Take a close look at this rather fuzzy image. It’s from an old postcard archived in the Lauderdale Library, and it shows just what you think it shows: A gentleman in long pants, jacket, and cap is WALKING down the middle of the Mississippi River. The photo was taken just as he passed Arkansas City, Arkansas, sometime in January 1907. And though it’s hard to tell from the blurry old photo, he accomplished this seemingly impossible task by strapping six-foot “water shoes” — basically little canoes — to his feet. And no, this wasn’t one of the Lauderdales, though my Uncle Lance was known for his decidedly eccentric behavior after imbibing a bit too much moonshine. This fellow’s name was Charles Oldrieve.
Oldrieve lived in Massachusetts. For reasons that were never made clear — not to me, anyway — he accepted a $5,000 wager (an enormous sum in those days) to “walk” the Mississippi River, all the way from Cincinnati to New Orleans, a distance of more than 800 miles. A former circus performer, he experimented with various devices for five years, and finally came up with his cedar “water shoes.”
