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The River: One-hundred-ninety weeks ago, he started with ‘Where do I start?’ — and look at what came of it


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 is a part of a long and continuing story.

By Captain Don Sanders
Special to NKyTribune

One-hundred-ninety weeks ago, the first edition of this Sunday column, THE RIVER, appeared in the NKyTRIBUNE. Although 190 weeks may seem like an abundance of time to recall fading memories and transcribe them into print, timewise, only 3 2/3 years have passed since my first story began, “Where do I start?”

A Spooky Night: The river was a terrifying place for a little boy. Dark, wet, foreboding; full of terrible sights and sounds.

Why not start at the beginning, I figured, and so I did: “The river was a terrifying place for a little boy. Dark, wet, foreboding; full of terrible sights and sounds,” I confessed.

Eventually, over time, and through my father, Jess Sanders, Jr., I met a grizzled older riverman named Walter Hoffmeier, who truly was born on a shantyboat on the Licking River.

Several columns out of the 190 featured Walter and how our relationship helped shape my ambition to spend much of my life on the water. Walt also inspired my passion for “junking and scrapping,” now known as “recycling,” which influenced me to transform a backyard collection of aluminum cans into a profitable enterprise that flourishes some 41 years since its conception as a major recycling business in the metropolitan Cincinnati area.

I met a grizzled older riverman named Walter Hoffmeier, who truly was born on a shantyboat on the Licking River.

Walt died before the end of my first semester while I was away at college. He had a weak heart that failed to conform to shoveling a dump truck load of cinders onto a riverbank rampway — a job I would have handled had I still worked for him at Walt’s Boat Harbor where the floodwall ends on West 2nd Street, now called Highway Avenue in Covington, Kentucky across the Ohio River from the former West End Power Station near downtown Cincinnati.

That summer began my first season of steamboating on the paddlewheeler, the Steamer AVALON. There, Walt’s good training and that of my strict, attentive parents and grandparents soon helped me catch the eye of Captain Ernest E. Wagner, the capable and respected Master of that Cincinnati-based excursion steamboat. A decade later, give or take a year or two, I delighted in signing the Enrollment Papers for the venerable DELTA QUEEN as the Alternate Master, with Captain Wagner, of that legendary vessel. Still, at that time, the QUEEN was the “last of the overnight steamboats.”

Louisville Night Charter, 1959 — That summer began my first season of steamboating on the paddlewheeler, the Steamer AVALON.

Along the way, these past 190 weeks, I introduced several characters from the boats and off the shores of the Mighty Mississippi River and its tributary waters. Captain Wagner and Captain Clarke C. “Doc” Hawley are, perhaps, my most frequently used subjects besides Walt Hoffmeier. A few of my best tales came from phone calls with “the doctor.” Whenever we talk, I know to record notes as I am always surprised at what new tales Doc may reveal throughout our conversations.

During the 1988 Tall Stacks, when Captain Hawley helped crew the Steamer PRESIDENT from New Orleans to the Queen City, John Hartford, the celebrated boatman and Bluegrass musician, and I were returning from a kaffeeklatsch aboard the Crescent City sidewheel steamer with Captain Doc and other respected steamboatmen. As we walked along the cobblestones on the Cincinnati Public Landing, I asked John his opinion on how he figured Captain Hawley had so many varieties of river stories to share. John replied: “You know how you and I are on the river for a while, and then we’re off doing something else?”

Captain Wagner and Captain Clarke C. “Doc” Hawley are my most frequently used subjects besides Walt Hoffmeier.

After I agreed to John Hartford’s query, he continued: “Captain Doc, unlike either of us, hasn’t left the river to be anywhere else. Throughout his life, he’s always stuck with the steamboats and, obviously, has spent more time on riverboats than anywhere else. So, naturally, Cap’n Doc has, by aggregation, more steamboat stories to share than either of us.” I had to concede once more with John, as he had a quirky way with words and earned a liberal livelihood manipulating them to the strumming of a five-string “banger” while flatfoot clogging on a ¾-inch plywood board wired for sound.

Besides Walter, Big Cap, Cap’n Doc, and John, a raft of other characters came floating from deep within my memory of the past 69 years since I realized I wanted to follow the waterman’s way of life throughout my brief time on this earth.

Among the many examples were:

• Tex Kitchaching, the shantyboat-residing Harbormaster at the Covington Boat Harbor, below the Roebling Suspension Bridge, who taught me how to tie the first of several knots all boatmen needed to know. But for all the good times I had with Tex, I refused to yell “Hubba -Hubba” at the girls we passed along the road whenever I accompanied him on an errand of any sort.

