Episode 4: Gregg Andrews on Growing up in the Mississippi River Bottoms near Hannibal, Missouri

Historian, musician, and author Gregg Andrews grew up in the Mississippi River bottoms south of Hannibal, Missouri, in the shadow of Mark Twain. In this episode, Gregg shares stories about the struggles and hardships his family faced but also about how the community known as Monkey Run stuck together and looked out for each other. He also describes how growing up in a working-class family influenced his life and views of the world. In the Mississippi Minute, I talk about my first visit to Sherburne National Wildlife Refuge in Minnesota, what turned into a delightful and surprising experience.

Gregg Andrews mentioned three books during our interview. Links to each book are below. (Note: As an Amazon Associate I earn commissions from qualifying purchases.)

• City of Dust
• Insane Sisters
• My Daddy’s Blues

Don’t forget to check out his band, Doctor G and the Mudcats.

And here are two pictures of the purple lesser-fringed orchid I mentioned in the Mississippi Minute.

If you are enjoying the podcast, please consider showing your support by making a one-time contribution or by supporting as a regular contributor through Patreon. Every dollar you contribute makes it possible for me to continue sharing stories about America’s Greatest River.

Gregg Andrews (00:00:00):

The generosity of people there was, had no bounds. They were all hardworking poor people, but they were generous to a fault.

Dean (00:00:26):

Welcome to the Mississippi Valley Traveler podcast. I’m Dean Klinkenberg, and I’ve been exploring the deep history and rich culture of the people and places along America’s greatest river, the Mississippi, since 2007. Join me as I go deep into the characters and places along the river, and occasionally wander into other stories from the Midwest and other rivers. Read the episode show notes and get more information on the Mississippi at MississippiValleyTraveler.com. Let’s get going.

Dean (00:00:59):

Hello and welcome to episode four of the Mississippi Valley Traveler podcast. In this episode, I talked with historian and musician, Greg Andrews, who grew up in the river bottoms south of Hannibal, Missouri, in the shadow of Mark Twain. We talk about his life growing up poor, the struggles and hardships of meeting basic needs, but also how the community in the bottoms stuck together and looked out for each other. Greg has written about his childhood in a memoir called My Daddy’s Blues and has also written historical accounts of the surrounding area. He’s a talented musician and writes songs that are inspired by those early years near the Mississippi River. We didn’t have much time to talk about his music in this interview, but I hope you’ll check out his band: Doctor G and the Mudcats. I’ll provide links to his music and his books in the show notes. I’d like to give a quick shout out to new Patreon supporters: Valerie Frye, Peggy Nehmen, and Amy Norris. Now let’s get to the interview.

Dean (00:02:04):

Greg Andrews is a historian, author, and musician who grew up south of Hannibal, Missouri, near a dusty cement plant at the village of Ilasco. His family lived in an out of the way area known as Monkey Run, which sits in the bottoms of the Mississippi River. In his autobiography, My Daddy’s Blues, he employs his skills as historian, musician, and river rat to bring to life the places and experiences of those childhood years and the river bottoms, people much of the rest of society looked down on. It’s a moving story marked by loss and struggles that he doesn’t romanticize, but that were balanced with love and support from his close-knit family and the people around him in the community. Welcome to the Mississippi Valley Traveler podcast, Greg.

Gregg Andrews (00:02:51):

Thank you very much, Dean. I’m just delighted to be here with you. I’ve always admired your work going back over, oh, maybe, almost maybe 12 or 13 years now, since I first stumbled on this guy on the internet that had this website and everything. And so, it’s a real honor for me have this conversation.

Dean (00:03:14):

Well, it’s a pleasure to talk to you, too. I know we’ve been connected for a while. I’m trying to remember what year that was when I drove up to Hannibal to hear you play for the first time,. Was that 2013 or 2014?

Gregg Andrews (00:03:25):

2013. Yep.

Dean (00:03:27):

Wow. Besides the fact that the music was fantastic, one of the other outstanding memories was that it was just a really hot night and you were playing outside <laugh> and the heat was getting to everybody, but you powered through it.

Gregg Andrews (00:03:41):

It was awful. I mean, I still remember that first break. I mean, I didn’t know if I could get back up there and do it or not, you know? It was, I think it was about 98 that night. I remember checking that out beforehand and I thought, well, you know what, of course it’s gonna be 98 on the one night I come up there to play. <Laugh>

Dean (00:04:03):

Of course.

Gregg Andrews (00:04:04):

It was a nice night, really a beautiful night and then had some good video of that night. And with the trains going by there on the river, on the river and a nice backdrop there at the foot of Hill Street, the famous Hill Street made famous by Twain, of course.

Dean (00:04:25):

I imagine that there were probably some old friends who were able to come out and and reconnect with you a little bit that night, too.

Gregg Andrews (00:04:31):

That’s for sure. They came from all around there. A lot of my relatives turned out in full force. I met some for the first time. I taught in South Shelby High School back in 1971 through 1975. And a lot of my good friends, former students, came down that night from Shelby County. And that was, that was really nice. I hadn’t seen them since then.

Dean (00:05:00):

Well, you had quite a childhood growing up in that area, and I think that’s mostly what I’d like to talk with you about today. Your book, your autobiography, My Daddy’s Blues, I think really tells some incredible stories and brings to, really brings to life what it was like to grow up in this community. So I was wondering if maybe you could just start us off a little bit by telling us how your family came to live in that area? It’s called Monkey Run and it’s still called Monkey Run today, but how did your family end up living there?

Gregg Andrews (00:05:36):

<laugh> Well, you know, as you said at the beginning, Monkey Run really is a section of Ilasco and the only difference was,…my parents lived in Ilasco proper, you might call it, where all the, almost all the land was owned by the cement company. And right before I was born in 1950, they moved down the bank of Marble Creek, which is the little creek that runs through there and into the Mississippi. And they moved down to bank of Marble Creek, probably about a quarter or a half a mile maybe, and settled in there and bought a house. And in that area of Monkey Run, the land ownership was private. The company did not own that. And I think that was really important to my dad and my mom, especially my mom, because we had a nice little bit of land there.

