It was no small miracle that five Alabama men didn’t drown in the Tombigbee River back in 1956.
Since none of them are alive today to tell the story of what happened 52 years ago, it isn’t known whether their johnboat was aluminum or wood, although it must’ve been powered by an outboard motor. The river is simply too strong to navigate by paddle. Regardless of construction, it’s probably safe to say the boat wasn’t designed to ferry 1,400 pounds – the equivalent of three bales of cotton – across a glass-slick swimming pool, let alone the turbulent Tombigbee.
The vessel was considerably lighter when the men slid it into the river that morning, and the going was much easier because they were headed downstream. But the return trip, against a stout current, was made with an additional 300 pounds of dead weight – dead deer weight, to be precise.
Five grown men, each clenching shotguns, a steel gasoline tank, a dog and a buck were in the boat, water threatening t...