The River: Remembering a year of river tales, great friends, explorations, adventures and still hangin’ on

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

It’s been 108 weeks, over two years, since I started writing this river column for the Northern Kentucky Tribune. This addition is also the last one for the year 2019, ending the second decade of the 21st Century. Sixty-seven years have passed since I quashed my fears of the water to begin a life-long river romance that continues toward the cusp of the New Year 2020. I’m not going to ask, “Where has the time gone?” It just went. Thankfully, I’m still hanging onto Father Time’s coattails.

About this time last year, on the 30th of December 2018, I asked, “Let’s see what happens in the coming new year.” What did we explore in 2019?

Let’s see…

2019 began with a tale of a revisit to the beginning of my gambling boats days aboard the DIAMOND LADY in Bettendorf, Iowa; I’d first seen on TV while game-show celebrity Vanna White cut the ribbon opening casino boat gaming on the Mississippi River. A year after Ms. White’s brief foray aboard the Bettendorf boat, I found myself on the LADY for a short run in the Hawkeye State until the Iowa operation folded, packed up, and set off down the river to Biloxi on the Gulf Coast. Before our departure, however, my friend, the celebrated Bluegrass musician, composer, and licensed steamboat pilot, John Hartford, a friend from the DELTA QUEEN two decades earlier, was with me in the pilothouse. “John Hartford,” I wrote, “surely navigated the straightest course anyone ever steered on the DIAMOND LADY.”

On the 20th of January, 2018, I recalled the two rivers bordering my hometown, Covington, Kentucky: the ancient Licking River, and the relatively young Ohio. How blessed I was to have such a boyhood playground as did two other local boys who grew up to influence millions of children worldwide with the tales of adventures we commonly shared, although decades apart, on those enchanted waters. A young Daniel Carter Beard’s boyhood adventures on the Licking undoubtedly inspired “Uncle Dan” when he founded the “Sons of Daniel Boone” in 1905, which he later merged into the Boy Scouts of America in 1910. Another Covington boy, Robert F. Schulkers, wrote a series of some eleven books about “Sekatary Hawkins and the Fair and Square Club,” that thrilled and influenced the play of millions of kids based on Schulker’s boyhood escapades on the two rivers bordering our hometown.

Riverman Walter Hoffmeier, born on a shantyboat on the Licking River just after the turn of the 20th Century, was one of the two most influential men in my life when it came to the river. He and his wee wife Lorraine owned a fifty-two-foot wooden houseboat named the PAL-O-MINE, where, once invited aboard, changed my life forever.

“Over sixty-six years later, I still ride that euphoric spell,” I revealed.

Besides telling of growing up on the river with Walter, I recalled adventures on my folk’s sternwheel houseboat, the MARJESS. “Tex,” I remembered, “the first professional riverman in my life, taught me the rudiments of boating and the river that began a metamorphosis from a casual pastime toward what became a lifelong career.”

An entire column, written on the 3rd of February, was dedicated to “Franko-the-Capstan-Man, born in Madison, Wisconsin, sailed at sea for many years before he found his way aboard the DELTA QUEEN, in early 1970. Franko was a drinking man, I said, but his misadventures with the bottle, though often personally sad, did give those of us observing his drunken antics moments of mirth. There was the timesome wag who lied and said Frank’s beloved sweetie, Gertrude, also a lush found in a sleazy Louisville saloon, was dead. But, after grieving throughout the summer and into autumn, Frank found her among the living.

“ Minutes later,” I divulged, “Franko’s voice rang over the waterfront as the entire crew of the DELTA QUEEN rushed to wherever they could look toward the excited shouts coming from Water Street. Hurrying towards the boat, looking like a schoolboy on his first date, was Franko nestled arm-in-arm with Gertrude.”

“She’s alive! She’s here! She’s alive!”