Gregg Andrews (00:06:38):

And it was a nice about three acres as I recall. And so we had, you know, we had gardens, I mean, huge gardens and orchards. We had every time fruit tree imaginable that grew there, every kind of fruit that grows in that area grew in our yard and our orchard. And so my mom was from a family of 13 farm children, dirt poor, in the area. And my dad’s people came up from the Columbia, Missouri, area and settled in there. The cement plant, of course, was the magnet. It was the draw for people coming in there, poor people looking for work. Some of ’em came out of sawmill backgrounds, of course. Thousands of Southern and Eastern European immigrants flooded in there, recruited and brought there by the Atlas Portland Cement Company.

Gregg Andrews (00:07:42):

And so my folks were a part of the population that was native to that area at that time. And so they were not, they were not immigrants. And so that little community, I think it had about a hundred people when I lived in Monkey Run–and it still does, by the way–it’s sort of hemmed in, in terms of growth. It can’t go anywhere. You can’t really put too many more people down there, or dogs, but it was originally Dean, it was attractive land that before the Civil War was a, it was a tobacco plantation operated by slave labor there, a small plantation farm, and that was carved up after the war and eventually was subdivided then sold by a Hannibal entrepreneur named RH Stillwell. And so technically the name of the place is Stillwell’s edition First Addition to Ilasco, but people are still arguing today about where the name Monkey Run comes from <laugh>, but that became its popular name.

Gregg Andrews (00:08:59):

And so my parents were both, both came out of impoverished backgrounds and good, hardworking people. They were, my mom and dad both, were the hardest working people, I know, especially my mother. It never stopped. She was a shoe factory worker and later became a retail clerk, minimum wage stuff. After my dad died, he died very young, I was 15, and she did whatever she had to do, you know, to raise us kids. There were three of us and she canned and I mean, work was a way of life. You just did it. You didn’t complain about it. You know? So I grew up with that hard work ethic. I didn’t like it at times <laugh> times, but she pushed you pretty hard. But that’s the, that’s the background.

Gregg Andrews (00:10:00):

My dad worked at the cement plant. His dad worked at the cement plant. They both died young from occupational lung disease in their forties, I think 48 and 49. And my mother’s, some of her brothers worked at the cement plant. It was the major employer in a, in a rural county, Ralls County. And so that was the attraction. It paid, comparatively speaking, good wages, you know, for that particular area at that time. So that was the, that was the draw. And all the people who lived in Monkey Run were, I mean, you knew everybody, you know, and they, probably 95% of the men worked at the cement plant, or they were a commercial fisherman or both, you know, There were, we had plenty of Jon boats in our community.

Dean (00:10:56):

So was it kind of a requirement to own a boat if you live down in the bottoms?

Gregg Andrews (00:11:02):

<laugh> Well, we never did, actually. I don’t, we never did, but my uncles did. And, I had cousins down there who owned them and neighbors who had a jon boat and believe me, they, I mean, they were, my neighbors were the fishermen. I’m sure I was a nuisance to them sometimes, but they took me out with them, you know, running their baskets and trot lines and everything. And I was as a kid, I mean, I just ate that up and I watch, boy, they’d have these big tub, big tub loads of beautiful buffalo and carp, and of course, big flat heads or, perch, white perch. So, and during floods especially, you know, those boats came in, really came in handy. And the people who owned them were generous to each other. They all helped each other. You know, I think that’s from that community. That’s where I learned the value of, of collective help, people trying to survive. And, the generosity of people there was, had no bounds. They were all hard working poor people, but they were generous to a fault.

Dean (00:12:14):

Right. I think you tell some really interesting stories in your autobiography too, about that, the connections in the community. I think you do a great job of balancing telling the stories of the realities of the hardships but with balancing that with the descriptions of the community ties that helped people get through it. So I don’t think you romanticize those experiences. I think sometimes we tend to romanticize, you know, the poor years and poverty, to a fault, but you provide some good balance. I think in describing how people worked so hard, life could be very difficult, but people kinda looked out for each other.

Gregg Andrews (00:12:56):

Yeah. Thank you. I’m glad. I’m glad that came through in the, in the memoir. Um, yeah, I remember people, I mean, 1965 was a big flood year on the Mississippi. And, that that’s probably before you were born, right?

Dean (00:13:13):

It was a couple years after 65…

Gregg Andrews (00:13:14):

<laugh> …my dad was in poor health at that time. And this is why I remember that flood so well. He was in the last six months of his life at that point when that spring flood came that May or April. I forget which, I think it was May, but we had to have oxygen tanks in the home. We, and these oxygen tanks weighed about 90 pounds, big, big things. And we normally, we put those in the car, the trunk, and hauled those home, or had someone deliver them. And during that flood, our neighbors who had boats brought those in. I’ll never forget that. It was, they brought, they came down Marble Creek, worked their way slowly down Marble Creek, which backed up of course, when the river flooded. And so our yard was, we had three acres about and about, I’d say about two of those acres were flooded.

Gregg Andrews (00:14:20):

And so our garden was flooded. The water came up close to the house, but never, ever got in our house because our house was on a hill. We sat right at the bottom of the bluffs and where the bottoms and the bluffs meet there. And, they brought those tanks in across the fence, over the top of the fences in our garden and unloaded them at the bottom of the yard. And I, I carried them up that hill to, to the house. And so that and we had a guy down in the community, Monkey Run, Denny, was strong as an ox. I mean, Denny, he had the shot put records, and I think maybe even the discs at Hannibal High School. He was strong. And at one point we had to, he carried those up over the bluff and walked them up this bluff and down the other side and carried that and brought ’em to our house.

