“Me, George Ringo and Sonny Bencini on the Mississippi”

It was a beautiful spring day and not a cloud in sight, so George Ringo and I decided to go to Middle Bar looking for unusual rocks and hoping for some pretty agate or an arrowhead or two.  I had found a nice chunk of, almost but not quite, gem quality green jade.  It was about one ounce and I sliced it and formed a cab for a dinner ring for Frieda.

We knew Sonny Bencini would drop us off on the head of the island when he went down river to run his nets and pick us up on the way back up.

We found Sonny and he did drop us off and it was becoming a fun day.  We both had several interesting specimens and were really enjoying the morning on the beautiful Mississippi.

After a couple of hours we noticed a black cloud to the southwest and heard the unmistakable rumble of thunder.  What happened next I had heard of but never, thank goodness, experienced.  I felt the hair tingle on my forearms.  George yelled at me and said he was experiencing the same and he said my hair was standing up.  I knew a charge was building up under us from what I had been told about lightning so I got George and we lay down in one of the deep holes the currents had formed and got on our knees in the fetal position until the storm passed by.  As soon as my knees hit the sand the tingling was gone.  We were no longer the highest object.  The thunder storm did not last long and Sonny soon showed up to get us.  He had gone to the bank to wait it out.

The Corp had just laid some concrete rip rap on the bank below Columbus and above Chalk Bluff and Sonny spotted a mink on the rip rap.  He eased the boat to the bank and picking up a piece of staging jumped out of the boat.  I asked him what he was doing and he said he was going to catch that mink.  I told him that that thing will eat him alive but he ignored me.  The cracks in the concrete were about one and a half or two inches wide and that rascal made a noose and after many tries managed to lasso the minks foot.  It slipped off so he tried and succeeded once more.  Just as he got it to the top it slipped off again and this time the mink got out of sight.  I am sure Sonny had his guardian angel with him that morning for I am sure you do not want to grab a live adult mink wearing only thin leather work gloves.

I did not go back to the island again until I had my own boat and then I checked the weather beforehand.
This was published in The Hickman County Times 07/10/12   Volume 3 issue 28