Who We Are

We're Marion and Anne McFarland of Dubuque, Iowa, both fifty-nine, both newly retired as of June. Marion taught industrial arts at the high school for thirty-one years: woodshop, metals, small engines and drafting, and some of you reading this learned to use a band saw from him and still have all your fingers. Anne was a surgical nurse for twenty-eight years and has held more hands in recovery rooms than she could count.

We have talked about doing this since 1971, when we rented a houseboat for a weekend on the river above Dubuque and Marion got it stuck on a sandbar in front of a church picnic. In May we bought a used one, a 32-foot fiberglass houseboat built in 1984, from a widow in Red Wing whose husband had kept her beautifully. We renamed her the Recess, which Marion thought of, and which everybody says is bad luck. (Renaming the boat, that is. Not Marion.) We rented the house for a year to a young doctor and his wife, and on Monday, August 2, we cast off from Red Wing and pointed her downstream.

We take turns writing. You'll be able to tell us apart. Marion writes in the plain type and tells you about engines and locks. Anne writes in the fancy type and tells you about people. Our son Lance in Des Moines and our daughter Tonya in Cedar Rapids get these by e-mail too, but this way their friends and ours can follow along, and we don't have to tell the story about the bait shop eleven times.

What's Next

From here it's about 160 miles of open river to Cairo, where the Ohio comes in. We'll turn up the Ohio there, and then go on up the Tennessee River to Kentucky Lake, where a man Marion met at the Burlington fuel dock has promised us a slip for the winter at a fair price. Fuel and marinas are few and far between on this next stretch, so we're topped off and carrying extra, and Marion has bought two spare impellers. Next letter when we find a library. Pray for us, and for low wind. -- A.