Gregg Andrews (00:15:19):

That’s the kind of stuff that you don’t, I mean, I look around, I don’t see a whole lot of that going on today. And again, not to romanticize that, because there were hard times and, you know, river communities suffered a great deal during those floods, we were fortunate because our house never, ever got inundated. But our garage did, which sat down at the bottom of the hill and it was a detached garage, so it filled with water. Our driveway was filled with water down below. We parked on the public road right of way that ran right past our house. So, and there were so many examples of people helping each other down there. And especially during those kinds of hard times. People expected, or they went out of their way, you know to see if you needed anything. Is anybody going to town today? Okay, well, do you need anything? We’re gonna go to town. Do you need, can we bring you anything? Stuff like that. Yeah. And I, I think that, from what I can tell is pretty consistent with river communities in general, in terms of helping each other that way.

Dean (00:16:34):

So you mentioned there were maybe a hundred or so people that lived in that area, in Monkey Run. Was that a pretty stable group or were people kind of coming and going?

Gregg Andrews (00:16:45):

It was very stable at the time I was a child. It, it was very stable. People had lived there for a long time. I mean, our next door neighbors on one side were Ukrainians. Across the road, a guy that I worked for, a man who was, who was blind and kept seven milk cows. My first job was working for him. He was Slovak, and they’d been there for, you know, their families had been there for a generation before. And so it was a very stable neighborhood at that time. Occasionally you might get a new person move into a particular house but, and usually it was somebody you already knew anyway, you know, they were either related to somebody down there or whatever. Now the, the community in the early years of Ilasco, that was highly unstable, the larger Ilasco community, cause it was mainly a, it was like a mining camp, you know, immigrants coming and going. Mostly men coming there, single men, maybe a family, from over in Europe kind come and go. And so at that time it was, it was a much, much less stable kind of environment in the first decade of its history from 1903 to 1910.

Dean (00:18:19):

Mm-hmm, <affirmative>. It’s interesting though, that, I like the distinction you drew there, that there was, there was a lot of housing that the company owned and controlled and people could only rent. Your family was able to buy a piece of property and move there. And I imagine probably throughout a lot of Monkey Run, that was the case. That probably, that was mostly people then who owned the land that they were living on?

Gregg Andrews (00:18:43):

Yes. Yes. In most cases down there, the people there owned their own land. Now our house, when I was a child, I mean, it wasn’t much <laugh>, but we didn’t have a, we didn’t have, well, actually we didn’t even have indoor water when I was a child. We had a well, and we’d go down and dip, we had a chain, a bucket with a chain on it and we dip that water, bring it up. And then mom with us kids, mom heated that water and put us in a tub <laugh> for our baths. Now later, but as I think back, at the time I began grade school, we had piped in water, and some crude, I remember some, I have a vague memory of, a crude sink of some sort in the kitchen. We never got an indoor bathroom until after I graduated from high school. That was a long time, until 1967. I’ll never forget it. <laugh> I, it was a surprise. I came home from a trip to Mexico and I got home and wow. There, it was, it was a beautiful bathroom. <laugh> .

Dean (00:20:05):

Does it ever like, make your head spin a little bit, thinking about just how much things have changed over your lifetime or the changes in your own life? That you went from carrying water into the house for drinking and bathing, using an outhouse, and now here we are 800 miles apart talking to each other over the Internet with our air conditioning and indoor plumbing?

Gregg Andrews (00:20:26):

<laugh>That’s one of the reasons, Dean, that I decided to write the memoir. I, as you may remember, I had a quadruple bypass in 2018 and it kind of got my attention in terms of things that I still want to get done before I die. And so, that’s when I started reflecting on all what you just said here. And I think every generation goes through that, you know, but I, you know, as a baby boomer, I, my history is different from the vast majority of baby boomers that I know and have met in my life. And so I thought, you know, this is a story that really needs to be out there, as a social document, if nothing else, you know. And even if no one ever reads this, maybe historians someday will, you know, look at this document and be able to use it and integrate it into the history that they write. And so I began, I was like a, a dog with a bone. I felt a certain urgency to get that done. And so, I wrote it at the very end of 2019. And it was a really emotional, a highly emotional experience as I reflected on the, on the past and how quickly, you know, life passes us by.

Dean (00:21:57):

So as you were reflecting on those–we’ll go back to a couple of other experiences a minute too–but, since we’re here, when you were, when you were reviewing that and kind of reflecting on those experiences, what sort of feelings or lessons jumped out to you?

Gregg Andrews (00:22:13):

Well, first of all, probably how fleeting life is to start with that. Everyone has that experience. But also sometimes, you know, I look back at my life and I, it’s like, how did I get from there to here? You know? And I think most of us go through life searching for our identity, or at least that’s how I see it. And being a historian, I think historians are looking for their identity in some way. And I know that that is the case with me, for me. It began when I, on my second book, when I began to research, I decided to go back and do the research on Ilasco. I had been told by professors and at the university where I studied that they were very interested in that. And they urged me to write that, in fact, some of ’em wanted me to do it for a dissertation.

Gregg Andrews (00:23:12):

And so in 1992, I began that research and that took me on a journey that I’m still on. And I can’t imagine now, looking back, not having undertaken that particular book, because it transformed me in so many ways. It’s the link between the music and what I, what I did for a living and the kind of history that I write. And I remember the feeling well, sitting in my office and just the, this feeling that, that I just swelled with, this, with emotion as I reflected on the book and where I came from and the importance of what I was writing about. And it wasn’t long after that, then that I got a spinoff book but from that too, so Ilasaco has really been good to me. That Monkey Run, City of Dust was my fir the first product that came out of that Ilasco research.

Gregg Andrews (00:24:16):

And then Insane Sisters was a spinoff from it. And so, but once I finished that, I, I turned to the music and that was something I had neglected over the years for a number of reasons. And I went back to it, but it’s all coming out of that process of self-reflection and trying to figure out who I am as a person and as a historian and as a song writer. And it’s been a, it’s just a really enriched my life. I can’t emphasize that enough. It was life changing and life transforming. And it helped me better understand myself and, and my position in American history and the community I came from.

