A Mississippi River bustling with boats comes to life in the stories Cleve Johnson tells. The 99-year-old Natchez man worked on the river for more than 40 years, witness to floods and erosions and years of efforts by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to tame and control the river. His memory is sharp and his wit as subtle as the smile that comes slowly to his face when he knows he has told a good story.

He leaned against the kitchen counter in the home of one of his grandsons, a well-worn hat pushed back jauntily on his head. He took his time, collected memories from many years past and then shared them generously.

Johnson, born in 1905 in Natchez in a small brick house still standing on the north side of town, began working for the Corps in 1927, the year of the great flood. He retired from river work in 1969.

&uot;We built Government Fleet Road and they put the fleet at the end of the road,&uot; Johnson said. &uot;It was just above where Jones Mill is now.&uot;

The Corps faced big challenges in the next 20 years, not only floods but also moving the town of Vidalia, La., away from the river to build a more substantial levee there and making one of the first of many &uot;cuts&uot; in the river, a flood-control technique to help move the water more swiftly to the south.

A seasonal worker for the first six years, by 1933 he gained full-time status, a utility man who went job to job, &uot;whatsoever needed to be done,&uot; Johnson said.

Forging through the land to create Giles Cut in the 1930s was one of the big undertakings during his career with the Corps.

Two dredge boats worked on the project, one at north end and the other on the Natchez side of the point that went up around Ferriday and is now known as Old River, Johnson said. &uot;It didn’t take months. It took years.&uot;

His assignment during that project was to an eight-man blasting unit. &uot;The dredge cut a 400-foot broad way on each end. The blasting unit would soften the earth up to make the dirt slide on both ends,&uot; he said. &uot;We’d spend mornings with one dredge and afternoons with the other until the two dredges met.&uot;

Each year, the high water helped to wash more of the sides of the cut away. &uot;The current widened the cut, and after it got to about a 400-foot width, they began to let the traffic flow. Each year it got wider and deeper.&uot;

In time, the Corps blocked the upper end of the cutoff and made Old River form. Soon it was blocked on both ends.

The current was swift in Giles Cut when boats first began to navigate it. Some river historians say the cuts like Giles Cut were the final obstacle steamboats met as they dwindled in number in the first half of the 20th century, as many steamboats did not have the power to ply northward against those currents.

&uot;When the cut first opened, some of the boats could make it and some couldn’t,&uot; Johnson said. &uot;The bigger boats and better boats fought it and made it.&uot;

The creation of Giles Island was a result of the eventual closing off of the old part of the river. &uot;And there were many disputes about it,&uot; Johnson said. &uot;The river was the dividing line between Mississippi and Louisiana, and there were disputes about where the line was.&uot;

Natchez Under-the-Hill was a busy place during those years, Johnson said, describing the boats and buildings there, the Natchez Water Works and Natchez Ice Company.

Like other Corps workers, Johnson spent much time aboard the quarter boats that tied up close to where work was under way.

&uot;It was home. You went out four or five months and then came back and did repairs before you went back again,&uot; he said. Length of stay was governed by the river stages.

Moving the town of Vidalia to its present location provided place for the levee but also for a new mat field, Johnson said. Mats were built to place along the banks of the river to control erosion. He helped to build those and saw the changes from mats made of willow branches to mats of concrete.

Johnson remembers 100 to 200 Corps boats at the fleet site just south of Natchez. Then politics intervened to cause a rift between the city and the Corps.

&uot;That’s why Vidalia has the engineers office today,&uot; he said. &uot;Some of the dissatisfaction was Natchez aldermen and so on didn’t approve of the salaries they were paying blacks,&uot; he said. &uot;Then it comes up they thought some of the whites were overpaid.&uot;

In a time when racial relations often were tense, Johnson became close to two white men with whom he worked daily, Francis Geddes, who headed the Corps work for a large area of the lower river; and Edward Salmon, also one of his engineer supervisors.

&uot;I’ve told my children some of the best friends I ever had were white,&uot; he said. &uot;And some of the worst enemies you could have were white. People can disappoint you and then people can make you glad.&uot;

Johnson spent much of his life on Verna Plantation, off Airport Road. When he was born, his father worked for Mississippi Power & Light Co. Then when he was a young boy, the family moved to the country. &uot;That’s when my father went back to farming,&uot; he said.

It was family property, owned by his parents, Aquila Johnson and Jane Lambdin Johnson. So Cleve Johnson learned about and worked on the river and farmed the land during his most productive years.

&uot;I still own a little piece of the property,&uot; he said. &uot;Johnson Road is named after me.&uot;

A man proud of his family, he beamed when asked how he felt about having two successful political leaders as grandsons, Darryl Grennell, president of the Adams County Board of Supervisors, and Robert Johnson, a former Mississippi state senator and now a state representative.

&uot;We’re moving forward,&uot; he said. &uot;Very few people would want to go back. Nothing stays the same. In another 20 years, a lot of the things we have today we won’t have, but we’ll have better.&uot;