story. He and his wife, Lou Story, are river people “by birth, ancestry and inclination” and have brought up their children, Peggy, Irene, Pete and Debbie, on the river between Paducah and Memphis, having made fifteen or more trips between these two places. When Harlan Hubbard drifted down the Mississippi River in 1949, he met them in their houseboat in Nonconnah Creek below Memphis, and he told of this meeting in his book Shantyboat. Through Mr. Hubbard’s introduction and with his help, I was able to locate the Story family at O’Donald Bend, near Luxora, Arkansas, in the summer of 1954. They were in a newer and larger houseboat than the one at Nonconnah Creek, the children had grown, were
as much at home on the river as ever, and I found them a perfect “story family.”

  For a period of six weeks I stayed in Luxora and was able to see them almost daily on their houseboat. I ate meals with the family, went out on the river with the children in their johnboats, took notes and made many sketches, helped to sell fish to the cotton pickers, and learned by firsthand experience all the intricacies of trotline and hoop-net fishing. Not the least of my pleasure in this family was learning and sharing their river philosophy and sensing their happiness and satisfaction in the river as a way of life. By contrast with the increasing commercialization, conventionalism and standardization of our average American way of living, theirs seemed to offer a singularly fresh and wholesome approach, a nearness to the world of nature, and a sense of true freedom and independence of spirit not quite possible on land. I learned not only to know the Story family, but to love and admire them as well.

  With a few exceptions, life on the river since the days of Mark Twain has been ignored in literature to its great loss. The river is as much an environment as mountain, prairie, plain, swamp or woodland. It controls the life of the people who travel on it and of those who live on its banks and of all those who love it because they have “the river in their blood.” A fine river tradition has grown up to enrich our American heritage, and it is as alive today as it was yesterday, for it is being preserved for us by those rugged wholesome people who have deliberately preferred it and its vagaries to any other way of life, even though its monetary rewards are negligible. To them goes my highest admiration and regard.

  It has been a privilege and a rare pleasure to write of the river people and to tell how they live for the benefit of the many who do not know them. The river children have been ignored and neglected, even though they live dramatic, vivid, if not dangerous lives. I have found them daring and courageous, resourceful and independent, poor perhaps in this world’s goods, but sweet, lovable and good.

  To the Henry Story family and to Harlan and Anna Hubbard, and to my many friends in Luxora and Osceola, Arkansas, go my sincere thanks for the help they gave me in making this book possible.

  Lois Lenski

  Lutean Shores,

  Tarpon Springs, Florida

  February 1, 1957

  CHAPTER I

  River Calling

  THE HOUSE WAS NEARLY EMPTY NOW. The rooms looked strange and bare. Patsy picked up a box of dishes and took it out on the porch. She was a pretty girl with soft brown eyes, and blond hair falling loose on her shoulders. She wore a skimpy cotton dress and a red sweater.

  “Is Mama coming?” she asked.

  Patsy stood at the top of the steps and looked. The house and porch were raised high off the ground on six-foot posts, so she had a good view. Across Front Street and beyond the wide weedy stretch of the river bank, she could see Daddy’s new houseboat. It was floating in the water at the river’s edge. The river was the Ohio, and across on the other side, she could see the shoreline of Kentucky. It was May and the river was low.

  Daddy had started building the houseboat on the bank in April. He bought the hull, a large heavy barge, from a man up river. Then he set the framework on it and closed it in. Me said it was going to be the biggest and best houseboat of all. Just a little shove from Old Garrety’s bulldozer had been enough. The houseboat slid down the slick peeled willow poles on which it had been resting, right into the water. Due to the falling river and the slackening current, Daddy was anxious to leave.

  The people who drove along Ferry Street or Front Street stopped to look. They were very curious and Patsy got tired of their questions.

  “What’s it for?” they asked. “Buildin’ Noah’s Ark?” or “You gonna put it in the river and go somewhere?” When Daddy told them the Foster family was going down river, they thought he was crazy. But Patsy knew he wasn’t.

  Patsy remembered Daddy’s last houseboat. She was all excited over the new one until the boys and girls at school began to tease her. They started calling her shanty girl and river rat. They said, “Don’t fall in and drown yourself!” and “Watch out! A garfish will bite you!”

  But school was out now and Patsy was glad. Both she and her older sister Milly had passed but Dan was held back. He had to do the second grade over again. Little Bunny was only five, still a baby. She had never been to school at all.

  It took a month and one day to build the houseboat. Now it was done and the Fosters were moving in. They were moving all the furniture out of their house on Front Street and putting it in the houseboat. As if a houseboat could ever be a home!

  Patsy could see Mama now, coming back up the dirt river road in Uncle Ed’s car. Mama was taking all the small stuff herself—the clothing, cooking utensils, curtains, dishes and other things. Daddy had borrowed a truck to haul the stove and beds and heavy furniture. It was surprising how much the houseboat could hold. Milly was down there helping to get everything in order.