Dean (00:25:05):

So what, what do you think were the, what are the characteristics that you see in yourself today that you think were shaped by your childhood, from living in Monkey Run?

Gregg Andrews (00:25:18):

Sacrifice. That’s one. The willingness to sacrifice for long term goals. Frugality. My, my mother was frugal to the fault to the day she died. When she didn’t have to be frugal, she still was. I can still remember going to visit her in the nineties and early two thousands, and she she’d sneak in because she knew, I would tell her, “mom, don’t put that in here.” She goes out there, to the little shed, and she’s putting toothpaste and all kinds of little items like Pringles, potato chips, and toilet paper. It’s the things that she found on sale somewhere. <laugh>. I said, “mom, don’t do that. Don’t load up the car. We gotta go to Pittsburgh this summer. You know, I need the space in that car. Don’t be putting that stuff in there.” But that’s how she was. And she did it for, she did it for all of her children and for her grandchildren.

Gregg Andrews (00:26:13):

And so that frugality really came out out of my experience. And I, and I have to say on the most, probably the most profound level, a consciousness of class that has guided my work as a historian. It was always there. As I went back and read one time, my placement papers at Northeast Missouri State University, and when I graduated in 1971 with a bachelor’s of arts degree, and I was talking about and emphasizing my blue collar roots, and I, the pride I had in that, you know. And of course the music, my taste in music was shaped by class experiences. And as I got older, that sense of class grew and grew. And that’s explains why I write about the people that I write about, because of that, because of that working class consciousness. And in academia, you know, it’s, you know what academia is like, and I got into a lot of arguments in that world with people about class issues.

Gregg Andrews (00:27:28):

And I think even today, as a society, we don’t recognize class as an issue in our society. It’s much easier to recognize race and other forms of discrimination. And there’s plenty of it and gender discrimination, but if you wanna rub somebody wrong, start talking about class and <laugh> so, but I just keep doing what I’m doing. I don’t care. I don’t, you know. I’ve done it. I have to say I’ve been happy. I’ve had the kind of career that I wanted. And I had, I did everything the way I, most of the things, the way I wanted to do it. I did ’em on my terms. And I never got caught up in the hoopla of academia and the kind of pointless arguments, you know, when the stakes are so petty, you know, oftentimes the battles are a mess. I tried not to get involved in, in those kinds of things. And I, so I, I feel, you know, very fortunate that I came out of a background there in Monkey Run in Ilasco, and later was able to write the history of those communities. And I’m still writing about those communities and I’m singing about them.

Dean (00:28:49):

Absolutely. So I’m curious, like when you got into arguments with your peers in academia over class, like what, what were they arguing with you about? What was the point or the points they were contesting?

Gregg Andrews (00:29:03):

That there was no such thing as class in America.

Dean (00:29:07):

Oh!

Gregg Andrews (00:29:08):

Those kinds, those kinds of things. And where I really noticed it was, you know, in conversations at the faculty lunch table, you know, with a bunch of colleagues. And I remember, I had, in the mid eighties, I was fortunate to get in an Andrew Mellon pre-doctoral teaching fellowship at the Illinois Institute of Technology. I taught in the humanities department. I liked it. I really enjoyed it, and I was having lunch one day with a, with one of the members of the department who was a philosopher from the University of Chicago <laugh> and I made some joke. He was he in the lunch conversation, just the two of us. He said all of his friends are now at the right institutions. You know, they’re all, you know, everybody’s where they wanted to be and should be and all that. And he started naming the places, and they were places like Harvard and Yale and other Ivy league schools.

Gregg Andrews (00:30:10):

And I made a joke and I said, well, all of mine are unemployed right now, I think. And he, without missing a beat, he leaned forward, just like I’m leaning into this screen right now, and he said, “Why did you go to Northern Illinois University?” and I told him, I said, man, I didn’t plan. I didn’t plan my career in academia, chartered out so that I can get to a top Ivy institution. I came up, I had to struggle. I didn’t, I didn’t ever, never dreamed I’d ever go to doctoral school or a master’s program, neither one. And I had to do it. I took a lot of detours, including an early teenage marriage. And that’s where he couldn’t understand that because he came out of an, of an academic background where it was assumed from the beginning that he was on a track that he’s going to end up at the University of Chicago or Harvard. And so those kinds of conversations were frequent. And you try to talk, have a conversation and start talking about having to use the outdoor toilet and not having running water, and it gets real quiet, real quiet at the lunch table.

Gregg Andrews (00:31:38):

And so, I think there, what I’m trying to say, Dean, is that I, for most of my career, I mean, I love teaching. I always, when I taught high school at South Shelby High School, I fell in love with the teaching profession. And at the university level, I really enjoyed interacting with students. I did not enjoy committee work. I did not enjoy the, the, you might wanna say nose in the air atmosphere in certain quarters in academia. I hated that. It violated every sense of, you know, every value I had, to be condescended toward, you know, and that sort of thing. So that, like I said, I feel like I, you know, I was able to carve out a space for myself, you know, pretty much and did pretty much the things that I wanted to do, you know, and I’ve met many other people from similar backgrounds. Most of my friends in academia were working class.

Gregg Andrews (00:32:47):

They came out of working class backgrounds, most of them. I’ve met some fine people who came out of very academic backgrounds, too, you know. People are people. And so you find, you find, you find people you don’t like everywhere, and you find many people that you do like that come out of different kinds of backgrounds. But my experience has been, and my wife Vicky also came out of a, a working class background, and she, she had a hard struggle of her own, a personal struggle. And I think that’s one of the things that drew us to each other, you know, when we first met. But I, my point was that I, I think I felt alienated most of my career, you know. I’m not talking about classroom or research. I love research and writing, but the overall academic structure, I, I could care less. <Laugh> Well, Vicky and I spend time really mocking it. I think you know what that’s about.