The 10th of February featured the tales of two murders. One, pardoned in a trial as self-defense, the other, a coldly calculated plot were never-before-revealed until “Plenty of tales to tell in whispered tones — some about how to be rid of troublemakers,” let slip the decades-old secret.
Floodwaters visited the Ohio River during the middle of February when the river reached 55.23-feet on the Cincinnati Suspension Bridge Guage. On February 24th, “How to Make a Handy Rope Bumper in Less Than Five Minutes,” was featured, complete with illustrative photographs. I would wonder to this day if anyone learned anything new?

Greenhorns, advised of the hard work and effort required to maintain a paddlewheel, served as a warning lest they get themselves into something beyond their capabilities. In the last paragraph of the March 3rd edition, I first hinted that “rumors abound that the ‘Old Captain’ is scouting the waterways for his replacement as the new owner and custodian of the ‘most authentic small stern paddlewheeler on the Western Rivers.’ (Kind’a keep that to yourself…)”

The March 17 column, dedicated to Ed Smith, the celebrated steamboat fireman from St. Louis, revealed that Ed and I started working together on the Steamer AVALON in June of 1959. I hinted that he should be inducted into the National Mississippi River Hall of Fame at Dubuque, Iowa, for his many selfless contributions to the river community. Word reached the highest levels at the museum sponsoring the tribute to the most outstanding members of the Mississippi River System throughout history. Still, I let the momentum lapse, and the idea has, to date, gone no closer to producing results. Help! These words are a cry for HELP! Ed Smith belongs in the Rivers Hall of Fame.

On the last Sunday in March, I finally confessed my desire to offer the Rafter CLYDE, my authentic paddlewheeler, for sale and gave a thorough description. Cautiously, I advised, “the CLYDE is not the boat for everyone.” The story probably dissuaded tire kickers and those envisioning a laid-back pleasure palace with one hand on the pilotwheel and another on an ice-cold adult beverage. BTW: the CLYDE is still looking for that particular new Owner – Captain.

The first two weeks in April were dedicated to the P. A. DENNY Sternwheeler in Charleston, West “By God” Virginia, after telling of saving old homes in Covington nearly half-a-century ago. My beautiful 1874 Italianate townhouse, built for Mrs. Harriett Albro, widow of a Cincinnati wood merchant, Henry Albro, was discussed in length. At the same time, across town, “Jeannine VanDerVeer and her husband Steve McMurtry had their neighborhood restoration projects going. Jeannine, it turned out, was one of the most talented restoration contractors the city had. Primarily, it was Jeannine’s efforts and leadership in her end of town that made that neighborhood flourish.”

“Of the countless number of steamboats I never worked on, but “would’ a if I could’ a” the most common reason for my absence was, they came and went long before I was born,” or so I wrote in my April 21, 2019 edition. Excerpts from this story were chosen and featured in the RIPARIAN, an anthology of prose, poetry, and photography influenced by the Ohio River and my first look at my writing in book form.

The first season I worked as a Watchman and Striker Engineer aboard the Steamer DELTA QUEEN found ink in a piece featured in my April 28th column. I’d graduated from Eastern Kentucky that spring, and Captain Ernest E. Wagner, my captain and mentor from my Steamer AVALON days, found a niche for me on the crew. I told of working in the engineroom after Jimmy and Bruce, the regular Watchman, returned from vacation and reclaimed their positions where I’d been filling in for them.

Discreetly handling my foray into a romance about when I met the lovely “Ilene,” especially after I overslept, was late for the watch, and sought the furthest recesses within the bilge to hide, hoping-against-hope, to escape Captain Wagner’s rebuke. Still, he found me and warned:

“Mrs. Greene is aboard, and you know she wouldn’t approve. I don’t want to hear you’ve been in that girl’s room for the rest of the trip. Understand?”

“Of course, I said, ‘Yes, Sir,’ and promised, but that was the first and only time I deliberately disobeyed Captain Wagner’s orders,” I confessed.

