Monday, February 27. 2006
Howdy!!!! it is winter and we're expecting a possible 70 degrees tomorrow. What is up with that. If it is sunny outside, who cares. As long as it doesn't get to be 110 degrees this summer. ANYWAY, I talked with the Archivist Librarian at Willard Library, one of our library system in town, to Pat Sides and she is trying to add new pictures to the Photo Gallery for steamboats, river boats, and other river traffic pictures each week. I told her that it would provide a great site for those interested in the river as we were the world's biggest area for river traffic in the early 1900's. She wasn't aware of that fact also. But, she wants to help out and will add more pictures as fast as she can. She will be losing two volunteers who help her scan pictures in the library site. So, bear with them for a while. You can also contact her at the library: 812-435-4309 or email her for any photo needs: patsides@willard.lib.in.us I told Pat about this site and she is checking you all out. I'm sure that she will help us find a way in getting more pictures up....I told her that maybe I can help financially down the road when some boats start coming in and help preserving and getting these photos faster on line with some paid help. I'll see what I can throw together...may get some volunteers to help her. So, catch her site some time: go to www.willard.lib.in.us, go to Photo Gallery section and click there, then go to Ohio river/River front. Enjoy! and hope you get to see a piece of our river history along the Ohio River. Mary
Wednesday, February 22. 2006
Information on early steamboats and those who operated and traveled on them can be found in a number of sources. My personal preference are law suits and there depositions of witnesses. Newspapers are an excellent source as well as the reports of the local steamboat inspectors which were sometimes printed in the papers Beginning in 1853 the supervising inspector for each district met with his counterparts in a major city within one of the districts. Here they submitted "their annual report of the operation of the steamboat law of August 30, 1852, and their own proceedings and those of the local boards during the past year." These summaries were in turn printed in the annual "Report of the Secretary of the Treasury of the State of the Finances." The following is taken from the report for the year ending June 30, 1860;
"By far the most serious accident by explosion of inspected passenger steamers during the past year is that of the explosion of the boiler or boilers (for the boilers having sunk, and not yet been raised, it is not known whether one or more exploded) of the steamer ‘Ben Lewis,’ about one o’clock on the morning of the 25th of June last, at the mouth of the Ohio river, and but a few moments after leaving the landing at Cairo. The steamer also took fire from the explosion, and was burned to the water’s edge.
This explosion caused much excitement and indignation, not only by the loss of life directly resulting from the explosion, but from the greatly increased loss of life by the drowning of those who, after the explosion, were compelled by the fire to leap in the river and endeavor to reach shore.
At the Cairo landing, which was a short distance from the exploded steamer, were steamboats having steam up, small boats, and other conveniences for rendering assistance to the injured and saving the lives of those driven into the water; but so little were they availed of, or so great was the delay in proceeding to the rescue, that many of them were drowned, before assistance reached them, who were comparatively uninjured by the explosion. Indeed, in one case of a steamboat just arrived at the landing, and with steam up, relief was positively refused by the captain. The officers and crew, after urging the captain by every consideration that could be presented to start out his steamboat to the aid of the injured and drowning, and his refusal, took possession of the small boats and proceeded to the scene of the explosion, and were successful in saving many lives.
It is supposed that not more than one-fourth of the total loss of life was the direct result of the explosion; the remainder were driven overboard and drowned.
The conduct of the captain alluded to has been condemned in the severest terms, as not only the most common dictates of humanity should have led him to render all possible assistance to the sufferers, but he was, in addition, urged and implored by those surrounding him, and by every consideration that should influence a human being, even appealing to his cupidity by offers of compensation, guarantee, &c., to the fullest extent; but all was of no avail. Since the accident, this man has been publicly censured and repudiated by the whole community, and especially by those more immediately connected with steam navigation; so that, as the result, he has been compelled to give up his steamboat and abandon the river.
The investigation of this explosion has been commenced by the board of inspectors at St. Louis, but is not yet completed, as they desire to examine the remains of the boilers before making their report.
The circumstances attending this disaster, as set forth in the testimony already given, were as follows: The boat was on her trip from Memphis to St. Louis, and had made a landing at Cairo of fifteen to thirty minutes; they had started out again on her route, (whilst at the landing at Cairo the second engineer, then on watch, blew off a large quantity of water from the boilers,) and as the boat struck the current of the Mississippi river, when passing out of the Ohio, she was careened down very much. As soon as she was fairly headed to the current, she again righted, and the explosion immediately occurred.
