When you come to a fork in the river, take it!

Once upon a time, 35 years ago, I lived in a houseboat under a bridge on the Upper Mississippi River, where I happened to captain a 135-foot sternwheel cruise ship. Having grown up on the ocean, I’d always thought of the Mississippi as some legendary Mark Twain world I would never inhabit. But fate changed that.

We’ve all played the fate game. Here’s mine: If my high school guidance counselor hadn’t said, “Well, Roper, I think we both realize you are not Harvard material, but I know of a very fine private college known as the Harvard of the Midwest that might take you,” I probably would never have gone out there. And if I hadn’t heard a girl sobbing in the basement of a sorority house freshman year, I probably wouldn’t have gone downstairs to calm her. And hence I probably wouldn’t have married this life-long Midwesterner. And if, after I dragged her out East after college, she hadn’t said soon thereafter, “I’m going home,” I probably wouldn’t have moved back there. And if she hadn’t gotten a job at a Minneapolis college and booked a student event on a 135-foot sternwheel cruise ship and asked me to go along, I probably wouldn’t have met Wally. And river life never would have happened.

Wally. There he was, a nervous little guy with a hint of a mustache, darting around, frantically turning off equipment in the third-deck pilothouse. My then-wife had some paperwork for him to sign regarding the charter, and introduced me, saying I was somewhat of a captain, too.

“You have a license? Really? Really? A Coast Guard license?” Wally asked eagerly.

“Well, yes.”

“Want a job? We need captains. No one around here has big-water licenses. I’m exhausted. Need at least two more captains.”

I smiled. “You’re kidding, right?” I looked forward and aft on the ship. A long way forward and aft. “There are a few major problems: I already have a job. I know nothing about the river. I’m an ocean guy. My license is for coastal waters and much smaller. In fact, I’ve never even been in the pilothouse of something this big. And this is driven by that giant paddlewheel? How does that . . . ?”

“Yup, a true sternwheeler, single paddlewheel, no bow thruster, no keel, no skeg. Just flat bottom all the way. Kind of violates the laws of vessel control: she can get away from you in a cross wind – she slides pretty bad – making her tricky to dock. But you could get the hang of it. We can get Ray, the old retired pilot off the Delta Queen, to take 20 trips with you on this stretch, mentor you on the river, so as to get you endorsed and ready to test for your Western Rivers ticket.”

This is absolutely ridiculous, I thought. But what I said was, “Okay, Wally. If this Ray guy can teach me, fine. But I’m not much at taking tests, especially the Coast Guard’s, so don’t be surprised if . . .”

“Don’t worry, we’re in pretty tight with the Warrant Officer in these parts.”

So I quit my job as a junior high English teacher, and took my 20 trips under pilot Ray’s “mentoring” – which consisted of an incessant string of river yarns, but nothing about piloting on the river – and then I sat for the test. I “passed” due to the helpful guidance of the Warrant Officer: “I see you answered ‘b’ on this one, Mr. Roper; are you sure about that? . . . I know you wouldn’t have chosen ‘a’ or ‘d’ either, of course.”

So Wally got himself some relief. He now had Captain Roper, a new river man, who pinned on his four gold epaulets, climbed to the bridge, and plied the river for three years. River men like to say that they spend most of their money on women and booze; the rest just gets wasted. So fate had it that this new river man would become a bachelor, then buy, rebuild and live a lively life aboard a houseboat named The Ark, taking a fork in life that yielded a world of stories that keep on giving: stories involving colorful river characters, adventure, tragic accidents, tornados, romance, joy, and fierce confrontations. The stuff novels are made of.

Call it fate.

Fine with me.

Editor’s note – For our regular readers who looked twice at the photo; yes, that is indeed a younger version of Dave at the wheel of a Mississippi paddlewheeler (photo by Dave Padelford).

Dave Roper’s new novel, “Rounding the bend: The Life and Times of Big Red,” was released in mid-June and is available from Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble.