A lengthy article published in the Minneapolis Sunday Tribune more than a hundred years ago was penned by a woman who would later become a close friend and confidant of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. Reporter Lorena Hickok wrote the largely humorous story after a three-day trip from Taylors Falls to Stillwater in 1921.
St. Croix 360 is pleased to republish this article as a series. (See the introduction to part one for more information about Lorena Hickok’s remarkable life.)
Last week’s installment found the trio of paddlers heading down the river from Taylors Falls in the dark of night. The shallow river had just revealed its challenges as their canoe, the “Muller III,” ground to a halt on a sandbar.
Part 2: If Girl Reporter Had Known—Canoeing’s One Thing, Paddling’s Another
The Minneapolis Sunday Tribune Sunday, September 11, 1921 Lorena Hickok (No byline)
Yep! You Said It!
“Yep, sand,” said the friend, in a pleasant, impersonal “won’t-you-have-another-sandwich?” voice.
The girl friend began pushing with her paddle. The Muller III refused to budge.
“Well—lemme try her from this end,” said the friend. “If she won’t back up, maybe she’ll go forward.”
The friend pushed from the stern. The girl friend helped from the bow. Still the Mueller III wouldn’t move.
“Guess we’ll have to trim her different,” remarked the friend. “Shift your weight forward.”
The Girl Reporter groaned and got up on her knees.
“Farther forward,” ordered the friend.
The Girl Reporter lowered herself to her hands and knees. It was an excruciatingly uncomfortable position. Her knuckles ached, the laces in her army breeches cut into her knees, one spiral puttee came undone, and her feet were cramped.
The friend and the girl friend puffed and pushed on their paddles. At length the Muller III began to grind along on the sand. It seemed like hours to the Girl Reporter, though, before the friend finally announced:
“Letter go! We’re clear!”
No, Not So Happy Now
The Girl Reporter readjusted her spiral putties and settled back against the friend’s traveling bag again, but she wasn’t quite so comfortable now. Her mind traveled back to stories she had read about ships aground. When a ship ran aground did the passengers drown? Or didn’t they? She couldn’t remember. Then she thought of the Titanic running into onto an iceberg in the North Atlantic. The thought wasn’t reassuring.
In the meantime, the friend and the girl friend had turned the Muller III to the left.
They had gone about 10 minutes, when the girl friend paused, with her paddle suspended and announced:
“We’ll have to get out here—I’m touching bottom.”
They back off and turned to the right. Hugging the shore, they paddled along in the dark on the right, the girl friend stopping every now and then with her paddle.
The Girl Reporter didn’t care for this paddling in the dark, but anything, she decided, was better than sand.
If the Girl Reporter had known—
But that’s just the point—she didn’t.
* * *
They had been going about 15 minutes, and the Girl Reporter was getting used to the dark, when—
“Bump! Gr-r-r-r-plash!”
The Girl Reporter clutched the sides of the rocking canoe.
“What—wha’s that?”
“Oh, that’s nothing but a deadhead,” answered the friend calmly. “You’ll find plenty of ’em in this river. They used to float logs down here—”
“Don’t you think we ought to get out into the middle?” The Girl Reporter tried to sound undisturbed and matter-of-fact.
“Can’t,” snapped the friend. “Gotta stay where the channel is.”
The Girl Reporter wasn’t a bit comfortable now.
“Wha—wha’s a deadhead?” she gulped.
She could just see her friend grin—although it was dark, and she wasn’t looking at him.
“Just a long, one end buried in the sand,” he grunted. “Won’t hurt you. Worst it can do is tip the canoe over. Not much danger of that—”
“Huh! Shallow here,” announced the girl friend.
As she spoke, the grind sound came from the bottom of the Muller III again.
The friend tried to back her off. No business!
“Might as well let her go forward, I guess,” he remarked, after a pause.
Rebelliously, the Girl Reporter rose to her knees. The friend and the girl friend tugged, pulled, and pushed. No business!
They all sat and rested for a moment.
Then the Girl Reporter got over on her hands and knees, while the friend squatted in the center of the canoe, and the girl friend stood up and poled. In this way, they finally backed the Muller III off the sand.
They started to the left.
“Well, let’s start down now,” suggeseted the friend, when they were in the center of the stream.
St. Croix sand. (Greg Seitz/St. Croix 360)
“‘Til the Sands of the Desert—”
They did. That’s all they did do. Sand—sand—more sand.
The Girl Reporter spent the next 10 minutes on her hands and knees, while the friend and the girl friend poled.
“Are we moving?” demand [sic] the friend.
“How should I know?” growled the Girl Reporter.
“What the shore-line!” snapped the friend.
The Girl Reporter took a look at the shore-line and decided they weren’t moving.
“Well, it’s worse here than it was over at the right,” grunted the friend, beginning to unlace his shoes. “I’ll get out and pull her.”
The Girl Reporter crouched on hands and knees, and the girl friend poling from the bow, while the friend pulled on the stern, they managed to get the Muller III over to the right again. Then the friend started to pull it downstream.
“Well, I’ll be durned!”
The friend stepped out onto dry sand.
Then the Girl Reporter saw something.
“Isn’t that a sawmill, there?” she asked hesitatingly.
