Free The Dog Says How by Kevin Kling Page B

1950s starlet and we had barges and eddies. One foggy night the Captain was creeping us down the river. We heard a low horn.
    “Good Lord,” he said. “That’s a barge. Try and see it.”
    But the fog was too thick. We heard it again, the horn blaring through the soup.
    “Go up top and see if you can see anything.”
    I scrambled up to the top to find a musician practicing the bass clarinet horn. I told the Captain it was a guy practicing his horn. He opened his mouth and a few hundred dollars worth of charm school went out the window.
    When we hit St. Louis a great surprise awaited us. Jacques Cousteau was there filming a special on the Mississippi. We really wanted to meet him. There was his magnificent boat, the Calypso, its bowsprit graced with a beautiful mermaid leading the way. Our boat had deteriorated quite badly. Someone needed to constantly bail. The engine was acting up. We spruced it up as best we could, got some paint, and wrote “Calapso” on the side in huge letters. I got a woman’s bowling trophy from a thrift store and we lashed her out front as our bowsprit. Jacques Cousteau was not amused. We tried to meet him several times but were informed he had wine tastings and research that took precedence.
    I was upset, or “bummed out” as my fellow travelers would say. I wanted to meet the man, inventor of the aqualung and French voiceovers. Not long after that our poor Calapso sank where the Ohio River meets the Mighty Miss and our captain went back to Minneapolis for his operation to become a woman. We were now traveling in school buses. The close quarters, lack of protein . . . I started to lose it.
    We all had meltdowns. Sooner or later, everyone lost it on the trip. This was mine. I decided this was it. I was quitting. I had about five dollars on me, so I went to the Greyhound station and started begging to let me ride. I was pleading to the ticket agents like they were the American Consulate.
    “Please, just please, put me on a bus.”
    I figure once on one, I could stow away, get into a compartment, anything. But I’m not going back to lettuce sandwiches.
    Then I saw the trombone player in the station. In her hand was a spare rib—meat with sauce. It looked incredible. Linked to her arm was Shaky Leg, and then a friend who was visiting them who said he was running for mayor of Milwaukee. He had treated them to a rib dinner, and when they heard I’d made my break, they’d come looking for me, with bait. They handed me the rib and I took a bite. Unbelievable. Ambrosia. Then I noticed she had another one. What I didn’t notice was we were walking out toward the car, and by the time I’d finished my third rib, I was snuggled in my tent.
    We did finally make it to New Orleans. The show was well received and I met a group of lifelong friends, family really. And like family it was certainly a group I wouldn’t have chosen as my people but one to which I now count my blessings I belong. I’ll never look at the river the same either. Every time I cross it I have a feeling for its power and beauty. That river lived up to every metaphor written. At times sitting on the deck of the Calapso, surrounded by high bluffs, passing a barge or swimming kids or a fisherman, it was impossible to tell what decade, what century held our journey. The gift of that river, as Shaky Leg would say, lies deep in the “ever changing, never changing muddy waters.” That said, one day I will get the trombone player and old Shaky Leg for tricking me with a rib.

czech
    I was in college when I told my dad, “I’m going to be an actor.” He didn’t say anything; instead, every two weeks I would get these letters in the mail. Well, actually, they were newspaper clippings. Clippings with headlines like, “ACTOR STARVES TO DEATH IN NEW YORK.” There was another one that read, “ONLY TWO PERCENT ACTORS’ UNION EMPLOYED.” And another one: “BOB CRANE, STAR OF HOGAN’S HEROES, FOUND STABBED TO DEATH.” At the top of