Dean (00:33:52):

Yeah. I think we have some similar feelings about much of that. So <laugh> let’s kind of go back for just a second to the Monkey Run area. One of the things that’s interesting to me, and I know you’ve got another book that’ll be out later this year on shanty boat communities–hopefully we’ll have you back down the road when that book is out and we can dig deeper into that. One of the things that’s interesting to me is, we have a lot of people today who spend time on the river, who willingly embrace the label of river rat. You know, it’s kind of a… People love calling themselves river rats, but there was a time, not that long ago when that was an insult, right? And it seems like it’s tied very much into that poor working class, attitudes towards folks who are poor working class. Can you talk a little bit about why people maybe didn’t think so much of river rats or folks who lived in the bottoms?

Gregg Andrews (00:34:50):

<laugh> Well, let me just start with my own family and then build, work out, build from there. I discovered by the way, for the first time in 1992, that my grandmother and my great-great grandmother were shanty boat people. And I never knew how somehow that got hidden. I don’t know how that exactly had faded from the family memory, but my grandmother was a child when she was, and then she moved off there. She and her mother moved to, into Ilasco, left the shanty boat and took up residence in Ilasco. Her family that was on the levee there was run off the levee by vigilantes in Hannibal. This is on the south side of Hannibal, just south of Bear Creek where Bear Creek empties into the Mississippi. And there was a shanty boat community there.

Dean (00:35:50):

Ukulele Ike was there at the same time, you know, the voice of Jiminy Cricket on Walt Disney. Yeah. Hollywood actor and musician, who had a, had a nice career. He lived there, was born there at the time my grandmother was about a year old. This is like 1895 or thereabouts. And they were chased off the levee by the Burlington Railroad agents. And one of the things that shocked me when I first discovered that, and it was Vicky who discovered it for me the first time by looking at the census records, and she said, do you know your grandmother lived down here on the river front? And she said, in these boats. I said, what? And so that’s where my interest in shanty boats started, in 1992. I’ve been gradually moving in that direction of, of trying to, to understand that culture a little better. But the thing that shocked me about the way they were, they were kicked off the levee, they and other people there, the vigilantes came in and joined, joined the Burlington agents. And the police stood by and watched that happen.

Gregg Andrews (00:37:05):

And I mean, we’re talking about physical force and destroying, coming in with, with steel bars and busting up the boats, scattering their personal belongings on the shoreline there. You know, an expression of class contempt and they wanted them off the levee. So from what I have researched, that was a common process. They were, they were the river rats, they were the real river rats. And they were often called that, you know, and the term shanty boat really was a pejorative term used by those who did not like them. I use it in my title as a way of using it against those. <laugh> You follow me? Yeah. Against those who look down their noses at those people, who lived in the, in the boats. Now, what’s interesting is over time, they would distinguish, newspapers would distinguish between shanty boats and houseboats, and begin to make that distinction.

Gregg Andrews (00:38:14):

And, of course, when the wealthy people began to take over the river around the turn of the 20th century with yachts and big, impressive looking houseboats, they appropriated in a sense, they appropriated the shanty boat migratory way of life. And they, and they often, I found evidence where they refer to themselves, of course, demeaning, but refer to themselves as shanty boat people. But so the newspaper coverage kind of changes as the levee there in St. Louis, for example, undergoes a class facelift. And there are fewer and fewer shanty boat people there because they’re being chased off. And now what’s docking there is large, large house boats–yachts with servants aboard and all that, all that. Some of the same St. Louis elites who lived down there on the river 20 years earlier, or less, they were condemning that way of life as being unhealthy. <laugh> Wow. Now it all changes because they discover the river and expressed their own class status. And they’re you, you’re from La Crosse, right?

Dean (00:39:39):

I’m from the Midwest. I’ve moved around a lot generally, but yeah, I lived in La Crosse for six years.

Gregg Andrews (00:39:46):

Okay. Yeah. Up there on the upper river, the Lamb family, out of Clinton, Iowa, they had one. John Deere, the John Deere family, they had these huge boats that they, that they used for recreational purposes. And when they come into St. Louis and other ports, they shot a cannon. They had a cannon on board. They had automobiles aboard. You know, in some cases they’d shoot cannons off and let everybody know they were, they were in town. And so those, as that happens, you begin to see, especially in an urban area like St. Louis, that urban space is being, is being usurped in a way by very wealthy with their boats, docking them there and everything. And the shanty boat people are driven off. I found a case there in St. Louis with one of them, on the north side. Little Oklahoma it was called, they, the police used a gang. They used a waterfront gang to go in and terrorize these people. Most of ’em were women that were still left, and they, they sent a gang in. There were vivid descriptions of it in the St. Louis newspaper. And it was sympathetic. It was so awful the newspaper, was sympathetic. Most of ’em were women, and lived alone and they [the gang] scattered the belongings. Tore up, smashed their little shanties and some of the boats weren’t seaworthy anymore. And basically this just turned them into homeless people, just like that, you know, and, with the gang using violence and with the police standing by and watching.

Gregg Andrews (00:41:45):

And so that’s a, that tells you something about the way middle class and upper class people viewed the real river rats at the time. Newspapers, of course, were great about, on the one hand, they’d romanticize them. They expressed envy of the lifestyle. They didn’t pay, sometimes didn’t pay any taxes, all of that. And yet at the same time, they ‘d condemn ’em. When they were driven off in large numbers, they’d often be sympathetic and see it as a conflict with civilization., and it’s sad, but, you know, they have to go. And there were some tense, tense confrontations there in, on the St. Louis wharf, both St. Louis and East St. Louis, you know. The river rats didn’t take kindly to being booted off.

