Diving For Shells: Watching for Steamboats

Among the most engaging scenes of the newly released film Mud are several brief episodes in which the character Galen (Michael Shannon) dons an elaborate diving helmet to gather shells or mollusk from the bottom of the White River.  His assistant, a young boy in his early teens named Neckbone (Jacob Lofland) remains alert on the small barge  watching over the air pump and remaining ready to respond to any emergencies or to Galen's signals via a rope to which he is attached.

Because Michael Shannon is known for his portrayal of various crazed characters, any viewer familiar with his roles immediately assumes in him more than a touch of evil.  However, like a number of other false leads in Mud, this is not Galen's role.  In fact, he turns out to be more of a friendly adviser and coach for both the young boys featured in the film, Ellis (Tye Sheridan) and Neckbone.  

Instead, the diving scenes are not the source of terrible danger and potential tragedy, as one naturally expects, but rather in the darkness of the depths could well serve as a metaphor or otherwise enhance the tone of the emerging journey of the boys through their encounters with Mud (Matthew McConaughey)  from the darkness or innocence of childhood into the clear though often harsh realities of the adult world.

DPW Eighth Grade

These scenes, however, were especially engaging for me because on this same White River -- perhaps not far from where much of this film was shot -- during the summer of 1948 or '49 when I was about his age I played Neckbone's role for real while employed by a courageous young Navy veteran newly returned from World War II named O.V. Gosnell. 

 I was that boy who sat on the anchored barge and waited, watching for steamboats and trying to stay alert for any emergency.  If the engine stalled that pumped air down the garden hose to O.V.'s cleverly jerry-rigged helmet, I was prepared to turn the fly wheel of our jerry-rigged engine until he had time to surface so I could hook the top of his helmet to a ring on the back of the barge.  If the occasional steamboat did appear, its whistle could be heard far down beyond the next bend of the river, my signal to pass along to O.V. via a prescribed number of tugs on the rope, the under end of which was around his waist on the bottom of the river.

O.V. Gosnell Eighth Grade

The barge and engine and diving gear of the film, in contrast to ours, are, of course, "hollywood" in every detail, the helmet complete with glass viewing area and even lights, the engine air pump painted and efficient, unlike ours.  Those pictured below in a National Geographic stock image of a diver on the Mississippi River are closer to ours in most details -- the weighted helmet made from a galvanized can and the the net used to collect the shells gathered; only here a hand operated air pump.

Summer jobs around the Bluff that were to be had in the late 1940s and '50s were almost exclusively associated with the farms that extended in vast flat prairies to the south and west of the wooded hamlet that extended along the bend of the River that was home to the post office located in the home of Bealah and George Kline, the Baptist Church that lay at the entrance to the cemetery, and Schwab's Store, the clear center of all important activity, save perhaps on Sunday morning.  So, a job of any kind on the river was unique.

My only previous paying job, before O.V. lured me away with a  promise of the hefty salary of fifty-cents per hour, had been one plowing cotton middles behind a hefty buck skinned horse from sun-up to sun down for $2.50 per day for Mr. George Kline in his lone cotton field some two miles westward out the Hill Road.  We road his horses Lightning and Buck back and forth from our work.

Because O.V. was only able to work beneath the surface of the White River for only a few hours each morning and afternoon, my salary was probably about the same as the one ridding the cotton field middles of their grass and weeds, but it allowed me more time to wander about during the rest of the summer and to hang out at Schwab's Store, where the action was, listening to the stories of travelling salesmen and a random collection of bored and non-working farmers.  The human interaction was what I relished.  For shear isolation, following a horse behind a plow all day, or for that matter riding a tractor all day in two mile laps is to be rated right up there with the legendary lonesome cowboy and his horse riding the range endlessly. 

 The sweltering heat on a barge on a river in summer ( for some reason, an umbrella or even a make-shift were never considered) is hardly an ideal working environment, but it was a welcomed change from work in the fields.

I spent most of my earnings that summer on the purchase of a used bicycle from the Western Auto Store in DeWitt.  It had been newly painted red.  I rode the gravel roads for miles around, and I recall one spill on loose gravel at the bottom of the hill toward the river landing near the Herman Marrs house.  Both knees skinned for a week. 

I remember O.V. as being very supportive of me as a boy, perhaps because he didn't treat me as a boy.   I admired him and was amazed by his abilities and ambitions.  He realized if he could condition himself to descend to the depths of the river he could gather more shells in an hour that those using the conventional "crows feet" method of dragging the bottom from the surface of the water could gather in a long day, or longer.  So, that summer remains a great memory for me.

For some time, as I recall, I begged him to let me give diving a try until one day he consented. At the end of the day, we ventured up around the bend above the Bluff to a sand bar and I gave it a try. I donned the helmet and waded outward.  I doubt I got down more than about ten or twelve feet or so before I sensed my head was about to blow off, and I had to abandoned the venture.  Characteristically, there was not the least hint at teasing me as I rose and removed the helmet. He just said: "Well, you just have go down far enough for your ears to pop; it's easy from that point on.

Footnotes

During the depression years, the button industry thrived on the Arkansas Rivers including the Mississippi.  More on this topic later.