THE RIVER BOY

by Leif Wallin

Ihave always lived within a stone’s throw of a natural source of water. That is quite an accomplishment since I grew up in North Dakota, a state better known for wind and prairies than for rain and agua. My parents bought a house on the banks of the Mouse River. The front yard was the size of a football field, and it became the neighborhood center for games of hide and seek, kickball and tag. The yard gently sloped upwards to the house, which sat about three or four feet higher than the other homes along the river. My parents were both college music professors, and this became their dream home. They built an addition specifically for their Steinway grand piano. Appropriately, we named this the Music Room. Its floor was two steps lower than the main section of the house. It had a vaulted ceiling, hardwood floors, and a grand picture window that looked out to the river.

As a child, living by the river was a grand adventure. We had thirty feet of backyard before the land sloped down to the water’s edge. The riverbank was filled with oak trees, jack pines and shrubs. It was so dense with foliage that you could not see across the river from the back windows. My parents built a dock at the water’s edge, and we’d fish for bullheads, a scary looking fish with stingers and ugly whiskers. We’d pull up crawdads, a mini lobster with pointy pincers. We would dare each other to see who could last the longest when sticking our fingers into its claws.

In the winter, my eight-block walk to school was cut in half as I could take a shortcut across the frozen river. Once, I got to the middle and heard a crack beneath my feet. I took a deep breath and froze, still and stiff. Nothing happened. I inched my foot forward. More silence. Then I dashed as fast as I could to the other side. That was the moment I learned to respect the power of the river.

When I was nine, the residents of my small town experienced a hundred-year flood as the Mouse River spilled its banks. But to me, that was an adventure. We had to evacuate our home. We moved in with a family friend who lived on the north side of the river valley. Their family of four welcomed the Wallin family of five into a threebedroom, one-bathroom house. I was thrilled because I gained an older brother. My parents, however, were thinking more about that single bathroom and nine butts.

As the inundation continued, the neighboring properties were swamped with several feet of water on the main floor. But we were saved by that three-foot rise in our front yard. Water filled the basement but did not reach the first floor. My mother recalls that when you took the two steps down into the Music Room, water would squeeze through the floorboards with each step. Keeping water below the first floor was a major victory. If water reached the main floor, it would trickle up the walls like a kid sucking on a straw.

Mom borrowed a little fishing boat which we used to check on our house. We puttered the boat along streets that, even as a child, I recognized. Mom steered the boat up our driveway. and we motored past those hundred-year-old oaks. The six-foot hedges that marked the border with the neighbor’s yard were totally submerged.

The situation in Minot reached the national news. Headlines blared: “The Mouse that roared,” and “The Mighty Mouse.” Outsiders might have laughed, but it did not seem funny to us locals. The city survived, but, sadly, we experienced hundred-year floods in six of the next ten years. In each of those years, we had to move out or be prepared to move out on a moment’s notice.

In 1976, a five hundred-year flood bore down on the city. As a sixteen-year-old, it brought a new set of adventures. We got out of school to fill sandbags. This was going to save the city, but mostly what I remember is flirting with girls and the taste of the sugary icing on the sweet rolls provided by the Red Cross to fuel us as we shoveled sand into bag after bag.

The National Guard brought in big machinery to clear the riverbanks of brush and trees. Anything that slowed the flow of the water had to be removed. I hid in the house as cranes came in and slammed against hundred-year-old oak trees. The cracking of tree trunks sounded like blasts from a shotgun. What had been an oasis of green became a barren, denuded river trench.

Giant earth-moving machines rumbled in and built a ten-foot dike of clay and mud along the trench. These would become permanent dikes to finally rid the city of its annual problem. The city evacuated the low-lying areas and quarantined the entire section of the city where I lived. Once again, we moved in with our friend on the north side. I still walked to school, but I had to skirt the borders of the quarantined area. At sixteen, I considered it a challenge to evade the authorities to visit my house. Like a soldier behind enemy lines, I weaved through alleys and backyards crouching low so as not to be seen. When I got to my house, it was locked up, but I was able to climb through a basement window. I was in! Then I realized that there was no electricity or heat and, most importantly to a teenager, no food. I wandered around. It was a ghost house with an emptied basement and first-floor objects all hauled up to the second floor. I realized that this was not just a game. A few nights later, we got a call. Just upstream from our house, the water bore against the dike at a bend in the river. The city thought the dike might break. They decided to put a secondary dike in front of our house. If the main dike broke, the city would be saved but our house would be a goner. In my teenaged brain, I thought of the fame this would bring. Like martyrdom, our house laid down its life to save the city. But the main dike held, life moved on, and the city survived.