Dean (00:42:47):

Do you think there were similar attitudes toward people who were poor, but living in the bottoms and not living in shanty boats?

Gregg Andrews (00:42:53):

Oh, yes. Yes. We, when I grew up, we, we were regarded as river trash and people were… Now by the time I became of age, it was changing somewhat in that, that, in that respect, but there was still the, the sting of it. And I know if you came from Monkey Run in Ilasco, you, you had a stigma attached to you by a lot of people, not everybody, but, I think, I don’t know, if you remember in my memoir, I had a little, little confrontation with a high school principal. His daughter was gonna take me, gimme a ride home after we were working together on a, after school activity. And I lived, you know, at that time I was 15. I didn’t, I didn’t drive. And I, I lived about probably from the high school, eight, nine miles.

Gregg Andrews (00:44:05):

And it was, it was, you know, it was late afternoon and she just said, I’ll just go check with my dad. I’ll be right back, or she said, no, just come up here, I’m gonna ask my dad before we go. And he, he wouldn’t let her, and the way he looked at me and the way he paused, he looked me up and down. And I, he knew me very well. I mean, I was a good student and all that, and I tried not to get in too much trouble. And he, he said, you don’t need to be going down there.

Gregg Andrews (00:44:37):

And what I heard from that was “down there,” I knew, I knew exactly what he meant. And so what she did was to take me to the edge of town, of Hannibal, and drop me off and where I, she could take me that far, but you couldn’t go any further. And I had to hitch down the river road and down to the, down to the bottoms there, past the cement plant. So, but it was, you know, I didn’t have a lot of that. There was some up there still, still lingering in the 1950s. I think for people who were older than I was at the time, they felt it more. And it had to do with the changing images of Ilasco. Now today, it’s interesting, just because of consciousness, because of, I’d like to think in part to my books on Ilasco and the preservationist movement that came right after that, now Ilasco was celebrating. <Laugh> The company, the company–they called the state militia, called out the state militia in 1910 to crush a strike, same company now. I mean, different ownership, but the cement company, they’re posing as the, as the Ilasco, the champion and themselves as the creator of the community.

Gregg Andrews (00:46:09):

It’s, you know, how it’s the way it is everywhere. It’s corporate appropriation, right? Of, of really poor people’s history and poor people’s struggles. And they sanitize them and present them to the public, you know, as a kind of padrum, as I see them.

Dean (00:46:27):

It must be particularly galling as a historian, like, you know, when you know the full stories and you see the way that they’re being told in certain quarters, now. That’s gotta be especially galling.

Gregg Andrews (00:46:39):

I remember the, I remember when City of Dust came out and the head of the union there at the cement plant told me, he said, I walked into the main office the other day. And he said there they sat. He said, there was a stack of your books, about a dozen of ’em or a dozen high. And, and he said to the, the supervisor, he said, oh, I see you got City of Dust. “Oh yeah. We’re, we’re giving them away to anybody who comes to tour the plant and everything.” And the union guy told me, he said, oh. I walked out the office and I laughed. And he said, man, you haven’t read that book. You haven’t read that book. But suddenly that picture of my, on the cover of City of Dust began to show up in local TV commercials for the cement plant.

Gregg Andrews (00:47:26):

And there was the beginning already of the subtle appropriation of the history of Ilasco. The company, of course, had a major role in the history. It’s not that Ilasco likely would not have existed, had it not been for the company, but it is the side of the story that’s told. And so of course, up until City of Dust, only what was put out in word of mouth and pamphlets and certain, you know, booster kind of pamphlets. That’s what prevailed until a real, until, you know, a scholarly study laid it out. And so it’s, they don’t, oftentimes they don’t wanna share in that history. They want their version only, you know? And then there’s the working versions, version is therefore automatically the company’s version and vice versa. And that’s a kind of paternalism, if you see it in a lot of different places, you know, my story is your story. If it’s not, we’re gonna call out the state militia.

Dean (00:48:38):

<laugh> And we’re gonna make it your story. <laugh>,

Gregg Andrews (00:48:42):

<laugh>, that’s an iron fist and a velvet club, I think they call that.

Dean (00:48:46):

Yeah. So one of the things that I was curious about, you grew up in the backwaters of Mark Twain Land. When you were a kid, was, was there much of a consciousness of Mark Twain or his visions of the river? Did that, was that present in your life as a child?

Gregg Andrews (00:49:08):

I read, I read Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, I think, when I was about 11 years old, as best I can recall. We had to read Tom Sawyer, I, I think I read that for an English class. I read Huckleberry Finn on my own. And at the time the commercialization of Twain, it was underway. I mean, it was underway from, I would say from the time when Mark Twain died, was, you know, the beginnings of it, but it really picked up in the 1960s. I don’t, you know… here’s what was sad about it. I, I wasn’t that interested in Mark Twain. I took it all for granted because everywhere around me was, Mark Twain mental health, or Mark Twain chicken, or… I’m making up stuff, you know, everything was Mark Twain or Tom Sawyer, and so you kind of get, you kind of get tired of that.

Gregg Andrews (00:50:11):

And I think there was a weirdness there that exists among Hannibal people to this day, and they resent it. They, it it’s too bad because they turn their resentments on Mark Twain rather than what’s been done to Mark Twain, in the name of Mark Twain. And so I didn’t find personally among the people I hung out with, you know, I was in, my life was mostly spent in Monkey Run in Ilasco. That’s where my friendships were. And the south side of Hannibal, which was a working class section in Hannibal. Only later when I, when I, when we, we consolidated schools or we were forced to, just say it, we were forced to go to the Hannibal schools. They dismantled their other community of Ilasco, and you had no choice. And they had a very sophisticated way that they did that.