As we walked along the cobblestones on the Cincinnati Public Landing, I asked John his opinion on how he figured Captain Hawley had so many varieties of river stories to share.

• Captain John Beatty, the all-around legendary riverman best known for his salvage work raising barges and wrecks no one else would touch, received his fair share of ink in several columns dedicated solely to Cap’n Beatty and our exploits together… and apart.

• Capers concerning Ed Smith, Bubba Chinn, Robert “Preacher” Lollar, Lester, Shorty Robinson, Harry Ricco, Jackie Armstrong, and Mate Red Wilke came from the Steamer AVALON paddlewheel, excursion boat that cruised more miles on the Mississippi and tributaries than did any other steamboat in river history. 

• The DELTA QUEEN contributed the stunts attributed to Pilots “Handsome Harry” Hamilton, Harry Louden, and Howard Tate. Franko-the-capstan-man, his love life, and his battles with spirits coming from within a bottle are both humorous and tragic. Also aboard the QUEEN, Ed Duemler, Jamie Hansel, Tony Espelage, Rooster and Johnson, and Gary Busey were also remembered and recorded.
 

A riverboat showed up nearly on my doorstep which happened the time the diesel towboat, the M/V MARY ELLEN JONES, chose the riverfront park at Aurora, Indiana, for a crew change.

• Concerning my personal boats, the narrative of the race to beat the 1941 speed record of Cappy Lawson Hamilton on the Great Kanawha River told of the two five-mile sprints of the sixteen-foot, wooden Weaver Skiff, the FLYIN’ FISH, with me stroking the oars while the lovely redhaired water maiden, Deborah Anne Fischbeck manned the steering tiller. On September 9th, 2018, I told of the tragic tale of the loss of the trawler JOHN HENRY that taught me a lesson I would remember when I owned two other admirable watercraft, the SUN*FISH and the Rafter CLYDE. 

• Sometimes, as told in the January 19th, 2020 column, a riverboat showed up nearly on my doorstep which happened the time the diesel towboat, the M/V MARY ELLEN JONES, chose the riverfront park at Aurora, Indiana, for a crew change. Capt. Gene Lockwood, who’d been on the river for 46 years with 16 of them working for Amherst-Madison, owners of the JONES, and his crew were soon like old comrades, especially after I let it slip I’d been personal friends with Captain Charles T. Jones and his late son, the legendary Captain Nelson Jones while I was the first Captain of the P. A. DENNY Sternwheeler in their homeport.

Deborah Anne “Fish” Fischbeck shopping at a fish market in Greece.

• Several river pals and acquaintances who’d gone on from this world were memorialized. Among them: Capt. Michael Coyle of St. Louis –  Capts. Charles T. Jones and O. Nelson Jones of Charleston, WV – Ms. Jane Greene, Cincinnati – John “Cheyenne C. Cheyenne (where the Middle-C stands for Cheyenne)” Hess of Carrollton, KY –  Fireman Ed Smith, St. Louis – Franko of Madison, WI – Capt. Ken Murphy of Arkansas – Robert and Rollie Mae Lollar, Cincinnati – Miss Kate Schwartz of Natchez, MS, and “Neptune’s Daughter,” Ms. Deborah Anne Fischbeck of Perry Hall, Maryland. 

After the passage of 190 weeks of uninterrupted river columns, I’m yet uncertain in which cardinal or ordinal direction I will be headed next. Hopefully, my worldly ploddings will continue on above the sunny side of the sod for the foreseeable future while recording certain tacit accounts as long as the possibility exists.

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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11 Comments

  1. Peggy Sanders says:

    Another great addition to the book of river stories that keep account of the people and times as the river keeps rolling on,

  2. Mark Heslep says:

    Thanks. I enjoy these stories each week.

  3. Cap'n Don says:

    Thanks, Peggy… I appreciate your support.

  4. Great Look Back. I don’t think I go all the way back, but remember most of the Characters, Saw elsewhere that Today is Captain Doc Hawley’s Birthday. We talk, but He had a real effect on Capt. Bert and Jim Sutton, who went on to Greater things. again, a Good Read. Where Next?

  5. Mary Goldenberg says:

    Each week you bring the river back. This really is the highlight of my Sunday, reading your memories. Thank you so much for the time, effort and bring your recollections back to life!

  6. Cornelia Reade-Hale says:

    Thank you Don for helping me relive the folks and times I knew and learn about ones I hadn’t met or known the whole story. You make them alive and fresh as I walk along “by the rivers of my memory” per JH..
    I can’t wait for your next installment.

  7. Mike Washenko says:

    Here’s to another 190+

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