Updated to include 2019 flood.

The night before I started to write this memoir, I dreamt I lost the boathouse on the upper Mississippi River where I have lived for 37 years. A cargo ship larger than an oceangoing freighter somehow steamed beneath the old “Wagon Bridge” a half mile downriver from my boathouse.

Richie moves into a boathouse on the Mississippi in 1987. His sweetheart Barbi moves into a boathouse next door in 1988.

Richie’s boathouse life continues, faithfully documented by Barbi Bell’s photos.

The joys of boathouse life persist even as Medicare kicks in.