From: "robert gold" <ibau39@hotmail.com>

john hartford, famed banjoist, fiddler, guitarist (on the Glen Campbell show) folk dancer and song writer is also a Mississipi River pilot for many years. a few words from john ought to conflate the mighty streams of folk music and Big River waters.

also, the song "Big River" by Johnny Cash is a travelogue of your subject as well as a fine piece of art itself.

you know of course the river is leveed and dammed to excess by the corps of army engineers, a series of classical government interventions and fuckups. ask the people who used to live in Alton, IL.

i think because of the dams, the pilots are confined to specific locations between these dams. hartford i think is a captain somewhere in the neighborhood of dubuque.