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Shantyboat home in Felton California. Benzy has to lift the telephone wires on the little road up to where the shantyboat nestles in the redwoods

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Shantyboat in the Paducah Labor Day Parade. Nathan Lynn playing banjo while Wes tries to make banjo sounds that are not too disharmonious. Photo by Mitch Kimball

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Lowertown Sunday kiln firing with Mitch Kimball

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Looking through the Mary Wheeler collection at the McCracken County Library

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Rev Kempton Baldridge one of a few chaplains for more than 4000 towboats and riverboats on American Rivers

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Shantyboat On display today and tomorrow. Open House 10-2pm Saturday at the River Discovery Museum on Water St in Paducah

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Bruce Walker king of the bar-b-Que in north Paducah at A&J’s BBQ. We had a great conversation about the neighborhood and then he made the most delectable ribs I’ve had all year

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African glass beads at Melanie and Erileigh’s stall at the Paducah Farmers Market. So much good stuff, fresh veggies and fruit. Shantyboat parked at edge of market

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Shantyboat seen through the windows of the Founder’s Room at the River Discovery Center in Paducah where the Secret History installation will be for the next two weeks

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My favorite Secret History paparazzi photo. Back from the Benzy as ships mate days

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Adrian playing dress up. He already had the radio on so we could listen to radio chatter as they blew up a major highway span we were crossing under. Thanks to friends in Guntersville for the sweet patches

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Old Danville Grain Elevator submerged by the inundated Tennessee River in the flooded town of Danville

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Our first volunteer fish dinner! When we to hop in the johnboat to pick up new ships mate Penske, we found he had jumped in during our rough traversal of Kentucky Lake

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Join us in Paducah Kentucky for a two week long series of Secret History events. Modes has exhibited the project in Knoxville, Chattanooga, Huntsville, and Florence, and will end his historic journey at the Port of Paducah. The project will be exhibiting for two weeks starting August 23rd in partnership with the Paducah Arts Alliance.

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Storm looming above the shantyboat. Photo by Adrian Nankivell

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Not everyone knows it’s good luck to pass under a train bridge and extra if it has a train and even more if it’s moving. So it was a lucky day

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Davis “Scoop” Anderson who worked on riverboats and rowboats for years, finally settling out as a newspaper editor (earning his nickname

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Shantyboat in the secret abandoned marina of the planet of the apes

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We learn to read the river: this beautiful herringbone pattern precedes larger wind waves. A steady breeze over a reach creates tiny ripples that reinforce each other, becoming swells that can become challenging for the shantyboat

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Pete Selmeci who’s job is to fix big boats and move them around. He was limping this disabled Love Boat with his business partner Mark downriver. He helped us look at our own limping Freddie Mercury who lost reverse gear and supplied is with rum and coke

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Barges in the mist. People ask us constantly if the tows give us any trouble. After over 1000 miles on inland waters we can definitively say, No, towboat crews are professional, more courteous, more responsible, and create less wake than big yachts

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The folks at Clifton Marina treated us super decently. Say hi to Sonja and Gene when you come by on the Tennessee River

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Captivating on several levels. Main St of Saltillo leads right down a boat ramp to the river with a half dozen stop signs near the end. Perhaps they had a problem’tDriveInTheRiver

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Roger Lard, fisherman near Savannah TN, trotline trays in the foreground and live catfish tank in the background

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After our thorough ten-minute tour of Savannah Tennessee, we went upriver to a kind of local party spot sandbar where we were regaled with stories, loaded up with beer, given hats with local logos, and generally lived the shantyboaters celebrity lifestyle. People asked lots of curious questions and enjoyed a snort or two of Dr…

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Shantyboat bloody marys for three days provided by our generous hosts upriver, Mark & Rachel. Thanks sister Heather

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Jabbok Refuge Center Church service. Just a few doors down from the museum where Black stories have been erased

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Tennessee River Museum in Savannah TN, like many river museums I’ve visited that extensively explore area history including the geology, native people, steamboat era, musseling & fishing, and a great deal about the civil war without ever once mentioning slavery, emancipation or African Americans in any way. Black people are completely missing from the story…

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Pittsburg Landing, the landscape where one of the great battles of the American Civil War was fought, the Battle of Shiloh. Confederate forces surprise attacked a Union division lead by Ulysses Grant working their way up the Tennessee River. The Union Army prevailed only because they were reinforced by several divisions on day two

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The Delta Mariner a vessel unlike any we’ve seen passes by us. We think it is the huge ship that carries rocket parts back and forth between Cape Canaveral and Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsvile

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Rooster’s Dogs & Burgers surrounded by hundreds of boats attending a strange boat-in only concert in Northern Mississippi-in

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Shantyboat out of place at the grand Harbor on Pickwick Lake, surrounded by plastic people, huge expensive boats that never leave the harbor and party barges stirring the Tombigbee River into a confusion of high swells

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Hazel got scalded when an enormous yacht came by close and fast while we were anchored and knocked a pot of boiling water off the stove. She yelped and cried and we iced her foot for a half hour. Probably not seriously hurt but it makes me hate irresponsible boaters even more. Big yachts are…

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