Gregg Andrews (00:51:11):

But only in the sixties do I remember really any much consciousness about Mark Twain. And I, I read those two books in the early sixties, but I, I remember the first time, they used to have a… between them called Twainland express. And I think they still have, they still have it. So it’s maybe called something different today. My brother worked on it as a tour guide in 1970. He had to, he went somewhere for a week and he asked me if I would, if I would fill in for him and I, so I did. And that’s the first time–and I was 20 years old–that’s the first time I’ve ever been in the cave. I’ve been there a dozen times, at least, since then. I, I love it. I always enjoy taking people in there when you come to visit, when we were living in, in the Hannibal area.

Gregg Andrews (00:52:09):

But as a young person, I can’t imagine now how, why it took me 20 years to get inside that cave. Other than I just wasn’t interested in it. We drove past it every day. Whenever we went to town, we drove past the road that turns off to the cave. We had picnics there as family reunions in Mark Twain Cave hollow. Those were great picnic grounds, but I never ever went into the cave until 1970. And so I think there was a kind of, it just didn’t have, I didn’t, the way I saw it, it didn’t have much relevance to my life, but I did appreciate the characters. At about age 11, 12, right around there, just as I was, you know, becoming, about to become a teenager. I begin to appreciate Twain’s writings about the river. And I’ve from the very beginning of my life, in fact, my memoir, I began my memoir with what, to the best of my memory, best of my knowledge, is my very first memory of life.

Gregg Andrews (00:53:17):

It’s a memory of death. It’s a memory of the river and it was my mother carrying me breathlessly in her arms, running down a dirt alley and up the railroad tracks to where the Burlington Northern railroad bridge goes over Marble Creek. The mouth of the river is less than, maybe 30 to 40 yards away. Staring down there, it was a drowning. My dad was down there fishing at the time, and that’s my very first memory. So the river has made a huge impression on me. I think something traumatic like that is bound to stimulate a memory consciousness. At least it did with me. And I was not three years old yet. I was about two and a half actually, when that, when that happened. But as a kid, the river was my playground, that creek and the river. I mean, that’s where I went, you know, to escape.

Gregg Andrews (00:54:21):

When I felt down, it was a place to go to fish first, smoke,, maybe a little homemade wine or something. Yeah. And I had a cousin who was all too willing to school me and all the, all the ways of the river and all the kinds of onoriness that young, young kids can get into on the riverbank. And I, I think I got involved in most, most of those. But we built a raft once. <laugh> It didn’t get very far. It sank after about 20 yards. We started taking on water. Somehow we didn’t… we screwed something up. And so, I, I gave up the idea that I was gonna go anywhere on a, on a raft, you know, but my mother was horrified. She tried her best to keep me away from the river. But it was like my playground in summertime. It’s… I fished, you know, and swam in some mud holes that you cannot imagine ever swimming in <laugh> with all those water moccasins.

Dean (00:55:30):

In your, in your book, in your autobiography, you write about a particularly, I think, meaningful experience, one night on Jackson island, that sounds… Can you just tell us a little bit about that, you know, for Jackson island has some significance in Mark Twain world anyway, it’s featured in, in Huck Finn, right?

Gregg Andrews (00:55:51):

Yeah. Right. Right. Well, we, my cousin, the one who got us into most of our trouble, he was older than I was see. And he was about, I was, I was 11 at that time we went, went on the island and he was about 15 or maybe 16. And so he had a boat, and so we went to camp. I don’t know how my mom ever let that happen. I don’t. I really don’t know to this day. I can’t remember how I got away with that, but she, she somehow must, maybe she was gone and dad, maybe, maybe dad let me do it. Cause you know, dad, he did a lot of drinking and so he, he wouldn’t pay, he wouldn’t keep quite as tight a rein on me as my mom would. But whatever the case, we spent a night, my cousin and, and myself, and there were two other, two or three other friends of mine from the, from the Weaver family.

Gregg Andrews (00:56:50):

It could have been Theroux. It could have been Howard or maybe Bobby, but, but two or three of ’em. We all took tents and went over there on the island for the night. And I had this memory that I intended to write a song about, and right after we retired, moved to Hannibal in 2010, I, I just thought I’d go to the computer and start writing that. And so I began focusing on it and I’d go in there and I’d write, but the song wasn’t working. It wasn’t coming for me. You know, it was just too big. And so I’d go in there and I’d write a sentence and the next, maybe the next day, I’d go in there and write another. And pretty soon that whole story, the way I recounted it in the, in my memoir just flowed.

Gregg Andrews (00:57:44):

And I remember that night, everybody else had gone to bed and I was sitting there, you know. I was smoking a pipe and enjoying the night by myself–it was a full moon night–and just reflecting. That was around the time that I read Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, and just reflecting on the beauty of the river. I watched that moving mass, you know, all around us. And I had, I had a line in the water and flat heads were biting that night. And I had just put one on another, put another one on the stringer. It was peaceful, quiet. And I laid there with my thoughts that night and stared down the river in the direction of the cement plant and started thinking about it as much as an 11 year old kid can think about it. Something like that, you know?

Dean (00:58:41):

Right. So there are two things that jump out at me about that story too. One is it would probably terrify a lot of parents today, the thought of their 11 year old, going out in a boat with other teenagers to an island in the Mississippi River. I’m guessing that does not happen nearly as much today as it did when you were a kid.

Dean (00:59:03):

The other thing that’s interesting about that too, is that so much of the narrative about the Mississippi today focuses on the economic value of activities along the river, but you’re describing a very meaningful experience that has nothing to do with dollars and cents. That matters just as much to a lot of us who spend time along the river.

Gregg Andrews (00:59:26):

It’s a lifestyle. And I know I have friends today who live up there. I mean, they, they, I just love to see their, when they describe, you know, their description sometimes of what they did and the people, the focus on the sunrises and the beautiful sunsets on the river. And I think back to the days when my uncles had a camp, a river camp down in Busch, down in Ashburn-Busch area, where the Ted Shanks Conservation Area is today. That was my favorite place to go with my uncles. We go coon hunting on Gilbert Island and back in the bluffs on the, on the Missouri side and spend a weekend down there. I was, I mean, that was about as close to heaven as you can get for me, and, you know, be able to steal a few of my uncle’s cigarettes, you know, while they’re talking and things like that, and go out by myself in the morning, you know. I was about nine or 10 at the time taking my 410 shotgun and go up on the bluff and squirrel hunt or something, watch a sunrise come up over on Gilbert island. Just, you know, it’s life.

