River ramblers

Tucked behind Newport Island on the Mississippi River is a tiny, floating community of hearty river souls who have shucked off many of their material possessions and taken to life on the water, no matter the season.

"It's so serene down here when it's snowing," said Glenn Oelerking, who with his wife, Judy, moved into a houseboat on the river full time seven years ago.

A few days ago, he spoke of how the snow in the trees muffles the sounds of the city and how wildlife populate their marina and the banks around it.

These resident-sailors of Inver Grove Heights have their own style of winterizing, from shrink-wrapping their houseboats to turning on the underwater bubblers that will keep the river from freezing around them and their docks.

Their fair-weather boating friends have headed ashore for the winter, but river people like Glenn and Judy Oelerking are hunkering down. They can be found tucked in harbors up and down Midwesten rivers. In Inver Grove Heights, there are at least two dozen of these year-round boat dwellers docked at five marinas.

The Oelerkings and their neighbors live off the main channel, sheltered behind the island, just south of the Wakota Bridge in the Castaways Marina. They range in age from their 30s to their 60s and come from all walks of life. There's a well-heeled young entrepreneur, a retired tugboat captain, a hair products saleswoman and a Vietnam veteran.

That would be Fred Bell, 66, who bought his first boat at age 18. It was a 1958 14-footer that was one of the first fiberglass hull boats. He bought it in Oklahoma, his home state, with $200 that he earned serving in the Navy in Vietnam.

He earned a Purple Heart after surviving a grenade attack near Da Nang. It took one of his legs, his right arm and the fingers on his left hand. Bell went on to work as the prosthetics chief at the Veteran's Administration Medical Center in Minneapolis but is now retired.

He and his companion, Lu Flynn, live in a 52-foot houseboat with a 16-foot-wide beam. It's named the Cadenza -- the term for a brilliant solo near the end of an orchestra's piece.

It's a name, said Bell, "which fits me because I kind of do my own thing, to my own beat."

He, like others who live on the water, is a free spirit.

"I just so like the freedom of boating, the movement, being on the water, the quietness of nature," he said. "You can anchor in a cove and watch nature, the deer and the fawns coming down to the water, the fish jumping, the eagles."

He and Flynn, 62, often head out with a small fleet of fellow boaters on trips to LaCrosse, Wis., and other destinations. When they get far enough from the city, Bell said, such as down by Buffalo, Wis., they can sit out on their decks and see the stars looking especially bright on a black, velvety sky.

"You can see the stars all the way down to the horizon, to the water," he said.

The couple began living aboard the Cadenza in 2004 after he sold his house in St. Paul Park. Flynn talks of the family unit that the year-round houseboaters have formed.

"I like the traveling, the freedom, the camaraderie of the boaters," Flynn said.

A few years back, for example, she recalled, a neighbor's boat began to sink, and other boaters rushed to hook up hoses, drain water from the craft and call the skipper.

Like "living in the '50s"

Tom Pulkrabek, the 43-year-old owner of the Sumerset, stepped out of his sliding doors to question a passerby who ventured into the marina's docks one recent evening.

Pulkrabeck, a 43-year-old owner of a manufacturing businesses, and his wife, Chris Pulkrabek, 40, live on an 86-foot houseboat that's 18 feet wide. It has three bedrooms with a cabin that's nearly 1,200 square feet.

In the mornings, Chris said, she likes to kayak or work out ashore, then sign on her computer to begin her work day in the medical field.

Tom Pulkrabeck works in South St. Paul and savors his evenings, when he climbs into his hot tub to watch the sun go down and the moon come up. It's a way of life that he likens to a simpler time, when people kept an eye out for one another.

"I've always compared it to living in the '50s," he said. "There are always a lot of people who will help you out."

A simple life close to nature

Moving to a houseboat means getting rid of possessions, say river dwellers such as Mike and Judy Anderson, both 62, owners of the River Bell. Now, Mike Anderson said, "when one pot comes aboard, another has to go."

Their neighbor up the dock, Judy Oelerking, 59 said getting rid of possessions and settling into a 36-foot Gibson houseboat was "cleansing."

"You get to a point in your life that you have a lot of stuff that you don't need," she said. "You get rid of the stuff that doesn't matter."

She and Glenn, 60, are getting ready for their eighth winter on the river.

It's a lifestyle in which they are steeped in nature, from the foggy, dancing vapors that they've nicknamed the "river nymphs," to the quiet mornings watching wildlife as they sip coffee on their deck.

It's a lifestyle, too, that celebrates a sense of independence, Glenn said.

The Oelerkings, plucky like the Andersons and the other river people, have a fitting name for their vessel, too: "The Invincible."

Joy Powell • 952-882-9017