After I left Minot, I was constantly pulled to water. I lived a stone’s throw from the Red River in Fargo, and later a stone’s throw from the Missouri River in Bismarck. I moved to Minneapolis and bought a home a stone’s throw from Lake Nokomis, and perhaps two stone throws from the Mississippi. On hot summer days, I’d ride my bike to Lake Nokomis. I’d jump in and let the healing power of the water cool my overheated skin. Or I’d walk the pathways along the Mississippi River where the soothing calm of the water brought me back to peace. With my children, we’d bike to Minnehaha Falls Park. We’d squeeze around the fence and hike along a trail at the base of the falls. On humid August days, the waters of the creek would splash against our skin. The ledge surrounding the falls would drip with saturated groundwater. It felt like a country hideaway, yet we were in the middle of the city. We would bike to the little beach at Lake Nokomis and spend the afternoon playing in the water. I’d be the water monster from which the kids loved to flee. I learned that no matter how much my children fought, if I threw them into a pond, a lake or a stream, they would forget all sibling troubles and play for hours.

Water is fun when you are a kid. But now, I’m an adult, about the same age as my parents when they experienced those flood years.

I didn’t really have any skin in the game. I was a kid. As an adult, can you imagine motoring a boat up your driveway to your dream house?

You still pay a mortgage on that house, and there is no flood insurance. When the water recedes, you clean mud, water, and sewage from the family home. And that’s only if the dikes do not fail, because if the dikes fail, there is nothing left to clean. I think of my parents, and I realize I have another reason to look up to them. Would I be strong enough to take on such a calamity?

Water holds much symbolism. Water baptizes us. It cleanses our souls. Nearly all religions have a flood story, where water first wipes the earth clean, then provides a rebirth–a fresh start to those remaining souls. Destruction, then deliverance.

Living on the Mouse River had a considerable influence on my life.

I saw the power of the river as it flushed away nearly an entire city. I saw that, in the face of ruin, people pull together. Friends take you into their homes. Schoolyard rivals become allies as they struggle against a common enemy that knows no loyalties. It takes a village to save a city.

In a few short months, the water is again clean and fresh. People play on its banks and swim in its flows. The river didn’t make me, but as I breathe, it did shape my life. l

LEIF WALLIN proudly identifies himself as a North Dakotan. He is semi-retired and lives in Minneapolis, near Minnehaha Creek and the Mississippi River. He reads, writes, and tells stories to keep the heart warm on cold winter nights.

(Late October)

Yesterday was the first day that I have not had fresh garden tomatoes in the house in 4 months. No green and burgundy tiger-striped cherries. No brandywines, wide as a slice of bread, slightly pink with green shoulders. No hefty red roundies that are the definition of garden variety. No pointybottomed fruit or oblong saucedestined varieties. No grapes, plums, pears, or heavily ribbed heirlooms. A friend teased me, mid summer: “We get it, you grow tomatoes!” after my seemingly hundredth photo showing them in various scenes: on the plant, in a bowl, in a bucket on the grass, perched on the cutting board, in the sink with water droplets, chopped and waiting for the salad, bubbling in a pot, beefy slices on a brunch plate, gathered with other fresh produce, nestled in a frittata, all cut up and destined to be the star of the salsa, panzanella, or shakshuka. I was putting together a dinner salad last night and reflexively looked for the tomatoes to add. None to be had. I had to rethink the dressing I had been making all summer because something was off with the absence of tomatoes. Time for a November vinaigrette? A bit heavier on the honey from the missing sugar of the summer tomatoes? Or do I leave it as is and add apple? Just like you plan your time away around the planting or harvesting of the garden, you build your menus around the abundance or dearth of tomatoes.