The Niña

Thursday, October 18, 2007

Field trip.

7:30 in the morning, Mom, Frances, and Linnea pulled into the driveway in the minivan and helped Collette and Puck move into the vehicle.

Off to see the Niña.

The Niña – of the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria. An exact replica had just docked in the Alton marina, built in Brazil, sailed the (two or three seas), and was headed to New Orleans for Christmas, and then to Panama. Fully staffed, the crew slept on board and navigated the open ocean. Collette was very interested in seeing this great ship and added OLeif’s camera bag to Puck’s armada of things in the van.

After picking up Grandma in Florissant, they arrived at around the dot of 9:00, ascending the levy to the marina. And there it was – the regal, the majestic, the tiny Niña.

How 27 sailors could fit on deck, Collette wasn’t sure. But somehow it had happened. Furthermore, they all slept on deck. Never below. That was were they kept the supplies and the animals. Only Christopher Columbus had his own personal poorly ventilated hatch. (The crew had been mostly between the ages of fourteen and twenty.)

But the ship was beautiful, nevertheless. The rigging, masts, anchor, lamps. Yet such a tiny vessel on such a fierce Atlantic. Good thing it had been accompanied by the larger Santa Maria and Pinta, which, poor boat, was later lost at sea. All hands down. Never discovered. Collette decided that it would have been a fantastic wreck to locate, somewhere buried below in the deeps.

There were also photographs aboard of an excavation side in the Dominican Republic. Christopher Columbus’ house. Red dirt and skeletons. Another interesting dig.

After Grandma had purchased little ship fenders woven in Aruba and a book on Christopher Columbus, all for Frances and Linnea, it was back on the river road.

Grandma was already passing out the snacks, including fruit veggie juice, which Frances began to drink with much gusto.

“Hey, buster, I want some too,” said Grandma.

“Okay, here you go, Grandma,” Frances handed her a cupful. “And you can have more when you finish.”

“Well, thaaaaaank you,” Grandma laughed.

Linnea sat in the back, hooking together the plastic rings for Puck.

“Hey, Grandma, could I have a barge for my birthday?” Frances asked.

“Sure.”

“I want to build a giant air-soft field.”

“Well I think that’s an admirable goal.”

“Yeah, we could have two floating side by side.”

“It may be a little weird. But I can see how there is a great need for a playing field in the middle of the Mississippi River.”

By this time, they had arrived at a little park in Elsah. Semi-Colonial homes, a few 1950’s, stone and clapboard. Yellow earthenware pots of red eucalyptus in the windows. Small gardens and glades under autumn forests and bluffs, shadows. Somewhat primitive. The doors of the town hall were locked with a heavy chain.

Then a pumpkin patch, several miles into the interior. In the middle of nowhere, surrounded by apple orchards. No other visitors were present that morning, just the elderly farmer in his barn, waiting for customers.

They spent the next part of the afternoon looking over the patch and filling up the back of the trunk with happy-looking pumpkins: orange, green, and yellow. The farmer was selling them for a dollar apiece, and fifty cents for the little ones. So Puck got his first pumpkin for fifty cents, a chubby specimen that the kids picked out for him.

Linnea walked through the bedraggled rows, pointing out pumpkins that had the appearance of family members.

“This one is you,” she said. “It’s skinny.”

She pointed to a large one nearby.

“That’s OLeif.”

“And that, poor sad little thing,” she pointed to a small squashed pumpkin near the road, “reminds me of Rose.”

Then their trip continued back down the river road, Grandma and Mom talking about bittersweet and sweet potato fries, etcetera. They then landed themselves at a restaurant by the river.

Later that evening, after the adventures had been concluded, OLeif studied Hinduism while watching clips with Collette of conch diving in Tobago. Outside, wild winds whipped through the neighborhood.