  Mama came in the kitchen to get the pots and pans. She was a plump woman, with loose dark hair, dark eyes and a pleasant smile. She wore a cotton dress and a flowered apron. Patsy followed at her heels. She heard voices out the window and ran to look. There were the Cramer girls and Ginny Cobb coming over.

  Mama climbed on a chair and started taking things out of the cupboard. “Here! Take this,” she said, handing one thing down after another. Patsy put the pans and jars and canned goods into boxes and baskets.

  “Patsy! Patsy!” called the girls outside.

  “You can’t go now,” said Mama. “You stay here and help me. This is my last load. If I can take everything, we can eat on the houseboat tonight.”

  Patsy frowned. She felt almost like crying. She did not like this moving business.

  “Why do we have to go on the river?” she asked. “Why can’t we be like other people and take our summer vacation here?”

  “You’ll like it on the houseboat once we get settled,” said Mama.

  “But the Cramers and the Cobbs don’t go on the river,” said Patsy. “Mrs. Cobb said people don’t live in houseboats any more the way they used to.”

  “Your Daddy likes living on the river,” said Mama. “He’s not happy anywhere else.”

  “But I like living in town,” said Patsy.

  “You’ll like the river, too,” said Mama with a smile. “How about going swimming every day?”

  “I can’t swim,” said Patsy.

  “It’s time you learned,” said Mama. “Milly will teach you.”

  “Patsy! Patsy!” called the girls again. She could hear them giggling beneath the kitchen window.

  A cat came walking into the kitchen. It sniffed in cracks and corners.

  “There’s Aggie’s cat,” said Mama. “Chase it out. Aggie ought to feed it so it would stay home.”

  “Can’t I take it with me on the trip?” asked Patsy. “I’d catch fish every day and feed it.”

  “Pushcart Aggie wouldn’t thank you for stealing her cat,” said Mama.

  “She’s got six parakeets,” said Patsy. “She’d not even miss it.”

  Just around the corner by the alley stood an old bus used as a house trailer. It had dishpans and pots of blooming flowers on its hood, a moon vine growing up over the door and two tanks of bottled gas on the left side. This was the home of old Aggie Stiles and her son. She was called Pushcart Aggie because she pushed a cart and picked up junk to sell. All the river children knew her well. She kept her birds in a cage indoors. She loved her cat and scolded the children if they threw stones at it or pulled its tail.

  “Patsy! Patsy!” called Ginny Cobb.

  The girls were waiting on the front steps when Patsy went out.

  “Are you really goin’ down river and never comin’ back?” they asked.

  “Of course we’re comin’ back,” said Patsy.

  “Then why don’t you leave your furniture here?” asked Alice Cramer. “Why you movin’ everything out?”

  “We need furniture on the houseboat,” said Pats
y. “We’ll cook and eat and sleep there. How can we do it without furniture?”

  But Alice’s question disturbed her. In her own short life of nine years, Patsy had already lived on four houseboats. This was the fifteenth houseboat her father had built. They had all gone down river and stayed there. Not one of them had come up river again.

  “When you comin’ back to River City?” asked Ginny.

  Patsy hung her head. “I don’t know,” she said in a low voice.

  The girls could not guess how sad she felt inside. They kept on talking excitedly.

  “Boy, it must be nice to go sailing in a houseboat,” said Alice. “You goin’ all the way to New Orleans?”

  “I wish my daddy would build a houseboat,” said Faye.

  “We helped your daddy build it, didn’t we?” said Ginny.

  “Remember when the storm came and blew it over?” said Alice.

  “Yes,” said Patsy. “My daddy got his leg hurt when the boards came down on top of him. He got a man to help him put the frame back up. That time he made it so strong he says the wind can never blow it down again.”

  “We carried boards and put them where he told us to,” said Faye.

  “We swept it from one end to the other, me and Patsy,” said Ginny.

  Patsy put her arms around her, friends, happy in the warmth of their love. They walked around to the back yard.

  Mrs. Foster loaded the car and drove to the houseboat. Soon the girls came too, carrying a chicken coop. Several of Patsy’s chickens were poking their heads out between the slats.

  “What are you bringing the chickens for?” asked Mrs. Foster. “I told Uncle Ed he could have them.”

  “Oh no, he can’t,” said Patsy. “Daddy told me to take them along. They’re my pets and I’ve named them all. There’s Old Red, Fluffy Tail, Mrs. Fuzzy, Shoo-Fly, Mrs. Cackle, Jenny Brown, Stiff Legs and Fuss-Box.”

  Daddy came up in the johnboat—a rowboat with square ends. He was a tall, wiry man with a thin, weathered face. He wore overalls and a blue shirt and cap. He looked so much like young Abraham Lincoln, he went by the nickname of Big Abe. Patsy’s brother Dan was often called Little Abe.