Johnny Nelson
Guest Column
I don’t remember meeting Larry Robison.  He was the kind of childhood friend who just seemed to have always been a part of my life.  We grew up together, and after getting our drivers licenses, we went places together and double-dated together when one of us could snare the family car.  We did a lot of things that were fun, some that were stupid, and some even dangerous.
 And while loss has become commonplace by the time one enters his 70’s, I  was still shocked by Larry’s death earlier this month.  Other dear classmates had recently departed after illnesses of some duration, but Larry’s passing was sudden, and I was not prepared.
 Though the friendship would endure for decades, the event that really bound us together was a short two-week period in the summer of 1960.  During that time we made a raft voyage down the Tallahatchie to Greenwood, followed that up with visits to Vicksburg and New Orleans by bus, and then returned to Batesville on the City of New Orleans – pretty big doings for teenage boys of that era.
 I don’t remember just when we first got the raft idea, but it was a notion that our parents didn’t embrace.  Rather than forbid it, their strategy had been just to sit back and allow the Huckleberry Finn dream to be replaced by some other boyhood whim.
 But the dream lived on, and in the summer following our junior year, the raft began to take shape on my parents’ farm, and within a couple of weeks, the roughly 6 X 8 foot craft was nearing completion.  Daddy stayed out of it until he saw me attaching four, 55-gallon oil drums with bailing wire.  He then got a couple of men from the compress to come out and securely band the drums to the raft’s frame.  In doing so, I knew that he had bought into the venture.
 The raft was loaded on a cotton trailer on July 11, and towed down the Dummyline to the east side of the bridge crossing the river.  From there it was dragged down the bank and placed in the water.  We spent our first night on board, and the next morning we declared it “seaworthy.”  By noon, we had it loaded with a few supplies and shoved off under the gaze of quite a few onlookers.
 What followed was, as we would declare many times over the following years, the most carefree days of our lives.  I can remember sweeping around the bends, our ragged appearance and strange craft startling fishermen on the banks as Elvis’ “It’s Now or Never,” or Roy Orbison’s “Only the Lonely,” blasted from our transistor radio.  Other than an occasional stop at a store or plantation commissary to replenish our supplies, there was nothing that we had to do.
 Reading a yellowed copy of a “ Panolian” recently found among my Mother’s papers, I marvel at how accurately editor Hunt Howell had, without being there, summed up our experience.  “But the simple fun of being off by themselves for a fortnight, keeping no schedule, eating when they pleased, working together to keep the craft moving…”
 It’s also ironic that Hunt’s article gave so much mention to our parents’ concern for our safety.  Lured by the romance of our adventure, a group of youngsters that included his son Rupert would make a similar voyage about seven years later.
 Our original plan had been to travel on down the Yazoo to Vicksburg and then into the Mississippi for a final voyage down to New Orleans.  By the time we reached Greenwood, we knew that our unwieldy craft had no business on the Mississippi, but we still felt capable of floating down at least a part of the Yazoo.
 To get us off the river, our parents consented to letting us finish the trip by bus.  When I think about Larry and me spending the night in a seedy hotel in downtown Vicksburg and later wandering around on Bourbon Street, I realize that our parents got suckered into a bad deal – we would have been safer on the Yazoo.
 A couple of songs popular that summer have been mentioned, but what was to become our “theme song” didn’t come out until the next year.  With lyrics like “Two drifters off to see the world, there’s such a lot of world to see,” it seemed that “Moon River” had been written for Larry and me.  A few years later, we discussed the attraction that song had for both of us and how it reminded us of our voyage.
 With the passing of time and Larry’s settling in North Carolina, we saw less of one another.  The last meetings were brief ones at Robison family funerals, but friendships forged during those twelve, formative years of school are strong and don’t require nurturing.
 Looking at a photo on the wall of my office and another one in the old “Panolian,” I see two young boys frozen in time.  In one, Larry is standing in river water and mud preparing to push the raft away from the bank and just then remembering that he had forgotten to bring shoes.
 In the other, I’m laboring over a crude rudder and still about thirty minutes away from learning that it would have little effect on a boxy craft traveling at the same speed as the current.  There would be little steering, and in the words of the song, “Wherever you’re going, I’m going your way.”
 Sadly I realize that now I’m the only drifter, and I can hear Andy Williams crooning, “We’re after the same rainbow’s end, waiting ‘round the bend,
                            My huckleberry friend…”