It was.
“I thought we passed the sawmill way back there,” she remarked innocently.
“!!!!* * **??????!!!!!!!—”
“Let’s go way over to the left,” suggested the girl friend diplomatically.
They did, and in the shadow along the left shore they found the channel.
D-d-d-d’you suppose there’s deadheads along here?” she quavered.
“Probably,” grunted the friend.
“They won’t hurt you, silly,” snapped the girl friend.
It’s Usually True.
That didn’t make the Girl Reporter any more comfortable. The friend and the girl friend, she reflected miserably, could both swim. She couldn’t. Why the deuce hadn’t she let Morris Rule teach her how to swim in the Athletic club tank, anyhow? He had offered to—had almost insisted on it. Why didn’t a person ever do anything until it was too late?
She felt a little happier—but not too happy—when the Muller III swung out again into the path of light in the center of the river.
Overhead, a cool, impersonal sky—the same sky that hung over Minneapolis, the Girl Reporter reflected—with cold, unfriendly stars staring one out of countenance.
On either side, menacing octopus-like shadows, stretching out grizzly black tentacles to drag your canoe onto dead-heads or sand.
Ahead that dim path of light, full of black things bobbing up and down on the surface of the water—black things that, to be sure, turned out to be shadows when you came up to them, but looked like rocks, logs, almost anything, from a distance.
“Gee, ain’t this great?” exulted the girl friend.
“Uh-huh—great fascination in being on the water at night,” quoth the friend peacefully.
Great fascination—huh! Same kind of fasciation a man must experience when he’s on his way to the gallows, the Girl Reporter reflected.
At the risk of being snubbed, she ventured one timid question:
“Wha—wha’ time is it?”
The friend struck a match and looked at his watch.
“Nine-forty-five.”
“Ha—hadn’t we oughtta be seeing the lights of Osceola pretty soon?”
“Oh, in about an hour, I guess,” replied the friend, in his most matter of fact tone. “Lost a little time back there on that sandbar.”
“We oughtta get through without much trouble now,” remarked the girl friend over her shoulder.
If the Girl Reporter had known—
But that’s just the point—she didn’t.
* * *
So, taken as a whole, it was hardly what you’d call a pleasant evening.
At least it wasn’t for the Girl Reporter.
Maybe the friend and the girl friend and the Muller III did enjoy getting on—and off—sand-bars. She didn’t.
Three more sand bars, one dead-head and a big fish that almost into the boat—to the unbounded joy of the friend and the girl friend and the unbounded horror of the Girl Reporter.
At 10:52, the Girl Reporter sighted a light ahead.
“It is—is—can it be—”
“Yep, that’s Osceola,” said the friend, and the Girl Reporter knew he was grinning.
No shipwrecked mariner on a storm-tossed raft in mid-ocean ever sighted a light with a keener, vaster sense of relief than did the Girl Reporter—in a canoe in two feet of water on the St. Croix river—gaze upon that winking, blinking light of Osceola.
She loved it—she adored it—she couldn’t turn her eyes away from it—secretly she kissed her hand to it—she started to sing “Keep the Home Fires Burning”—and then—
A grinding sound from the bottom of the Muller III—a giggle from the girl friend—a grunt from the friend—yessir, they were aground again!
The Girl Reporter went forward on her hands and knees automatically this time. The friend and the girl friend tugged and puffed and pushed. No business!
The friend got out and tried to drag ’em off. No business!
The girl friend got out, and she and the friend tried to pull the Girl Reporter and the Muller III off. No business!
“Well, all hands out,” grunted the friend.
With rebellion in her soul, the Girl Reporter began to unroll her spiral puttees. So near to safety—and then to perish! It was hard.
Tears of self-pity rose to her eyes as she lifted up one foot and prepared to step out. Ye gods, how far away now was the friendly light of Osceola!
Soft Music Here.
She wondered if they’d miss her at the office. She had an agonizing mental picture of the office boy going around with a list of subscribers to the fund to buy a spray of carnations for the funeral—her funeral.
Would The Boss give 50 cents or a dollar? Probably 50 cents. They’d soon forget her anyhow—
“C’mon! Snap out of it! Yuh lame?” The friend’s impatient voice broke in upon her reflections out there in the dark.
With a lingering, farewell look at the winking, blinking light of Osceola, she let her weight gingerly down on her foot—and gasped.
The water rose to her ankle bones and stopped. It wasn’t more than three inches deep!
“Oh, well,” she reflected as she dozed off to sleep in the Hotel Osceola a couple of hours later—after a dainty little lunch of two ham-and-egg sandwiches, two glasses of milk, and a quarter of a watermelon, in the combination pool room and restaurant on “Main Street”—
“Oh, well, for the rest of the trip we’ll at least have daylight.”
St. Croix 360 offers commenting to support productive discussion. We don’t allow name-calling, personal attacks, or misinformation. This discussion may be heavily moderated and we reserve the right to block nonconstructive comments. Please: Be kind, give others the benefit of the doubt, read the article closely, check your assumptions, and stay curious. Thank you!
“Opinion is really the lowest form of human knowledge. It requires no accountability, no understanding.” – Bill Bullard
Comment