Billy Curmano is a Huck Finn without a raft. He is swimming down the Mississippi River, celebrating the beauty of every mile.
If Curmano can hold on for 2,552 miles, he will be the first person to swim to the Gulf of Mexico from the Mississippi`s headwaters at Lake Itaska, Minn.
By Thursday afternoon, Curmano had sliced through about 1,160 miles as he went through the Mel Price Locks and Dam at Alton, Ill.
Curmano, 43, who holds a master`s degree in art, doesn`t consider his swim an athletic event. He instead calls it art-performance art.
Nor does Curmano look anything like an Olympic swimmer.
He wears sunglasses and a broad-brimmed straw hat in the water. Two feathers sticking out of the hatband are intended to alert boaters to his presence.
A changing crew of two to four volunteers, usually local artists, follows Curmano in two canoes, yelling warnings about barges and river currents.
As he swims, he sings, tells jokes and recites poetry.
The Milwaukee native`s training as a point man for Army paratroopers in Vietnam helps him stay vigilant for speedboats, floating trees and snakes, he said.
Curmano`s audience includes tugboat captains, anglers, pleasure boaters and those who sit on the shore.
Near Alton, he got encouragement from the crew of the tug Joanne V and from construction workers completing the east suspension tower for the Missouri Highway 367 bridge across the river.
”How`s it going?” one tugboat captain yelled. ”You got far to go?”
His longest stretch in the water was in July 1987, when he swam 11 miles in nine hours.
”It`s a leisurely swim, accomplished one stroke at a time,” Curmano said of his journey down the Mississippi. He began July 1987 and swims several weeks a summer. He hopes to finish in two to 10 more summers, he said.
To protect himself from raw sewage and chemical pollution, Curmano coats his skin with a mixture of Vasoline, glycerin, vegetable shortening and antibiotic cream.
Although part of his intention is to alert people to the pollution in the river, he talks primarily about its beauty as he swims. He also lectures about his waterborne exploits at colleges and museum groups.
”Part of what he is doing is altering the people`s view of the Mississippi,” said Debra Drexler of St. Louis, a painter who was part of Curmano`s local canoe crew for two weeks.
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”He`s a little like painter Marcel Duchamp-making fun of art and at the same time making art.”