Tag: Ilasco
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The River Gives Up Its Dead Slowly
My mother was deathly afraid of the Mississippi River, but it was my playground as a child in the river village of Ilasco, Missouri. Try as she might, she couldn’t stop me from swimming in the river or fishing from its banks while she was trimming soles at a shoe factory in Hannibal. After all,…
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On Growing Up in the Mississippi River Bottoms
The Mississippi Valley Traveler caught up with me recently for an interview about my riverbank childhood in the Monkey Run bottoms south of Hannibal. We covered a range of subjects as I reflected on the role of the river as a shaping cultural influence on my writings, music, and life. I hope you might have…
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Abortion on Four Mile Island
“If your wife will listen to Ida you folks won’t have any more children.”
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Ukraine on the Rural Mississippi
Until the building was torn down in 1938, river travelers and motorists who gazed up at the “Onion Bulb” dome on the bluffs were left to wonder about the origins of such a unique church in a small Mississippi River town in rural Missouri.
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Fifty-three Feet Down
The Old-World gravestones seem like quaint relics and reminders of our industrial past, especially the dangerous nature of cement manufacturing and the routine expendability of cheap labor. A reminder of the too-often-forgotten underside of the American dream.
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Searching for the City of Dust
Tourists speeding past on the nearby Great River Road (scenic Highway 79) that snaked along the perimeter of the cement plant had no idea that a town with a vibrant working-class history lay buried beneath the pavement.
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Iron Shackles & Old Rock Houses on the Mississippi River
To greet me were rusty remnants of iron shackles on the walls, reminders of slavery’s stain on America’s past and its ongoing legacies.
Lost River Stories 