Years before Harry Potter inspired older children to keep reading, Augustus inspired me, late in the primary grades, to keep reading. We were about the same age when we met at the school library. Eventually I grew up, but I never forgot him. In my imagination, he will always be out there somewhere on the Mississippi River with his kind, well meaning, but somewhat dysfunctional family.

Augustus' family not only lived in a houseboat on the river, but also lived off the river. What could be more exciting to an eight-year-old boy?

The Augustus Books by Le Grand Henderson (1901-1964), were unique in that they were written specifically for boys, within the age range at which I discovered them, barely ready to transition from material that relied on illustrations for motivation and interpretation to material that required readers to create pictures within their own mind based on the text.

For generations, American children were introduced to the world of written language by characters with names like "Dick and Jane", "Tom and Betty", and "Alice and Jerry". The three sets of children were products of three different publishing houses. In a time when learning disabilities were poorly understood, I required the assistance of all three sets of children and a determined mother in my personal pursuit of literacy. An elementary teacher by profession, she amassed a collection of beginning readers, now among my most treasured possessions, in a successful effort to teach me an essential skill that I was not acquiring at school.

In the not so distant past, poor people, like Augustus' family, lived in houseboats on the river and in shanties along Knoxville's waterfront. Some fished for a living, but others were known to make and sell moonshine. Well known writer, Cormac McCarthy, in a work of autobiographical fiction, set in 1951, captures the essence of the bygone era through the eyes of his title character Cornelius Suttree. My cousin Sarah Hutson Reynolds, a retired teacher, remembers, as a young girl, looking down from the Gay Street Bridge and seeing laundry hung out to dry in a haphazard style among the makeshift housing below.

“Mud”, a fairly recent movie starring Matthew McConaughey, set on the Mississippi River, depicts social conditions among those who continue to maintain a meager existence along its banks.

It is doubtful that many, if any, of the current owners of the floating houses found today upon TVA's reservoirs are desperately poor like Augustus family, Cornelius Suttree's friends, or the characters in McConaughey's movie.

At the headwaters of the TVA system, Norris Reservoir with its narrow channels and numerous coves is best suited for low impact use such as fishing, canoeing, bird watching, simply enjoying nature, puttering around in small leisure craft as well as camping and hiking along its shores.

Accessibility to the public, including those who do not own motorboats, is paramount, but secondary to maintaining water quality standards. We ourselves drink of its waters and the vital national defense operations downstream at Oak Ridge depend on the supply of water released from its depths at Norris Dam into the Clinch River.

It is unlikely that TVA or any other government entity has the resources to monitor for sewage leaks or intentional discharges of waste water from over 900 floating homes. It is even more unlikely the technology exist that would make such monitoring possible. Outside the visitor center at Norris Dam, overlooking the spillway below, an interpretative plaque reminds that us the dam was "Built for the people of the United States by the Tennessee Valley Authority"