How it all began....OR.....How I found my way to the river.

Hello all!

I think this blogging thing is more for therapy than anything else....I have gone to other sites and read other peoples blogs for ideas and the common thread is they all have a beginning. The place they start their story, if you will. So I figured even at this late juncture I would "start" mine here.

Attached you will find an old article from the Lousiville Courier Journal and Times (the latter of which was defunct some 3 years later) telling of a raft adventure my friend Greg Stevens and I took back in 1977.

As I read it over again some 31 years later, I remember the ambition it took to even try such a thing. For we were to forge a creek we knew precious little about other than what we had seen on road maps and been told by people on its banks in a public park. Some of the things we were not aware of included a pumping station near the Ohio River which blocked it (we never made it there), refuse in the creek behind the old Bourbon Stock Yards, and the general conditions of the creek past the part we knew in Cherokee Park.

We took off with a road map and the stuff the article mentions. As we decended the creek we learned that oars should not be made of cardboard (we were 13 years old....we learned ALOT that trip). By the time we had made it paralell with Interstate 64 we had lost them and were "rowing" with out hands.

No one told us how vile the water was behind the slaughter houses of the former Bourbon Stock Yards. This one should have stood to reason, as we lived in a neighbourhood where we could smell what they were doing to the livestock on days when the wind traveled in our direction. We just didn't know where that smell went....the creek! Just so you know, the Stock Yards are gone and the creek has been cleaned up to the point I would almost say it would be quasi-sanitary to re-attempt this trip again.

Once our vessel the DELTA QUEEN II sank...we learned how to talk people into helping us. At least helping us get home in one piece! This was probably the single most important thing the whole trip taught us!

My career on the river had many beginnings. There was the fact my adopted grandmother Miss Katherine Ambrosius, lived on Riverside Drive in Jeffersonville, IN. and I grew up watching boats on the river from her front porch. It was her Church Organist, Hal Whitley, who put me face to face with a calliope for the first time. It was also her connections which got my family to witness the launching of the MISSISSIPPI QUEEN back in 1974.

Then there was my first cruise on the BELLE OF LOUISVILLE in 1976. Our Church Youth Choir was to perform on the church charter cruise that year. I woke up sick with a sore throat and fever. But I didn't tell Mom so I could still go on the boat. I came home sick as a dog...but, that first cruise on a steamboat was the hook!

Then there was our neighbour, Captain Alan Bates who became a mentor for me in the education of the boats themselves. Many times he would sell me a page of one of his boat model plans. For I couldn't afford the whole set. One time he told me of a retired gentleman who had owned a record store in town and had the remains of it in his garage about 10 or so miles form our home. I called the man (I have forgotten his name now) and he had the record of the AVALON calliope Capt. Bates told me he should....so I rode over there, bought the thing, and rode home. All told over 20 miles. Even my mother took notice of my dedication to the river that day!

However, the raft trip was when I officially sealed my fate as a river rat....for it takes dedication to do something as fool hearted as this and be serious about it!

So this blog page is dedicated to how it all got started.

I have to admit, alot of things were not thought out on that trip. Like where were we going to store our inflatible raft if it had made it to the BELLE landing. Or, how were we going to get it home from the BELLE landing after the trip with no oars to row back up river.

Greg has since gone on to become a father of 2 and manage a group of fast food outlets in South Carolina last I heard. He never persued the river career quite the way I did. Of course, as many of you know well I not only followed the river, I made a living on it for many years and it became my life. In many ways, it always will be....and I am not complaining one bit when I say this. I have been blessed with great fortune my entire career...and that career has had many bends and even a few snags. However, it always leads me to a river.

Youth is a great and unfettered thing, ain't it?

~Travis~

Attached Files

1977 Raft Adventure.pdf (414.2 KB, 237 views)