[Alan Bates]

I have three stories, only. Captain Robert Morgan Lumpp had the River Queen and the Southern Belle built by Serodino, down there near Chattanooga. He is not well-known to river fans. He has a very checkered history and once played Bobo, the Clown in a chidren's television show. Somehow he worked his way to the river and ran the excursion boat at Nauvoo, Illinois. Somewhere he learned rapid-reading and can read faster than onyone I know, and retain it, too. He is a man of great imagination and a fine artist.
He cannot stand two things on his boats. One is a lack of cleanliness andif the pilot passes by a fingerprint on a window without pausing to wipe it off, his job is in jeopardy. The other is a lack of stability.
One of his boats heeled badly during a trial run and I was called to Chattanooga, instanter, to figure it out. By the time I drove three hundred miles at top speed Serodino's men had found the problem. The boat had very little fuel aboard so they had filled the collison compartment with water. A pipe cap was missing and the water flowed into the next compartment aft, which materially added to the free surface. Bob's fingerprints remain in the rail outside the pilothouse to this day.
The River Queen, I think, needed weight forward to achieve correct trim. Captain Lumpp found a steel shaft in a junkyard. It was about five feet long and two feet in diameter. Standing on end, it was welded under the deck at the head. He remarked, "If I ever have to find work for a deckhand to do, I'll hand him a drill and tell him to drill through it.
One day I was at Serodino's with him. The boat's deck was covered with mud, junk, scraps of fiberglass insulation, wire, welding hoses, and more mud. A passing electrician chose to spit, "Pat-TOO!"
Bob said, "Wait a minute," and followed the electrician aft. I tagged along to see the showdown.
He tapped the man on his shoulder.
"Yeah?" responded the worker.
"I'll thank you to not spit on my boat," Bob requested.
"Sorry," said the electrician.
One interesting project died. It was to be a diesel-hydraulic sidewheeler and he wanted to name it for his gorgeous wife, Sally. For the life of me I could not remember her name when I made the profile drawing, so I lettered it "DIXIE." The nickname stuck, and Sally is stuck with it.