A nonprofit publication of the Kentucky Center for Public Service Journalism

The River: Some good examples for weathering the COVID storm and models to follow to self-reliance


The riverboat captain is a storyteller, and Captain Don Sanders will be sharing the stories of his long association with the river — from discovery to a way of love and life. This a part of a long and continuing story.

By Capt. Don Sanders
Special to NKyTribune

With no relief in sight for the COVID-19 pandemic, while the economy is clamped tight with conditions worsening all around, I’ve been wondering, “What lifestyles might be conducive to best weathering this storm and whose lives can I look to for role models?”

My grandparents, Edith and Jesse Sanders, Sr., were both born in rural communities in the late 19th Century.

My grandparents, Edith and Jesse Sanders, Sr., both born in rural communities in the late 19th Century, are my first candidates. Jesse, born in a log cabin on his father’s farm in Carroll County, west of Sanders, Kentucky, grew up as a farm boy on the remote hilltop ground overlooking Eagle Creek, a tributary of the Kentucky River. Jesse’s second great-grandfather, Nathaniel, was the first of our family to settle in that area of “Kaintuck” in the late 1780s. Jesse would have never left his Carroll County home unless unsettling circumstances caused him to suddenly depart for the city. Arriving in Covington, Kentucky, across the Ohio River from Cincinnati, the young country boy carried the farm lifestyle with him.

Jesse’s understanding of the nature of “horses and rigs” earned him a job driving an ice wagon for the City Ice & Fuel Company. Where, one morning, he spied the pretty sister of a couple of his co-workers when she stopped by the icehouse carrying a lunch basket for her rough-and-tumble brothers. Edith, hearing of the farm boy’s intentions of calling on her, wanted nothing to do with the lad fresh from the sticks. Or as Edith, herself, told the story:

“That Jesse seemed like a country hick… so when my brothers told me he wanted to come calling the next Saturday after work, I asked my father to tell him I wasn’t home if he showed up. On the appointed day, there was a knock at the front door. While Pop answered, I slipped behind the door to listen. The young man identified himself and announced he’d come calling on me. ‘I’m sorry,’ my father told him, ‘Edith is not home.’ ‘That’s too bad,’ Jesse replied, ‘I stopped by the livery stable and rented a fine rig and a fast horse and was going to take Edith for a ride.’ But when I heard that, I bounded out the door!”

Jesse’s understanding of the nature of “horses and rigs” earned him a job driving an ice wagon for the City Ice & Fuel Company.

That country boy wasn’t so dumb after all, as Edith discovered.

Though Grandmother thought herself a sophisticated, citified woman, she was a small-town girl reared in various villages in southwestern Ohio where her father, Charles Rice, cut hair, barbering from town-to-town along the Ohio River wherever business was the best. Eventually, the Rice family ended up living on West 2nd Street in Covington. There, Charle’s sons found employment at the City icehouse within the shadow of the Roebling Suspension Bridge. Through a series of coincidences, the farm boy and the small town gal met, married, had two sons, and bought a bungalow on West 38th Street across from the busy Latonia Racetrack.

By the time I arrived in their lives as the couple’s first grandchild, hard times had shuttered the horse track. A grimy, one-flare oil refinery occupied the vast acreage and produced fuel for the war effort on what had been an exciting estate for entertainment. Three years before my birth, President Franklin D. Roosevelt appeared at the track for a political rally. In the crowd, Grandma found a neatly folded hankie a woman dropped during the crush to listen to FDR deliver an uplifting 32-minute speech of the sort that would thrill the hearts of listeners today, during these equally troubling times.

My grandparents lived next door to my Grandmother’s sister Florence and her husband, Henry Luckhardt. 1937

Within two months of my birth, the nation plunged headlong into the Second World War. Those on the homefront, even the children, including me, all had our duties. Our young resources and talents, though limited, added strength to the nation in one of its darkest hours. My grandparents lived next door to my Grandmother’s sister Florence and her husband, Henry Luckhardt. The Luckhardt’s yard was at least three or four acres, and I will never forget them breaking an acre, or more, with a team of stunning white horses pulling a bull tongue plow. The newly-turned ground became a mutually-shared Victory Garden where Grandma, Grandpa, Aunt Florence, and Uncle Henry, all 19th-Century-born, understood the secrets of getting the most production out of the vegetable seeds and roots planted there. They also knew how to prepare and preserve the fruits of their labor. At the end of the first growing season, both cellars brimmed with Mason Jars filled with canned tomatoes, squash, corn, peppers, and beans from the modest plot.

Grandpa Jesse knew how to cure meat, especially the “green” hams he fetched from the Sanders family farm after the hog-killing season “down in the country.” The savory smell of sugar-cured hams hanging in the basement remains a sweet memory of when my grandparents pooled their survival skills to make the family as independent as possible during those lean years on the homefront.

