A book by an Iowa-based folklorist and photographer chronicles life on the Mississippi River during the 20th century through the eyes of a western Illinois man whose life revolved around the river.
“Back Them Days – Reflections on a Life on the Mississippi River” is a self-published book by Sherry Pardee. It tells the story of the late Clinton “Bus” Downs, a commercial fisherman who lived in the tiny river town of Meyer on the western-most tip of Illinois.
“Bus was one of those special people that you meet in life that you realize, this is an exemplary human being, and someone who’s just lived honorably, lived well, and just has done amazing things with their life in a way beyond what normal people do,” Pardee told TSPR.
She said she’s spoken with fishermen “way up north on the Mississippi” who know of Bus, respected him, and consider him a legend.
“He was almost like a Daniel Boone figure. He would trap and hunt with his father when they weren’t fishing. He and his father would trap and hunt from Canada all the way down to Mississippi, way beyond what the normal fisherman or hunter would do,” Pardee said.
‘A beautiful rhythm and prose to his speech’
Bus was a third-generation fisherman, born in 1915. As a boy, he was nicknamed Buster, which was shortened to Bus, and that’s the name everyone knew him by.
“Back Them Days” is largely told in Bus’s own words.
“I just organized his stories and put them all together so that there was a flow that worked for the book. But I really let Bus speak for himself and I resisted any voiceover,” she said.
“I felt like he did not need any interpretation or any commentary. I just had my simple introduction and the book is really all in Bus’s words.”
She said he had “a beautiful rhythm and prose to his speech” that she found poetic.
Pardee’s black and white photographs add a timeless element to the pages.
Discovering the stories
Pardee met Bus in the summer of 1987, when the Illinois Arts Council hired her to survey traditions of commercial fishermen on the Upper Mississippi.
She lived in Quincy and had heard stories about Bus, so she drove up to Meyer to meet him. She ended up listening to him tell stories for three hours.
“Bus lived on the Mississippi, the chair in his house he always sat in looked right out on the Mississippi, and it was a place that he lived and a place that he worked,” Pardee said.
For the next four years, she kept returning and recording his stories, and twice she went out on the river with him.
“And that involved getting up at five in the morning, going out before dawn. Bus would fish about 20 miles on that stretch of the river and had out over 80 nets that he would pull,” she said.
Bus primarily caught carp and catfish.
Pardee learned from him that there was a community of 38 fishermen around Meyer when Bus was a young man in the 1930s. He was the youngest of the group. Most of the others were his father’s peers.
“They worked in pairs on the Mississippi, and would catch tons of fish, and the fish were shipped across the river from Canton, Missouri down to St. Louis on ice in box cars. Also, from Meyer by truck on ice to Chicago,” Pardee said.
“Back in the ‘30s and before the locks and dams were put in the Mississippi, fishermen were catching fish by the tons, and they were paid by the tons.”
Pardee said Bus worked no matter the weather and no matter the conditions on the river. There were times he fell overboard and almost died, but others would rescue him, drag him ashore, and he’d end up going back to work, never complaining.
“It was just what he did and it was just his work. And his life,” she said.
‘Back them days’ and ‘nowadays’
Pardee said a lot of Bus’s memories were of how the river once was as compared to today. He often spoke about “back them days” and “nowadays.”
“Back them days” would include stories about hunting with his father.
His stories of “nowadays” were of pollution, chemical runoff from farms, and how the fish population was decreasing.
“Bus reflected a lot about how he felt like he was the last of a community of men who once worked in this region and made a livelihood. And how the work and the tradition that he once knew was no longer existing. It was starting to disappear,” Pardee said.
As the way of life Bus knew started disappearing, he also saw diminishment in the state of the river. Pardee said Bus talked about how the lock and dam system caused the river to fill in with silt.
“When he was younger, the Mississippi River was about 100 feet deep, and often now it’s about six feet deep,” she said.
But Bus saw the river in very practical terms. He wasn’t romantic about it.
“He also could see how the changes in the world were affecting that and his livelihood. So he saw it as a time that was passing,” she said.
Meyer was devastated by the historic flood of 1993. Bus moved to Quincy after that flood.
Bus resided in the Veterans Home in Quincy when he passed away in 2008.
Putting together the book
Pardee said most of her interviews with Bus were done between 1987 and ’91. She recorded them on little cassette tapes, then transcribed them.
Pardee said she printed out everything and would literally cut and paste sections of stories, lay them out on the floor, and organize them in groups by types of stories. She then retyped it all.
She said it was a longer and more tedious process than if she’d started the project today.
Pardee also worked jobs, so she’d have to put the book project on the backburner and come back to it when she had time.
She had the book mostly finished before COVID, but said she needed that down time during the pandemic to focus on fine-tuning it.
“Also, I found the passage of time helped me in reflecting on how I wanted to finish the book,” she said.
Pardee said the book pretty much fits with the vision she had for it when she started out. She always saw it as the personal story of Bus Downs in his own words, with her black and white photographs mixed in.
She hopes readers will develop “a deep respect for the exemplary life Bus Downs lived, and are moved by his wisdom.”
Tri States Public Radio produced this story. TSPR relies on financial support from our readers and listeners in order to provide coverage of the issues that matter to west central Illinois, southeast Iowa, and northeast Missouri. As someone who values the content created by TSPR's news department please consider making a financial contribution.