Robert “Bob” Sikes, the DELTA QUEEN’s talented artist-deckhand, a veteran of some of the most terrible fighting in Vietnam, introduced the reader to the “Crack(ed) Crew of the DELTA QUEEN, 1970.” Through Bobbie’s art, we met Rooster and Johnson, Wild Bill from Chicago, Andy Estaber, Little Owen, Ernest V., and Preston “Red” Lunsford. Captain Wagner, Mate Clarke “Doc” Hawley, and I also found a role as characters in Sike’s pencil drawing of the first deck crew I worked with aboard the DELTA QUEEN.

Can you tie the “Fool’s Knot?” You could, if you read the 12 May column, found yourself a hank of leavin’ line, and practiced and practiced… and practiced.

Of course, the May 19th version was devoted to “Camp Day,” commemorating the day my brothers Bob, Dick, and I claimed a vast stretch of the Licking River when I scratched on a tablet of shale, “Claimed by Don Sanders. May 19, 1955.” For at least three glorious summers, we brothers enjoyed our days in the sun without our folks discovering their sons’ clandescent rendezvous on the Licking River. In the intervening years, these soon-to-be 65 years since I inscribed my claim written with a rock upon a sheet of shale, my brothers and I have yet to fail to wish each other a “Happy May 19th” no matter where in the world we are.

In June, I recounted my adventures on the ocean aboard the Offshore Supply Vessel (OSV) ACADIAN VICTORY with cement poured into the hull for ballast. After a tranquil trip from Norfolk to Bermuda, the “Nazi-U-Boat-Commander-type-Captain, took the VICTORY into raging seas with 30-foot waves and near-hurricane-force winds. Extensively damaged, the OSV limped into Norfolk, where all the crew, except for two mates and myself, walked off the ship, refusing to sail with the captain. Being my first time at sea, I stayed, as I figured that’s what one does when they go to sea.

Starting on the 16th of June, my next five segments told of the harrowing 1,300-mile delivery ride bringing the Rafter CLYDE under its paddlewheel power from Alma, Wisconsin, to its new home in Aurora, Indiana in June and July, 2012. How much sweeter would the trip have been had we spend that entire summer making side trips and visiting exciting people and places! But the marine insurers gave us just a month to complete the voyage – including downtimes caused by mechanical issues.

“The first Cincinnati steamboat race in 16 years,” the subject of the July 21st column, was a first-hand account of the three-way race between the AMERICAN QUEEN, BELLE OF CINCINNATI, and the AMERICAN DUCHESS in the crowded Cincinnati harbor only days earlier. My brother Bob Sanders accompanied me aboard the BELLE as guests of Captain Terri Bernstein, the ramrod member of the famous Ohio River party boat family. The AQ was declared the winner, with the local boat in second place, much to the displeasure of Cap’n Alan Bernstein, the patriarch of the BB Riverboats clan.

July’s last installment addressed “small wooden craft” on the river, especially those powered by oars and paddles the way these small arks operated before gasoline-powered, noisy engines became the norm. “Far too often,” I wrote, “it’s thought, to have a boat, it has to be large, showy, and fast. But of all the boats I’ve known, none have been more fun and enjoyable than the ones I rowed. There is no better way to learn how a craft will handle than to be the motor that powers it.”

August saw more of Captain Howard Tate’s antics aboard the DELTA QUEEN almost 50 years ago. Dame Sybil Leek roamed the decks of the QUEEN casting spells and dispursing curses on those displeasing the “English witch, astrologer, psychic, and occult author who wrote more than 60 books on the occult and esoteric subjects.”

That issue also included the tale of when Deborah “The Fish” Fischbeck’s ”special brownies” went to the pilothouse of the MISSISSIPI QUEEN, rather than the “normal” batch.

Fish recalled:

“It was one of the worst pea-souper nights I could remember on the river- I kept putting my hand in front of my face and couldn’t see it. I was so nervous I was nauseated thinking we were going to have a wreck or I was going to get fired – or both.”