Yes, we still traveled to the grocery store for specific items. Rationing limited what was available during the War. Toilet paper was a necessity. Paper towels invented several decades earlier, were in short supply, but my frugal grandparents preferred cotton over the paper variety. As soon as I had grown a bit, my duty involved carrying a small paper box of kitchen grease and drippings into the store, a requirement mandated for purchasing soap made from animal fats. As a lad, although of tender age, I was proudly performing my duty for the common cause and our family’s survival.

As a lad, although of tender age, I was proudly performing my duty for the common cause and our family’s survival.

After the Second World War, a wasteful throwaway, no-deposit-no-return era replaced the frugality of the first impressionable measure of my life. Since then, we, as a society, have distanced ourselves from being independent. Instead, we’ve become dependent upon a supply system that passes for a lifestyle in “normal” times but has shown its frailties in these overly stressed days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Sadly, I see the system only getting worse. Already, in specific sectors of the country, it is reportedly failing. Unless something happens soon to stop the decline, the future may become, as Captain Ernie Wagner often said, “It’s Katie bar the door.”

Two gracious, adventurous friends of mine lived a lifestyle utterly distanced from the norms of the modern, dependent world. They called their way of life, “Living on the fringe of society.” Harlan and Anna Hubbard lived the shantyboat way for years after their memorable adventure floating down the Ohio and Mississippi River aboard the floating shanty Harlan built from recycled timbers salvaged from a warehouse demolished in Covington soon after the War.

Harlan fished the waters on which they traveled. Together, they gathered edible plants, berries, and fruits. Anna prepared tasty meals from what nature provided. Each spring, they nudged the shantyboat into a cove and set out a garden they tended over the summer. By autumn, the produce gleaned from their labors was canned, dried, or smoked and stored in secure places aboard the shanty before they set off, again, at the first high water for the next site somewhere downriver.

Harlan and Anna Hubbard lived the shantyboat way for years after their memorable adventure floating down the Ohio and Mississippi River.

When the shantyboat adventure eventually ended on the intercoastal waterway west of New Orleans, Harlan and Anna returned to the first place they stopped; Payne Hollow in Trimble County, Kentucky. After settling in, they purchased the hollow, built a house, planted a garden, cut firewood, ate goats they raised, and the occasional groundhog the dogs killed and dragged home. I know that for a fact. Several others and I off the Sternwheeler WINIFRED were seated in the Hubbard’s “living room” when the door flew open, and their large, red Irish Setter, Rusty, rolled a freshly-slain woodchuck across the floor in front of the company. “Well, it looks like we’re having groundhog for supper,” Harlan commented. But our party left for Louisville aboard the WINIFRED before Anna baked the groundhog with sweet taters and gravy. I’ve often wondered what I missed had we stayed for dinner.

Both the Hubbards died long before the COVID-19 pandemic swept the planet. If they were still living, most likely, they would be unaware of the plague as they had no electricity, radios, or TVs. Eventually, though, someone would show up with the news. But had they not been notified, the couple could have lasted until the coronavirus came, went, and a vaccine discovered without being any the wiser. Such was the life Anna and Harlan led at Payne Hollow. There, they were not only thoroughly secluded, but they also lived as entirely self-sufficient as they chose to be.

Perhaps a result of this most unusual of times may become, folks will go back to being more self-reliant instead of depending upon an impaired system incapable of sustaining them when times turn tough. Until then, we will have to do as another old-time steamboat captain often advised, “Let’s just wait and see what happens.”

But our party left for Louisville aboard the WINIFRED before Anna baked the groundhog with sweet taters and gravy.

Perhaps a result of this most unusual of times may become, folks will go back to being more self-reliant instead of depending upon an impaired system.

Captain Don Sanders is a river man. He has been a riverboat captain with the Delta Queen Steamboat Company and with Rising Star Casino. He learned to fly an airplane before he learned to drive a “machine” and became a captain in the USAF. He is an adventurer, a historian, and a storyteller. Now, he is a columnist for the NKyTribune and will share his stories of growing up in Covington and his stories of the river. Hang on for the ride — the river never looked so good.


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5 Comments

  1. Helen Newton says:

    The best story I have read that Captain Don has written. Love the pictures and the photograph of his grandparents.

  2. Joy says:

    What a beautiful recollection of a time when we, as a nation, were more self sufficient. Thank you, Captain Don for sharing your sweet family memories.

  3. Queen Ann Baker says:

    We need to take note and start being more self efficient. Love to read Dons stories.

  4. Jo Ann W Schoen says:

    Thanks for bringing back memories of my childhood as well.

  5. Cap'n Don says:

    Thanks, everyone for your kind comments. As they say, We’re all in this together.” And, we will all get out of this COVID-19 pestilence together.

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