.
Upstream a short distance from town is (or was, I should say) a working grain terminal and elevator, not exactly a harbor, perhaps most notable for its proximity to the railroad. The building remains, now an historic site.
Amidst the dirty concrete pilings beneath, we would fish for carp with bits of canned corn while rusty barges gradually subsided under loads of boxcar grain, smoke from pilfered cigarettes mingling with the odor of turgid water as we planned nefarious boyhood schemes.
The train tracks remain, although the riverfront has been subject to a decades long urban renewal, now surrounded by four-story apartments and condos. A far cry from the "old Levee" and degraded mansions-cum-ghetto rooming houses we feral house monkeys would terrorize.
If I close my eyes I can remember the sounds: six inch thick hemp rope slithering around massive steel pylons, a splash in murky ooze, the death throes of massacred carp, mouths agape and eyes blank, the clank and crash of breaking bottles disturbing the hiss of tons of pouring grain, jovial cursing of deeply tanned deckhands and the POP of rock salt fired from a .410 gauge shotgun by a drunken, angry train conductor—the crush of feet in flight, torn high-top sneakers scrambling across class 5 stone, our ragged panting, our laughter.
grain, steel and coal
russian hemp grown wild
along the tracks
.
by William Sorlien
St. Paul, Minnesota
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