Working Hard on the Old Miss

Who knew the founder of Greenies dog food and his sister would be the two best grips on the planet? Achieving this lofty position is a tall order but not if you grew up in the sticks of Missouri.

Agnes and Joe are from a Poduck town just west of the Muddy Mo called Hermann. As kids they worked morning, noon and night on a farm, milking cows, checking the chicken coops for eggs and feeding the pigs. Agnes even did so barefoot!

Farming was and still is an unrelenting way to make a living so it's no surprise that a little manual labor today fazes neither.

This shot was taken under the St. Louis Arches on another crisp spring day. We had just finished interviewing a historian about the Great Mississippi. In the 1800's the city of St. Louis was port of entry for 300 steamboats a month. Bales of cotton, grain, merchandise and passengers flooded the city.

Mark Twain novels know best what that experience was like. River commerce was risky business though and several boats sank from floating debris like stumps and huge logs.