My old crewmate who helped me bring the CLYDE home from Wisconsin, Everett Dameron, who’d been the cook, dishwasher, first mate, and steersman on the initial delivery trip, was welcomed as a new boat owner in the August 11th installment.

A reflective, nostalgic mood overcame me as a writer the following week when I lamented, “The old-time steamboat men tried to tell us young bucks how swiftly the years would fly. But we laughed, unable to comprehend the passage of the seemingly long years ahead. In what appeared but a moment in time, the youthful face in the mirror drooped, grew gray, and looked tired.”

My 25 August story welcomed nineteen-year-old, newly-minted Captain Alex Schuchter to the ranks of licensed marine officers on the inland waterways.

The first September Sunday rag was directed to those greenhorns always spouting that they’d like to own a paddlewheeler, when they, and I, know they’re too damn lazy to take care of one. “

“The Wheel on the Rafter CLYDE is every bit as accurate as any wooden paddlewheel ever built since the NEW ORLEANS set the tone over two centuries ago,” I added. “Thankfully, though, it is much smaller, but is about nine-feet by nine-feet and weighs a ton. Still, there’s a lot of lumber in that brush pile to maintain.”

The 8th of September installment dealt with the replacement for the traditional “sternline telegraph,” the internet. Captains Kim Cornell and Doc Hawley were featured while remembering oldsters, Captain J. Emory Edgington and Albert Sidney Kelley. Born and steamboating in the 19th Century, both were men Cap’n Doc and I, knew and served with aboard one, or more, steamboats in the 20th Century.

Old river friends and ones newly met were the focus of the middle-September issue. Phillip Johnson, CLYDE’s Chief Engineer and part-owner of the Steamer DELTA QUEEN, and I flew in his automobile to Marietta, Ohio, in the third September column.

“Traveling with Phillip,” I wrote, “is akin to riding in the cockpit of a jetliner flying close to the ground complete with all the gauges and gadgets informing such facts as mileage, fuel used and gasoline remaining, miles averaged per-gallon and even the air pressure in the tires. The latest and most advanced smartphone interfaces into the display console that gives not only GPS-guided instructions to the pilot, but also accepts incoming hands-free telephone calls. Phillip knows how to safely scoot along a crowded highway as he is a ‘frequent flyer’ and superb pilot. Before long, we crossed the Ohio River and landed in Marietta.”

River Rat Barb Hameister’s gift of an “Old Crow” for the CLYDE’s pilothouse was appreciated as it commemorates Captain Wagner’s Old Crow mascot that graced a place of honor in the wheelhouse of the DELTA QUEEN many years ago.

The first October column talked about the allusion between a tow of barges and the Ludlow-Bromley Yacht Club, west of Cincinnati. On a positive note, I included, “Thanks to the skills and professionalism of those crewing the towing vessels, rarely does a mishap occur. Only when a rare accidental mischance happens is the public’s attention directed to the dangers of commercial barge traffic passing by their front doors.”

Former DELTA QUEEN deckhand, Charlie Rafferty, and his bride, Brenda, spent an afternoon aboard the CLYDE in the next October tale. “The last time Charlie Rafferty and I were together was atop the bonnet on the smokestack of the DELTA QUEEN over 41 years ago. John Hartford was aboard, too, and had brought the long, brass whistle from the U. S. MISSISSIPPI I gave him a few years before. I’d removed the QUEEN’s melodic, three-chime Lunkenhiemer and bolted the MISSISSIPPI whistle in its place,” I reminded my readers.

I attended the first reading of the RIPARIAN on the 14th of October and reported the results on the 20th.” Several authors read their works from the RIPARIAN. Perhaps the most notable, to me anyway, was Mrs. Dorothy Weil, some 90 years of age, the daughter of a steamboat pilot on the ISLAND QUEEN and the sister of Captain Jim Coomer, an old river pal-o-mine from aways ago.”

