Look Down That Winding River: An Informal Profile of the Mississippi

By Ben Lucien Burman

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0800849604
• ISBN13: 9780800849603
• Release Date: January 1973
• Publisher: Taplinger Pub Co
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 1.15 lbs.

Customer Reviews

A chronicle of a vanished American subculture

This book is about the folklore of the Mississippi river, the giant untamed stream of water that splits the United States nearly down the middle. The people who made their livings by hauling freight on steamboats and the people who lived in shantyboat communities on the Mississippi in the early twentieth century were generally very poor, yet were rich in stories. Like folklore of any form, some of it could win the most competitive of liars' contests. They are some very tall tales about spirits, creatures and the events of the past. The culture of the river described in this book is now generally found only in the past. The railroad and modern diesel tugboats killed off the less efficient steamboats and the shantyboat communities have been largely eliminated by the legal system. Through it all, the river remains the river, volatile, unpredictable and capable of dangerous surprises at any time. I enjoyed these tales of people who were largely uneducated, yet lived their lives in ways that can educate us decades later. They were definitely the freest of spirits, with a social structure that rejected a lot of authority, yet helped others at every turn. Most were also deeply and conservatively religious, sometimes rejecting what others consider mainstream religious activity. Burman writes from experience, having spent a great deal of time on the boats, sharing the struggles and dangers of life on the river. His prose is that of an educated man among the uneducated, yet he considers them his equals, and in many ways his superiors. This book is an intriguing chronicle of one of the many subcultures that have existed at some point in the history of the United States.