Gregg Andrews (01:00:36):

It’s one of the, one of the magic things about life and nature and the river for those who live on it and appreciate it. They know what, you know, they know what, what I’m talking about. And I think that’s one of the reasons you see many, you know, Facebook groups, public groups today sharing photos of the river and steamboats, and, you know, there’s a, the river has a beauty about it. And it can, it can turn on you too. It’s… I learned to be a very respectful of the river as a child. If you’re ever caught out in a, in a huge thunderstorm, in a little tiny boat, eight or 10 feet, you’ll know why you wanna respect that river. And that was a terrifying experience for me. I was five years old, I think with my uncle Melvin Sanders, and it, it didn’t, it didn’t diminish my love of the river, but it made me respect it as well as love it.

Dean (01:01:34):

Absolutely. Well, we’re, we’re probably about out of time here. This has been a really great conversation, Greg. I appreciate it. I was hoping we’d get some into music here a little bit, but we’re probably gonna have to put that off to another time now.

Gregg Andrews (01:01:48):

Thanks Dean. For having me on here. I really enjoyed it. It’s, it’s been a few years now, since I, since I’ve seen you and it’s really great to reconnect.

Dean (01:01:58):

So for people who are interested in following your work, where would be the best places to go?

Gregg Andrews (01:02:03):

Well, they, I have a WordPress blog called lost river stories.com, but they can look up Greg Andrews. They, you can find me that way. I no longer have my website for music. I’ve transferred it all to reverbernation. When COVID hit, you know, I had to pull the plug on a lot of shows. And I’ve just, I dropped the website for that, but, I’m on Facebook and I’m on Twitter, not on Twitter very much, but on Facebook. I’m there quite a bit, so they can find me there or WordPress, lost river stories.com. I try to provide little vignettes or stories of interest to the, that might be of interest to people and pictures and stories. And so far it’s gone great. I mean, I’m getting people from all over the world, you know, checking in with me and stuff.

Gregg Andrews (01:03:10):

So it’s really nice. China, Malaysia. There’s interest in the river. Absolutely. That’s my, that’s what I especially enjoy doing, I mean, something I’ve known a long time, but, but I think a lot of people look back at that period, especially and think, well, it’s such a, it seems like such ancient history compared to where we are today. And I think a lot of people are drawn to it. They wanna know more about that, and especially the people like the, like the shanty boat people, the river rats, so called, who lived a very simple lifestyle. And some people envied that and some people hated them for it. Some, some did both. They envied and hated, but anyway, it was great, Dean. I appreciate you having me on.

Dean (01:04:01):

Thanks so much. And we’ll we’ll put an end to things here then. Thanks so much for your time. Greatly appreciate it.

Gregg Andrews (01:04:10):

All right. Thank you, Dean. I really enjoyed it.

Dean (01:04:13):

If you’re enjoying the show, share that love with other people. Leave a review on iTunes or your preferred podcast app. Each review makes a difference and helps other fans of the Mississippi River and the Midwest find this show.

Doctor G and the Mudcats (01:04:31):

[short clip from their song Mississippi River Mud]

Dean (01:05:20):

That was a short sample from a song called Mississippi River Mud by Doctor G and the Mudcats. Thanks to Greg Andrews for permission to use that clip. And now let’s get to the Mississippi Minute. I was up in Minnesota a couple weeks ago and had a chance to visit Sherburne National Wildlife Refuge for the first time. It’s about an hour north of the Twin Cities, maybe 30 minutes east of St. Cloud. It’s not on the Mississippi, but, it’s a place that is relevant, I think, because it passes through or preserves, different types of ecosystems and habitats that the Mississippi passes through up there. The place really surprised me. I’ll be honest. Maybe I just had expectations that were too low, but when I got there, I found several places to hike. There were lots of flowers in bloom in different parts of the refuge I walked.

Dean (01:06:14):

The first trail I walked was called the Mahnomen Trail. It goes through a prairie and through some wetlands and along this trail, I stumbled across a lesser purple fringed orchid, a new type of orchid to me. A highlight for me, turned out to be another experience I had low expectations for, to be honest, was the wilderness drive, which is about a seven mile loop through a part of the refuge. I generally don’t find these loop drives especially rewarding unless you get out of the car and have the opportunity to hike away from the road and the crowds. You don’t usually see much, at least in terms of wildlife, but this was a surprising exception to me. Just in a, in one half hour stretch driving through part of the, the loop drive. I saw a couple of pairs of sandhill cranes. I saw a pond or a small lake where there must have been two dozen trumpeter swans. And I got out of the car to an observation deck, and I watched a beaver on ground working on a big limb. So I was really surprised at the amount of wildlife that I was able to see in that short loop drive, without having to get out of the car. I highly recommend it. It’s a place I think I’ll be going back to. I’d love to see it at different times of year. If you’ve been there. Let me know. I’d love to hear about your experiences at Sherburne and any tips you have about how to, to get the most out of a visit.

Dean (01:07:43):

Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe to the series on your favorite podcast app, so you don’t miss out on future episodes. I offer the podcast for free, but when you support the show with a few bucks through Patreon, you help keep the program going. Just go to patreon.com/deanKlinkenberg. If you want to know more about the Mississippi River, check out my books. I write the Mississippi Valley Traveler guide books for people who want to get to know the Mississippi better. I also write the Frank Dodge mystery series that is set in places along the river. Find them wherever books are sold. The Mississippi Valley Traveler podcast is written and produced by me; music by Noah Fence. See you next time.