66 years on Buffalo River

When Dad died, we found that during his final few months, he had written some notes about his life - most all of it spent near Flippin, AR in the Ozarks.  Thought I would put a few of his stories, in his words on this web site.  As told by Ike Linck (1919-2006):

One noted experience I had there (telling of time in the C.C.C. camp), were some guys decided to float the Buffalo from State Park to Rush Creek.  They asked me to glo along.  I explained that I had no equipment.  So one young man said he would loan me his if I would learn to cast left handed.  I did, and now 66 years later, I still do.  I think I made the trip to Buffalo City or Shipp's Ferry every year but two that I was overseas (WWII) since then.  Most of the time I have made the trip with family.  My wife, Velma, has had the job of taking us to Rush to put in, and finding our take out point, sometimes with ver poor equipment to use for hauling.

One of our trips we sank the boat on the first shoal below Rush Creek, which happens to be the Clabber Creek Shoals.  One brother was gathering and the rest of us were fishing.  When the river is low there are only three big waves, but the river was a little high and there were five large waves.  We went down from overlaps from the waves, not because we hit something.  The motor was a 5-hp Sea King by Montgomery Ward and the tank was built in.  The tank had a big dent which remained in it the rest of the motor's life, which was six years.  We carried our extra gas in a 5 gallon galvanized can.  

We lost most of our food, and most of the sinking lures, but the gas can stayed closed and upright.  I think we lost most of my brother's wife's silverware, but no ones'  rod and reel.  Everyone was fishing.  We lost 20 cans of beer.  We all had one can.

At the time, the Buffalo was not a national river so it had a few houses on it.  The only house for the next 20 miles was Cedar Creek Joe's at the mouth of Cear Creek about 2.5 miles down river.  There were 4 of us in the boat, and when we pooled our money, we came up with $2.40.  Joe let us have a 5" square of salt "bacon", 6 eggs, and 2 cans of canned tame rabbit.  We caught enough fish to have eats.  One brother had come up from the sunken boat with the coffee pot.  The coffee was in a vacuum packed tin can and had floated.  Our Ivory soap had floated.  So, we had a good trip and didn't starve.  It was overnight.  This happened sometime during the "40's" and we still made the trip several times a year for the next 50 or 60 years.

It was fun.

Picture of Ike Linck "floating the Buffalo" taken 2004.