The River

Dark brown, wider than wide, it was not the river I knew as a kid. Contained by steep banks, the Mississippi flows through Minneapolis and St. Paul; the Twin Cities are situated just above Lock & Dam Number 1. All barge traffic ends about three or four miles upstream from the Lock at St. Anthony Falls. Just below the Falls stands what was left of the docks and buildings that at one time comprised the Pillsbury A Mill. At the turn of the century, from these docks wheat and flour reaped from the vast Minnesota and Dakota Plains floated south to the railheads of St. Louis. Two blocks from my childhood front door one could put a boat in the water and cruise south, like the huge flour barges of long ago, all the way to the Gulf of Mexico.