Friday, November 30, 2007

Where went all the water.

When Lewis & Clark went up the Missouri, the river was three times as wide and carried three times as much water.

When Robert E. Lee, before the Civil War and when he was in the Corp of Engineers, built the levees and dikes that keep the Mississippi out of E. St. Louis and the St. Louis waterfront free of silt, the river carried three times the water it does now.

There is a creek near where my mother lives in Missouri. When Missouri was Spanish territory, before the Louisiana Purchase, the Spanish considered it to be a river, a rather important one that required them to build a fort at its mouth. When I was in grade school, it was waste deep. Today, you can wade across it in most spots and never get the top of your socks wet.

When I was a kid, we would visit my aunt and uncle in the country many times every summer to swim in the wonderful creek that flowed through their farm. There were several clear, deep swimming holes, with fish of considerable size who were less than thrilled to share their home. I saw one of my cousins recently and asked if he and his kids still swam in the creek. "Nope," he said, "it's been dry for years, the swimming holes have all filled in."

Where went all the water?
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:P fuzzbox said...

Did it become Budweiser?

LOL LOL even Rooty laughed!!

1 comment:

:P fuzzbox said...

Did it become Budweiser?