Hello:
I’m still getting used to the Substack ropes, the differences between it and other newsletter programs and I’m not the most technologically adept person in the neighbourhood, so … a little practice today.
I’m posting today about my newest book, Same Ground — Chasing Family Down the California Gold Rush Trail. Here’s a look at the cover.
It’s the story of my hunt, in a way, for the kind of belonging that many people find in their own families — my family was, and is, small, nuclear, and spread out across the North American continent. So the wonder and familiarity of other people’s large family gatherings has been a source of wonder for me for years.
For years after I started writing, my father wanted me to look at my great-great-grandfather’s diary from the 1849 California Gold Rush. And, like most people and their parents, I found other things to do until it was too late, and my father had passed away. That’s how regrets are made, because I wish he had lived long enough to see this book.
In 2016, my wife, author Leslie Vryenhoek, and I set off to follow the route my great-great-grandfather took across the western United States. We travelled where he travelled, saw some of the things he saw and many he did not, and had our own adventure — albeit, without many of the close calls he had.
The book, which was finally finished and on sale in the fall of 2022, contains almost all of his diary, interspersed with our experiences in the the same geographic locations.
Here’s a short sample: the first section is from William Castle Dodge’s 1849 diary, and after the asterisks, it’s me.:
March 25, Sunday, 1849
Ebon and myself went to a Presbyterian and Ferris to an Episcopal Church, but owing to the violent cold which I had taken by riding the first night, I was unable to remain. The weather was fine and the situation of the town, on the steep side hill, with its good supply of Churches, made it appear very nice indeed. Afternoon the steamer Anthony Wayne arrived from St. Louis and there being no probability of any other for several days, we left on her at 5 P.M., and reached the Mississippi, distant 7 miles, just at dark.
***
The Westminster Presbyterian Church is still standing, the construction date of 1846 high on the front under the peak of the roof, so it would have been brand new when Dodge visited. The center of old Galena is clustered around the river, climbing up both sides of the valley now and even spreading across the high flat ground.
It takes us three tries to find the North Ferry Landing Road, the tiny side road that finally takes us first up, then plunging down to the Galena Boating Club, a gathering of finger wharves and flat-bottomed shallow river boats, only a left-hand turn away from the mighty Mississippi (which is all of that, when we cross it later on a massive bridge at twilight at Dubuque). We’ve ended up almost exactly on his route: Fond du Lac, Madison, Blue Mounds, Dodgeville, Mineral Point, Platteville, Galena.
The boating club has a clean, bright-blue Portapotty perched on the berm next to the boat moorings. A sign that says “Members Only,” but no one complains as we walk along beside the tied-up boats, the smoking barbecues, the pick-ups angling backwards towards the ramp to unload their boat trailers. Most of the boats are flat and rectangular with low trim lines and awnings stretching over many of their decks. They’re recreational more than functional. Some are decked with artificial turf, still others have plastic flowers standing along their railings, as if they were floating yards. Under the surface of the water, some of the boats are festooned with long, trailing feathers of algae and waterweed — some of these homes-away-from-home clearly don’t move much.
Men and women are standing around the edge of the water, with glasses and beer cans in their hands, laughing and talking. The backdrop is a glassy river, and about 60 feet away, a long shoulder of trees that look to be big old elms, against the darkening horizon. Huge willows trail long-stranded branchlets down almost to the water’s surface, as if getting ready to drink. The Boating Club sits on a finger of water, a narrow channel that reaches out to the Mississippi. There are small wavelets lapping the pier pilings, a gentle slapping you can hear in those few moments when all the other sounds stop.
There’s a concrete ramp now where we’re told the riverboats like the Anthony Wayne used to come in, dropping off supplies, picking up the product of the lead mines, heading north to Dubuque or south to St. Louis.
The side-wheeler Anthony Wayne was built in 1844 and named after a Revolutionary War general who died, reportedly, of gout. Buried far from home, Wayne was disinterred 12 years later, his bones boiled free of flesh. His family had those bones carried to Radnor, Pennsylvania in a trunk to be reburied. A lot of hard, awful work to be sure that a loved one is finally home. And the steamer?
“Loss of the steamer Anthony Wayne: A telegraphic dispatch was received last night from Keokuk, stating that the Anthony Wayne, from Galena to this city, was sunk yesterday morning, at Wagoner’s Dam, on the Lower Rapids, four miles above Keokuk. Mr. Suss, by whom it was received, has no further particulars. The Anthony Wayne had a heavy cargo on board.” St. Louis Republic, Dec. 1st 1851
The evening is loud and slow and happy, small dogs barking around their feet, the midges coming out in clouds as the sun runs through orange and purple to steady plum.
A small, buzz-cut ginger kid — maybe nine years old — squires adults around in a faded red electric golf cart, and when he’s dropped them all, he drives too fast on the gravel parking lot, trying to pull the back end of the cart into a skid, succeeding, but in the shortest of swings. You get the feeling it won’t be too many years until he’s doing the same with a clapped-out Ford pickup, his friends laughing and hanging on for dear life in the box behind the cab.
There’s another, even younger kid successfully talking his way into the passenger seat of an old-model orange and white pickup, ready to peel out of the parking lot for town. Heading for some big town? No, just Galena, where the traffic slows to a crawl in the Labour Day weekend evening because there’s nothing to do but to see and been seen passing the roadside mini-golf. Malt liquor’s being drunk from the big cans — you see them sprouting up empty in the ditches, as common as mushrooms.
The Mississippi at twilight, the trees full of the songs of katydids, the swamp on the other side of the berm bright electric green and stagnant and pregnant with the calling frogs. There’s a black bull in the meadow behind a split-rail fence, standing stock-still and watching the road cut up and away through a narrow valley. A man in a sleeveless t-shirt is driving an old pickup truck with an American flag nailed to a one-by-two affixed erect in the bed of his truck. He guns the engine to make the truck jump forward, the flag stretching out to its full length. People on the boats point and yell and wave, then circle back into small knots of conversation.
The sky has taken over, the sunset full above the boating club like a movie playing at a massive drive-in. Towering dark clouds poke up over the horizon, promising imminent rain, rain that starts to fall when we’re mere miles away from Galena.
Three states today, and the experience feels like middle America at its loudest and largest.
The Sunday before Labour Day.
There you go.
If you like it and if you’re interested in a copy, it’s at most bookstores and online book sites. If you’re in Saskatoon or Winnipeg or anywhere else with a McNally Robinson Bookseller, could I most politely suggest shopping there? They are so helpful with resources and events for Canadian writers that their efforts deserve to be rewarded. Other independent bookstores are also an excellent choice.
Thanks for putting up with the pitch.