Page 95 - "Mississippi in the 1st Person" - Michael James Stone (Demo/Free)

Without a bug, without a tic, without even a mosquito it did seem very odd, but I knew sooner
or later they had to come. The thought I felt at the time was the river was giving me a different

taste of everything I would yet experience all the way down it. This was just an aperitif of a
banquet waiting for me in the south.

The river was too tempting and I just had to go for the river road that lay before me and adven-

tures yet to be experienced.

They say watch what you pray for you just might get it, and I certainly expected many things
and tried to anticipate everything.

My learning lessons were beginning to take effect and while I had not yet dumped all the infor-

mation I was given or had researched yet, I was skeptical now because with only 3 or 4 days
in, it seemed my expectations were greater than my realizations.

Mark Twain said something to the same effect but with a little more pizzazz.

Because I had faced so many life and death obstacles in my life when I was younger, I was of-
ten asked once getting past my faith, how I dealt with death. I simply said, death is part of life.

If you fear death, you’ll have problems with life. If you accept death as part of life, you don’t
fear dying, you just try to avoid the pain.

My mother once said to me the best advice I never forgot. When facing things you can’t do, do

what little you can and keep doing what little there is till you really can’t do anything about it,
by that time you will get it done, or realize there was no way to do it in the first place. She was
more independent than I was, sort of.

“...with a bit of grin I usually set in that thing that can’t be done and I do it…..”