Marquette and McGregor, Upper Mississippi

"What's the gauge say?"

"Kick that fucking starter already!"

"It doesn't work, the shit won't start, there's not enough pressure. Oh, fuck!"

Max's head disappeared into the darkness under the deck, and I could only see his forehead glow for a moment from time to time when he was blowing on the embers.

The boiler is a problem that requires constant attention. As if there was a third crew member aboard, that we had to deal with all the time. In the morning, you start and keep the fire for two hours until the water heats up enough to generate pressure for sailing; during sailing, you feed it all the time with wood to maintain temperature and pressure; and towards the evening and the end of sailing for the day, you start starving it so you reach the goal without fire, embers, and pressure.

"It’s all about time, boys," Kenneth kept repeating when we first tested Southwind on a lake near Three Rivers.

"Oh, shit!"

"The rudder won't help, we're spinning!"

"The current is too strong!"

"Anchor!"

I threw the anchor into the water. I was slowly releasing the line and braced for the tug. The line unwound to the end, but instead of a tug that would stop Southwind and keep it in place against Mississippi's current, I only felt how the anchor started to gently glide and sway across the muddy river bottom.

It was pitch dark. The lights of the Marquette harbour, where we were headed, drowned into the night with the relentless current. I turned the rudder a little too late. The filming crew was waiting for us at the pier, Max was standing on the bow with the line in his hands – but the current just swept us away. I steered the boat towards the current, but there was no pressure left, and the fire was out. We were rushing into darkness.

"It's rising! It's rising"

The flashlight was glancing the pressure gauge.

"Just a little more!"

"Try now! C'mon on, kick it for fuck's sake, come on!"

The starter turned and the pistons moved, slowly. I couldn't open the valve too much, otherwise I would use all the pressure that Max had just created. The paddle wheel was sobbing as it fought the current. It was still too strong. We were able to maintain course, but sailing against the current was impossible.

At that moment, a powerful floodlight brushed over us. It was cutting through the night like a beam from a lighthouse. I was naïvely delighted that someone from the river bank was lighting our way. In fact, it was a cargo ship, the first one we met on the Mississippi, sailing downstream, at least 50 metres long, going straight towards us. The hum of its engines coming from the dark gave us a frightening idea of its size.

"Yo, grab this rope and tie it up front.

I'll pull you outta this shit."

I was so fixated on the barge that I didn't even notice a smaller speed boat approaching form the other side. It was Dale, a local that our film crew asked to help us. His 110-horse-power engine roared and ten minutes later, we were safely moored in McGregor. Dale is a local teacher and he has spent his whole life on the river. He knows it like the back of his hand.

"When it gets wild, you better keep to the shore, and beware of the white caps on the waves," he shouted before cruising away. We stood on the pier of the McGregor marina, watched him leave, looked at each other, watched towards the river, and tested the solid ground beneath our feet. It all happened so fast we hadn't even fully realized we had just been inches away from shipwrecking.

McGregor is a small town where which access to the river bank is cut off by railroad. The train consists are huge, they can be one kilometer long or even more. The trains thunder by several times a day, always announced by a loud siren. They are all freight trains. Occasionally they stop and completely detach the river bank from the town. This can take ten minutes, an hour, sometimes even longer. People get stuck in their cars on one or the other side on a daily basis. They honk angrily, curse and yell.

When our adrenaline rush subsided, we realized we were starving. We had been sailing all day and there was no time for food. We double-checked all ropes, pressure, and whether there were any embers left in the boiler, and headed across the railroad into the small town. Actually, even calling it a small town is a bit of an exaggeration. It is a street with a gas station on the left, three bars and an antique shop. The lights were still on everywhere. The only person on the street was an old man in front of the antique shop. He had long white hair and a long white beard tied in a ponytail. He owned the antique shop and he introduced himself as Cowboy Jim.

"Come on in to Cowboy Jim's, welcome, welcome!"

"Cowboy Jim's got everything you need, just ask anyone, everyone knows Cowboy Jim!"

"Well, come on in already."

The antique shop was really full of all kinds of stuff. A cassette player with eagle feathers, mixtapes, woven tapestry, broken plates, photocopies of artwork, deer heads with just one antler ...

"Take a look around, everyone can find something."

"I used to be a junkie, but now, now I run this shop."

"Oh, that pot? Yea, that'll be great for the fire! Yea, yea, yea. Two bucks, two bucks."

"You're here by steamboat? Where from? Europe? I know it, I know it."

"You boys go to Spoonful and grab some wings and beers, and then come back to my place. Right there, see, take the steps and through the corridor. Room number 2."

I enjoyed the beer more than the wings. The memory of the experience on the river was still vivid. We were the only guests at the bar, and once they closed the door behind us, there were no more lights in the street.

Slightly reeling, we came to the building that Cowboy Jim had shown us. We walked up the squeaky stairs to the second floor and found ourselves in a dark corridor. A flickering light bulb revealed the brown-yellow walls with peeling paint and dried stains from the leaking roof.

There was a hand-torn piece of paper next to the switch with the handwriting: RING FOR COWBOY JIM.

We had no idea what was behind door number 2. But after the experience on the river, we were ready for anything.

"Hi-hi-hi, you guys came over, you're really here, good, oh yes, very good."

Cowboy Jim was stroking his beard and his belly and he was pacing in place from excitement.

"Step right in, come on in, right here, yea, through this door, yea, yea."

All of a sudden, a roof garden opened up in front of us, full of tomatoes and herbs. It was all there: thyme, sage, basil, lavender, rosemary, bay leaf. Compared to what we could get along the way, at gas stations that were the only store in smaller towns, where a slice of jalapeño in a frozen hamburger reheated in a microwave for breakfast was a vegetable bounty, this was heaven. A true culinary heaven.

"Here, grab a basket, just pick, pick! Oh, these small tomatoes are delicious!

Follow me, follow me!"

From the terrace, we went into another room. Huge columns of oyster mushrooms were growing in every corner. Cowboy Jim filled our laps with packs of dried mushrooms.

"C'mon, c'mon, hihihi!"

The next room was full of chest freezers. He opened one after the other, taking out chunks of smoked boar, deer, offering us steaks, chops, and veal. Our hands were full of delicious food of all kinds.

We saw ultraviolet neon light peaking from behind the next door.

"Just look at these beauties!" The black light gave away the contours of Indian hemp plants reaching towards the ceiling.

"I grow these for my own health. I've got stage four prostate cancer and no medicine can help me anymore."

"I want to stay alive for her," he added and showed us a portrait photo of a young woman on the wall.

"That's my girlfriend. She's 30 years younger than me, hihihihiiiii."

"Say a prayer for me, boys."

The next morning, he was with us at already at seven. He came with a big cowboy hat and a huge mug of coffee. His white beard was glistening in the morning sun as he shared his cooking recipes with us.