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Private recollections, sometimes kept covered, interest me. I wonder for instance how many others developed an early habit of injecting themselves when parental issues were getting hot. I know I did.
I’ve often commented my parents (though ungodly good and watchful) stayed together to keep up the battle. Considering how often my parents battled, I think I got an early introduction to mediation.

Never physical to my knowledge, the revered parents surely did a lot of yelling. A bit frightening, at times, to a child inclined to take such things seriously.

Here’s a test for you. How did you react to hearing about parental battling? More than once I’ve had people say they felt sorry for me or even express their sentiments as accusations of abusive parents.
Well, no, sorry. I’d have to see evidence that a decibel level of X experienced Y times per day resulted in Z levels of child endangerment. Would 1.3 times a day be safe and 1.5 damaging? Too complicated for me.

Let’s just say that all experiences of all sorts have some sort of impact.

Non-responsive parents would be as consequential as those who reacted to everything.

So mine fought a lot and sometimes scared me. Learning when-how to throw in a distraction was a decent childhood skill. Wasn’t it? From my childhood point of view, the food (mom was a good cook) was worth enduring the yelling. I suspect dad thought much the same.

However, I never asked. Why would it? Parental personal lives were beyond me.

In any case, getting through childhood is something we navigate is inexperienced travelers. No GPS for that, is there? Even the example or advice of older siblings (which I did not have) only went so far. Certainly not to your eventual destination.

On that topic, just last week I saw a Childrens’ Museum in St. Paul. I did not go in because I figured I could only handle so much at a time. Even though, you see, it is a longish while since I visited my first Childrens’ Museum (in the Netherlands) I recall too much sharply the great disappointment of the experience looking at large collections of chidrens’ toys, books and clothing plus more Eit and Ain (I’m going my memory and have likely bungled the spelling) that I knew existed, or needed, or wanted, etc.

All that material, fascinating as it might to some have been, was nothing against my expectation of a real child museum with true to life stuffed kids.

Imagine seeing for all time Suzy’s preserved face the exact moment she realizes Gerladine has won the spelling contest. As is said, priceless. Or the look on unexpecting Sammy’s face as he zeros in on snitching a brownie while completely unaware he’s about to meet the mixing spoon of fate.

Now that and those would be material for a child museum. Piles of toys, clothes and books can’t compare to the attraction of children taxidermized.

Going down the Mississippi (motorized drifting as ‘twere) I can’t help but wonder the huge difference would result if the mighty M had come up our way.

Gads. The Ports, in particular, might have had dual directions for transport and trade. Had that been so we might see more French than some remnant place names. Had Du-Luth and La-Crosse been water connected things would have moved along a distinctly different path. Of course, didn’t.

Northland rivers were used and abused but in no way on a scale comparable to that involving the Mississippi. The several dozen locks for river barge transport went in a little shy of a century past. And they still perform.

If, and I hope you’ll sometime have the opportunity, you travel on or along the Mississippi River Valley, you’ll see island systems built of waterborne material. Lots and lots of it making many and many an island of similarly sandy (well sorted) material. The size and scope are impressive.

The Great Lakes are also impressive, indeed, but lakes are by nature more passive than rivers. A river system seems more immediately alive, moving and going.

Miles and miles of sandy banks were built by moving water. Starts in Minnesota and goes all the way to the Mexican-American Gulf. I’d think that had all the silt and sand made it to the Gulf there’d be none, or very little Gulf to see.

Luckily much of that material was spread out to make riverbanks, berms, islands and relatively flat land. Ideal for building, though with the regular threat of spring floods.

One thing sure, if you needed river commerce, you’d more likely want to be near the water than safely high and dry on the bluffs high above. Clever little monkeys that we are we figured out how to cope, didn’t we?

Some will say the waters have been defiled. Others will say tamed. Where does your self-interest go?
In Mark Twain’s day the river was relatively wild, meaning it spread out into the valley to move at a somewhat slower pace.

Channelization for commerce makes a huge difference. Tom or Huck would have a tough time with a canoe on today’s river. The piece of raft Jim and Huck found was a relatively common thing on the river. Some of the log rafts taking lumber down river to cities building the nation were impressively long, but yet compare poorly to what’s routinely and with scant notice moved currently by river barges.

Near a hundred years ago dozens of locks were installed between St. Paul and St. Louis. They continue in use. I wonder if planners a century past saw the extent to which their effort would succeed. I wonder.
For you outside the box thinkers consider all the claims and use of lands as the taking of land from previous landlords ill-disposed to the bohunks, micks, dagos, pollacks and krauts, etc. intent on development.

A way, verging on outcast but easily unpopular, to see this and other historic conflicts is to point out vested landowner interests versus other claims or interests.

Or look at it as a battle between river and lake transport of goods.

Which wins out and why?