Tales from Wabasha

WABASHA, Minn. — Small towns on the Mississippi River are special.

Over the past 40 years, I've spent hundreds of days and nights in Bellevue (pop. 2,363), Guttenberg (1,817) and Lansing (968) on the Iowa side of the big river, Genoa (232), Lynxville (132), Stoddard (864), Trempealeau (1,890) Alma (718), Pepin (743), Stockholm (79) and Bay City (439) on the Wisconsin shores and Wabasha (2,603) on the Minnesota border.

They are charming and picturesque. They are home to legendary individuals and legendary stories. Life tends to move at a leisurely pace.

Most have no traffic lights or roundabouts. Rush hour is three boats headed to the local ramp at the same time. People are generally friendly and welcoming (unless a visitor wins on Bingo night).

Most of my time on the river is tied to fishing, and every one of those hamlets offers excellent angling for a variety of popular species. It's what has occurred beyond jigs and crankbaits that sets Wabasha apart for me and many others.

I'm proud to be one of the grumpy old men who pulls into the "Moron Parking Only" slot at the famous Slippery's Bar and Grill. Several of the most bizarre experiences of my life have taken place in Wabasha.

Four years ago, eight or 10 of us were enjoying a late night summer campfire at a friend's trailer in Beaver Point Park. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, a guy came climbing up the river bank toward us holding a box of lighted candles. He began handing out candles while chanting some kind of gibberish and encouraging everyone to get in touch with their spiritual side.

Most of the women in our group played along, but some of the guys weren't so patronizing.

"What have you been smoking? Which cloud did you fly down from? Do you need to go to the hospital?"

The man, who was probably in his 40s, finally gathered his candles and announced he was off for a naked ride in his runabout. The host for our little party retrieved a spotlight from his trailer. Sure enough, the visitor was bare to the world as he motored up the channel. We later learned he was an eccentric but harmless local from town.

A year later, three or four of us were enjoying an adult beverage at the Wabasha VFW when a scraggly looking young man with a safety pin through his nose walked in and sat down beside us. He looked like he'd been sleeping in the bushes, which he had, and he looked like he hadn't eaten in days, which he hadn't.

That's when Kim Lemke from our group, who was sitting next to him, took over. When he opened his wallet to pay for an order of fries, he only had $2. Kim bought him a burger, which he devoured like a starving dog, and struck up a conversation.

His name was Matthew, and he had hopped a train and ridden in a boxcar halfway across the country before getting off near Wabasha. Somewhere along the way, he had a girlfriend and a young child. He was a fentanyl addict, and he'd chosen Wabasha with the goal of getting a ride to Rochester where he hoped to get into a detox program at Mayo Clinic.

At one point, Matthew slipped outside for a few minutes. He returned with a backpack he had stashed somewhere nearby. He pulled out a ukulele, which he played quite well, then wailed out a tune about his troubled journey in life. Singing was not his strong point.

The next day, he reportedly secured a ride to Rochester. Hopefully, his story has a happy ending.

Last week, my lifelong friend Randy Randall joined me for a couple of days of fishing at Wabasha. Early one evening, we saw a large sailboat using a small outboard engine to make its way down the river channel. We thought no more of it until late the next morning when we stopped to fish a wingdam and saw the same sailboat stuck on a nearby dam. Black smoke bellowed from his motor as he tried to get free, but he was aground.

The man began waving his arms for help, so we headed his way. He was 50-ish, alone, bare-chested, bruised and bloodied.

"How'd you end up there?" Randy asked.

"The sun was in my eyes and I couldn't see where I was going," he answered.

Randy told him to throw us a rope. He threw us one that wasn't nearly heavy enough to move a sailboat off a wingdam. Randy told him to find another, so he grabbed a better rope, tossed it our way, and Randy secured it to my Lund. That's where the trouble began. We needed to pull him off backward rather than over the rest of the dam, and the rope the man threw us was attached to the front of the sailboat, meaning it was threaded all the way through the boat and out the back.

Between the river current and the rope pulling sideways through the sailboat, it was a frustrating challenge to get lined up correctly to execute the extraction.

At one point, the man started telling me how to drive my boat.

"Hey, you drove your boat onto a wingdam," Randy pointed out. "This guy (me) drives this boat about every day. I think he knows what he's doing."

Eventually, we pulled him free and back out into the river channel where Randy set him free. We barely got a thank you.

The next day I was talking to the manager at Wabasha Marina. A friend of hers who is in the boat rescue and towing business had received a call the previous night from this guy in the sailboat. When informed what it would cost to get help, the guy said he didn't have any money and ended up spending the night on the wingdam.

At least Randy and I caught a few walleyes and crappies. After all, Wabasha is a special place.