One river, two stories.
In 1999, I was working for Georgia-Pacific (GP) as an inside salesman for the states of Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin. Selling all sorts of building materials to independent lumber yards. Every 3-4 months I would travel from the distribution center in University Park, Illinois to ride along with the outside sales reps. We would visit as many lumberyards in the salesmen's region as possible in the 2-3 days I would be with him. Our goal was to put a face to the person on the inside they spoke to all the time when calling in orders, as well as introduce any new product lines that the lumber buyer wasn't buying from GP.
As we were visiting several of the yards in southern Wisconsin, the day became overcast and if you were around at that time, you know there were not cell phones with GPS, Maps, Waze, nothing. We had a great big spiral binder map book of most of the state of Wisconsin. Joe the salesman knew the region, as he lived near Madison and we were visiting yards he called on regularly.
Without the benefit of the sun since it was so overcast, we had no concept of direction of travel for a couple hours. We thought we were heading east towards Madison. We had both been commenting on far away the next lumber yard seemed to be when we drove up a rise in the road and down below us in all its majestic glory was the mighty Mississippi River. We were driving west the entire time and were so far away from the lumber yard we wanted to visit the most, we had to call and tell the lumberyard manager we would not be there today as we were almost in Iowa, which was right across the bridge.
About nine years later, I was working for another company. I was the territory manager for all the moulding service reps that called on Home Depot stores in Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota. I would visit most of the different stores to check on service levels, inventory, etc. I flew into Minnesota St.Paul airport and rented a car. As I stood waiting for my rental, a car drove around the corner of the car rental lot and slid sideways and crashed T-bone style right into a concrete post. The guy walked over to all of us waiting for our cars and said "Mr. Seaton?" Lucky me, it was my rental. 30 minutes later I was driving out of the airport in a new lime green VW Beetle, complete with the cute little flower vase holder on the dashboard. I had truckers honking at me all week driving through Minnesota. It was such a cute car, my 16 and 17 year old daughters loved it. Pretty cute isn't it? Easy to see why a trucker would be honking at me. right?
One day my stop took me near Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota. This is the headwaters of the Mississippi River. At this part of the river, the width was about 20 feet wide and knee deep. From here it travels another 2300 miles all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. I took a picture of the river with my little green bug car, but have not been able to find the picture in nearly 18 years. So imagine the trillions of gallons of water that flow down the Mississippi River starts at this little dinky creek in Minnesota. I can't say it's a trip to add to your bucket list, but if you're ever there, it's cool to see how something so small can end up so powerful.
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