In the town where I spent part of my boyhood, there was an annual festival celebrating a staple crop of the region. The Cotton Carnival lasted a week each fall. In fact, though, you could walk its midway every evening and not have cotton cross your mind.

For all the agricultural pride represented in this designation, the Cotton Carnival concerned itself almost exclusively with beauty pageants, dunking booths, concession stands, handshaking and convertible-waving politicians, Tilt-a-Whirls and marching bands.

The only float I remember working on for the annual parade was of the time-honored chicken-wire-and-tissue design ... not anything to do with cotton. No one pretended it was the Tournament of Roses Parade.

It was possible to get cotton candy, of course, but that's about the only other tangible reference you could find to the crop.

Other small communities lend their attention at harvest time to festivals that celebrate in this superficial way various grains and produce. I attended a Soybean Festival as a boy. No floats were made of beans.

In middle America, you will find no shortage of carnivals aimed at extolling the namesake (if not exactly the virtues) of sweet corn and grain sorghum. The Bootheel has one town that boasts of being the purple hull pea capital of the nation, though I recall no pageant that crowns Miss Purple Hull Pea, a title that would grace any resume.

Around Cape Girardeau, farmers grow corn and soybeans and wheat, not to mention a variety of livestock that could stand as a subject for community revelry. We also have a river, and in that our lot has been cast.

Cape Girardeau begins its two-day Riverfest this afternoon, with thousands expected to eat and drink and be entertained. Unlike festivals that acclaim crops yet don't really, the river is never far from view at this outing.

At least it isn't usually.

At times since the inception of Riverfest, the guest of honor declines to cooperate, its waters washing high from a season of snowmelt and upstream rains. In those years when the floodgates close, the river still assumes a brooding presence, out of sight from anyone wanting to chunk a rock in it from downtown, but not out of mind.

Cape Girardeau observes its heritage in this very logical way, Riverfest recognizing precisely that the city owes its origin, existence and prosperity to the Mississippi.

Less than a year ago, though, people of this region and throughout the Midwest swore unflattering oaths when discussing this mighty waterway.

At the 1993 Riverfest, the downtown floodgates were open but revealed a swollen body of water that stood at flood stage the previous two months. Little did any of the revelers know that matters with the river would soon expand beyond what anyone could imagine.

Those who ate barbecue and consumed cold drinks on Water Street last June were among those who volunteered to fill and stack sandbags in the months to come, claiming a victory for each house saved from the rising water, for each tract of land that remained out of the river's reach.

We witnessed in our midst so much suffering, so many people whose lives were dismantled, so much work washed away. It seems peculiar at first, and ultimately poignant, that people would gather once more this year to dignify a river that took such a toll on the land and the people here.

My guess is people resign themselves to the caprice of the river. What else are they going to do? Even waterways need redemption, and people don't need to carry around all that anger.

Perhaps there would no longer be a Cotton Carnival in my old hometown if boll weevils made a comeback or drought set in for years. But I believe history and inertia sustain such things. The Cotton Carnival will be called that until a second Dust Bowl develops.

As for Riverfest, there isn't much chance the celebration's focal point will meet a fate that forces a name change. The saying goes that some things will happen come hell or high water. Maybe that's the way it is with Cape Girardeau and the Mississippi. The river keeps rolling. The people of this city find themselves forever tied to its benevolence and whimsy.

Ken Newton is editor of the Southeast Missourian.