The last Sunday of October carried these sad tidings: “ Like a light mist this past week, the first whispers of the death of Captain Charles Tandy Jones spilled from the steep banks of the Great Kanawha River until the sorrowful tidings spread like a dense grey fog over the entire river community.”

THE RIVER observed its 100th column in the first week of November, while the Rafter CLYDE finally garnered a pair of decorative White Collars encircling its “chimneys,” as we say on the old-timey steamboat, the next week.

A cold snap blanketed the river from one end to the other before CLYDE’s engine was winterized by Chief Phillip. A pair of henhouse heat lamps kept the might Kubota diesel four-banger safe until the chief made his appearance with his lovely daughter Maddie. On the Lower Mississippi River, Captain Bob Reynolds posted photos of the ice coating the pilothouse windows on his towboat, the MAGNOLIA.

In the first week of December, I disclosed that relieving a lovely culinary specialist in the cookhouse of the M/V J. PAIGE HAYDEN while she was home in Arkansas on a family emergency. My antics behind the stove earned me the wrath of a trip pilot known to have shot his wife six times and escaped justice with the help of his closest kin, the county sheriff. The dialogue that festered the pilot’s venom went like this:

“Coming into the galley at breakfast for the first time; expecting the usual quality of towboat fare, the pilot ordered,

“Say, there, Cookie – Gimme two over-light… with bacon.”

I’d already burned the bacon, and as I scooped two slimy eggs from the frying pan and flopped them onto his plate, grease flew every-which-way as he watched with eyes as large as saucers. Handing him the plate with my left hand, I thrust out my right. As we shook paws, I announced,

‘Hi. I’m Don Sanders, the worst cook on the river!’
That Arkansan good ole boy hated my guts from that moment on. I knew he would exact his revenge the first chance he got the drop.”

On line boats all over the river, this past Thanksgiving, feasts of roast turkey and all the trimmings were the norm, as attested by Captain Bob Reynolds,
“Thanksgiving dinner on my boat: Roast turkey & gravy, baked ham, cornbread dressing, sweet potato casserole, green bean casserole, cranberry sauce, deviled eggs, pecan pie, pumpkin pie, caramel cake. Happy Thanksgiving!”

During the first week of December, readers surprisingly discovered the tactics once used by exterminators to debug a steamboat at the end of the season. Clean-up in the crew’s quarters was shocking to many to learn how much “weed” departing crewmembers left behind. Enough, apparently, to fuel the gleaners over the unemployed dry season.

Benton Roblee Duhme, the scion of a St. Louis family owning a major shoe-manufacturing company, and the river’s most-celebrated steamboat buff, was memorialized in that column. A fatal disease claimed his short life soon after crewing aboard the DELTA QUEEN in October 1970 on what could have been the “last trip” for the old steamboat seeking an exemption from the “Safety at Sea Law.”

The middle December issue of THE RIVER remembered Gene Clabes, his contributions to journalism and the Northern Kentucky community, in general, while I lamented not knowing him better. Crossing the LUCKY LADY ferry, back home to Indiana after the memorial, I found that the pilot, Josh Lakin, was appointed the “Senior Captain” of the Rabbit Hash / Rising Sun Ferry. After the column posted, I discovered to my embarrassment that I added a “k” in the middle of Josh’s surname, changing it to the name of my former in-laws. Sorry, again, Josh LAKIN.

Last week’s column was mainly about Christmas dinners, past and present. Included, was a tale recently concluded just before I wrote the December 22nd edition concerning the close call of two resourceful river-boating buddies, an encounter that would have killed lesser-experienced men.

That’s about all I wrote about encapsulated in 3,500 words or less. In-all, 2019 was a grand year. 2020, now just three days away, is a funny set of numbers – looking like a pair of spectacles. Hopefully, it will be the Best Year Ever.

Happy New Year 2020!

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.