Ben Simmons
Farnham 4th
5/13/2007
John Sutton has lived his entire life along the Mississippi River. Since he was a kid he has lived in the same town and in the same house for 17 years. To John the river wasn’t just a place to go and hang out with some friends, or a just a place to go out and ride around on his little canoe and fish. The river was a way of life to John. To be on the river and to just get out into the open was what John wanted the most out of anything in life. John dreamt of getting out of his town and traveling on the river as a captain of his own ship. That has been his dream since he could remember. He would always sit on the riverbank and watch the ferries and cargo ships pass by. He just hoped that one day that could be him on the ships sailing up and down the magnificent Mississippi.
John has never really liked where he lived or the people in his small town. John’s family was not the riches bunch off people that have ever lived either. They never took any vacations and if they did it were just to go see their family in northern Mississippi. He wants to get out from this life of boredom. He also was not such a good student. His dad was very hard on him for his grades. His dad wanted the best for John and pushed him hard when it came to his schoolwork. His dad didn’t want John to end up like him, in a small town with a bad job and not making much money. He knew that John had the potential to do great things in his life, if only he could focus in school. He also never wanted John to work on the river because his dad; John’s grandfather was a riverboat captain and lost his life when his dad’s ship sunk one day and his dad unfortunately didn’t make it out in time. John hated whenever he would bring up something about the river his dad would get upset and tells John the same story about his dad. John had a lot of pressure on him and that just fueled his fire to get out of the town and on to the Mississippi River. John just wanted to get out and be free from all the pressure.
A year went by with John feeling the same way about everything. John was now 18 years old and a high school graduate. He passed all his classes, but with low C’s. His family had just barley saved up enough money to get John through college at the local community college about an hour down the way. As the summer passed John’s desire for the open river became more and more passionate with everyday that he would spend on the river. He would occasionally travel down to the docks, they were about an hour away and he would watch all the boats come in from a day of sailing on the river. When John was there once he saw that a captain needed help on one of his boats, just as a deckhand doing some everyday task on the ship. This was a golden opportunity for John, a job that he had always wanted.
On the way back from the docks John devised a plan that he thought would work, he would stay at his house for the rest of the summer and when it was time for him to go to college he would just go to the docks and take the job. When the summer finally came to an end john packed his things said goodbye to his family and went directly to the docks and got the deckhand job that he had wanted earlier in the summer. The captain told him that this was not there main port, it was really somewhere in Illinois. This was a huge surprise to John, he thought of his family and his friends but it just wasn’t enough to overcome his passion for the river. So the magnificent journey began for John. The job was not as glamorous as he had thought; he had to do all the jobs that know one else ever wanted to do. But John soon accomplished his dream of sailing in the Mississippi. It was an amazing feeling to John, it felt like freedom; he had no stress, pressure and nothing to worry about. John was felling good about what he had done. He had finally escaped into his perfect world. He set a goal and had accomplished it sooner that he really thought he would. He was a happy kid.
John knew though that his parents would be concerned and worry about him. So one day while his ship was in port in New Orleans he sent a note to his family just saying what he was now doing, where he had been, not to worry about him, that he was happy, and he was positive that he would stay, and last that he loved all of them. As the years passed John became the captain of the ship that he had first started out on. He was a good captain and made many trips between New Orleans to Minnesota through out his days as captain. John and his family never spoke again since he sent them that letter.
The one thing that really kept John going was every time he would pass his little town while he was on the river. He could see his old house and he remembered what he had to give up to be here. Even with that feeling that he had no regrets of his life, he was happy that he did it and would not change one thing about it.
