Louisville Magazine is Louisville's city magazine, covering Louisville people, lifestyles, politics, sports, restaurants, entertainment and homes. Includes a monthly calendar of events.
Issue link: https://loumag.epubxp.com/i/174531
TRAVEL Westward wandering (from left, above Mark Twain portrait): a church bus in the weeds; Shemwell's BBQ in Cairo, Ill.; Cairo's Magnolia Manor; the Wooldridge Monuments in Mayfeld, Ky.; and Paducah menabout-town Bill Ford and Philip Phillips, the latter an acclaimed leatherworker. Cairo to Hickman Two intrepid travelers search for life on the Mississippi. By Jenni Laidman Photos by Joey Harrison 32 LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 10.13 I t's sort of like walking the path of Lewis and Clark. Only shorter. OK, a hell of a lot shorter. And I guess we were cheating: We had a car. Mark Twain had a paddlewheel riverboat. (Ours was in the shop.) But let's not split hairs. Inspired by the Mississippi we go, "Cairo to Hickman" — which is the name of a chapter in Twain's Life on the Mississippi — if one can relive a chapter in one of Twain's more tedious books. Tings could be worse. We could be attempting to retrace Innocents Abroad, acting as insuferably superior Americans making fun of things we do not understand. Probably the adventure quotient would be higher had we determined to retrace Huckleberry Finn, rafting our way to freedom. But Huck actually overshot Cairo, Ill., and ended up in Arkansas, lost in a fog all through the 63 miles of Mississippi that touch our state, whereas Life on the Mississippi devotes a whole chapter to Kentucky's bit of the Big Muddy. I should have known we were in trouble when I told my husband I wanted to make this trip. His name is Joey Harrison, by the way. We can't even agree on a last name. (Nor could we agree on wedding rings, so we don't wear them. I suspect I was duped.) Anyway, had I considered Joey's habits, I might have given up on Twain and planned a tour of Kentucky's landflls or something equally uplifting. His history is as follows: On a trip to Chicago, we detoured to spend several hours making a detailed survey of Gary, Ind. When we lived in Ohio, his favorite one-tank trip was to Detroit, where he would spelunk abandoned buildings and photograph the urban crumble. On a trip through Alabama, we spent the night in historic but downtrodden Selma, in a hotel with greasy carpets and people yelling to their dogs, so that he could run of and do some night photography of the picturesque abandonment. Nothing makes this man happier than a ruin. About Cairo he was incandescent.