A recent note from a stranger has dredged up some pleasant memories from 22 years ago and solved a mystery to boot!

To set the scene, let’s harken back to Sept. 6, 2003.  I was happily paddling through a really sweet spot on my solo canoe trip down the Mississippi River.  It was that section between southwestern Wisconsin and the northeastern bit of Iowa, a stretch replete with great river towns to stop at and savor.

There were great midwestern breakfasts, ribeye steak dinners with all the fixings, and yes, cold frosty beers, scattered all along the banks.   How could I not take advantage of all that?

In the previous few days I had already stopped at LaCrosse and Victory, in Wisconsin, and just the day before I’d stopped for breakfast in Genoa, Wisconsin, and a late afternoon beer in Gordon’s Landing, also in Wisconsin.  It was a tough life, but someone had to do it.

On September 6, still in the sweet spot, I stopped for a pleasant late breakfast in Lansing, Iowa.  Back in the boat and barely a mile and a half downstream, I encountered the next Iowa town, McGregor.  I wasn’t planning to stop, but the huge, covered veranda and open docks at the town marina beckoned mightily.

Here’s where the plot to this bolt out of the blue tale starts unfolding. 

As I walked onto the veranda and wound through the tables, a woman shouted out to me.  Her name was Mary Kay and she recognized me from the story about my trip in the La Crosse Tribune.  This was back in those quaint olden times when newspapers were still mostly printed and maintained robust regional circulations.

Mary Kay and her brother and sister were in town with their spouses on a family reunion and were more than happy to greet a grizzled river traveler.  They had seen me pull up to the marina in my fully-laden canoe and they knew I was the real thing. I was just happy for the instant friends.

We had a great visit and while we were there a cabin cruiser pulled up to the dock. We noticed that the manager and a small entourage from the marina were right there to greet the middle-aged couple that disembarked and escort them inside.  Mary Kay buttonholed our waiter and quickly learned that a celebrity had arrived.

The “celebrity” was no one any of us recognized and none of the wait staff knew who it was.   But Mary Kay persevered, and she wrote me months later that our mystery boater was Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the San Francisco poet and a major figure in the Beat Generation.

As the co-founder and owner of City Lights Bookstore and Publishing in San Francisco, Ferlinghetti published many of the Beat authors. An acclaimed writer, and artist himself, he died in 2021 just before his 102^nd birthday.

After I got Mary Kay’s note, I did a bit of research but never confirmed that he was the celebrity we saw and for decades never even thought much more of it.

Until the bolt from the blue. 

Just this week a gentleman named Nolan Rosencrans dropped this comment on my website account of my visit to McGregor:

“I came across this while researching a 2003 copy of Quimby’s Cruising Guide owned by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. He did, in fact, do a voyage down the Mississippi River in 2003 and took detailed notes throughout. Per his notes, he was in McGregor on Sept. 6, so your information was almost certainly correct that the celebrity in town was Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Thought you would be interested in getting belated confirmation.”

Quimby’s, for the uninitiated, is a printed guidebook used by folks who cruise the Mississippi in large boats, cabin cruisers and the like.  It is updated annually and lists marinas, boat repair shops, restaurants, hotels and other attractions along the way.  It also has lots of space to take notes as one travels along.  I in fact had, and often referred to, a years’-old edition that was given to me by some boater friends I met at a marina in Burlington, Iowa.

For someone to actually have Ferlinghetti’s 2003 edition of Quimby’s and then to see my little entry in my river trip and drop me a note is coincidental beyond belief.  I’ve asked Nolan for the story of how he came to have this book and if he gets back to me I’ll let you know.

Now all I have to do is figure out how to get back in touch with Mary Kate and give her the news that her sleuthing so many years ago produced the truth!