It appears, further, from the evidence, that the second engineer, then on watch, had been frequently noticed to run with water lower and carry a higher pressure of steam than was done when the chief engineer was on watch; in fact, an engineer, who was a passenger on board, had noticed this state of things, and had warned a friend of his (also on board) to be on his guard when the second engineer was on watch.
Without wishing to anticipate the report of the local board engaged in investigating this matter, we may say that, from the evidence already received, there can be but little doubt that the water in the boilers was blown down to so low a point that when the boat struck the current of the Mississippi and careened, a portion of the flues was laid bare, and when the boat again righted, and the water returned over the bare and heated flues, the generation of steam was too rapid to be relieved by the safety valves, and the explosion followed.
By this explosion and the fire resulting therefrom twenty-three persons lost their lives by the explosion and drowning; among the former was the second engineer, on watch, who paid for his temerity the forfeit of his life."
Tuesday, February 21. 2006
Before Interstate 75 mauled the West End of downtown Cincinnati and encapsulated the softball meadows of Willow Run on the Covington side of the Ohio River in cement, north and southbound traffic from Detroit, Michigan to Jellico Tennessee, and back, flowed on US Route 25. Most people called this road the “Dixie Highway”, but to others it was the “Hillbilly Highway”.
On Friday evenings, the road was jammed, bumper to bumper, with cars carrying Detroit automobile plants workers back to their ancestral Appalachian homes in rural Kentucky and Tennessee. The hillbilly highway crossed the river on a bridge that shared the same piers with a railroad counterpart and the combination highway and train bridges were collectively called the C&O Bridge.
My father, Jess Jr. was a Covington police officer and in command of the Traffic Bureau. Friday was also payday for the police department, so every Friday night, mother, my brothers Dick and Bob, and I would pile into our car and join dad where he was at work on the southern end of the bridge with the men under his charge. Dad was due to end his shift by nine pm, but he never got off until well after midnight on Friday nights, not until the last of the long homeward bound parade had finally crossed the C&O Bridge and cleared the far-most boundaries of our town.
The police had a small segment set aside for them in the parking lot of the Bridge Café and Liquor Store, across from the ramp of the bridge. The rest of the parking lot was filled with the automobiles of colored men and women from Cincinnati. For it was payday for them too, and the Bridge Café was a favorite place where they cashed their paychecks, which they spent liberally in the café before returning to their vehicles where they consumed their purchases drunk from small waxed paper cups provided by the café for that purpose. Little was generally said about the drinking in the parking lot as long as it was consummated within the confines of the cars and the lot had the frolicking air of New Orleans during carnival. Rarely was there any trouble outside of an occasional shouting match or the indignation of a man, or woman, who found his, or her, mate in the backseat with another, especially as the night wore on as the whiskey flowed. Perhaps the presence of my father and his men was enough to keep the peace, but everyone was there for fun at the end of a week of labor, and trouble with “the law” was the last thing anyone wanted, so generally the crowd policed themselves.
To my bothers and I, the black men and women drinking and cavorting in the parking lot was frightening, but also exciting, and we dreaded, but also anticipated Friday nights in the parking lot of the Bridge Café. We did have father and his men to protect us, so we boys put on airs of indifference and acted as though the goings-on in the parking lot were all apart of our everyday routines.
Dad and his traffic cops spent so much time around the Bridge Café that it soon became their favorite after-work place to stop for a beer, or two, and the Bridge is where, on Friday nights after the traffic had cleared, father bought his weekly case of Wiedemann Beer and a carton of six twelve-ounce bottles of Pepsi-Cola for us three boys. That was two sodas, apiece, to last a week, and if for some reason any of us displeased our mother, her worst punishment was to open one of the bottles and drink the Pepsi while we watched. This meant that two of us would have to, as she liked to say with delight, “Split one.” Those words still grate like grinding metal when I hear them.
The "Bridge" was delighted to have the best of Covington’s Finest frequenting their establishment as great sums of money changed hands over the counter and the check cashing service attracted varying levels of the social ladder--much of it from the lower rungs. The manager of the liquor store was another “dried-up, little old man” whom destiny had chosen to inspire me and set me on a course that I have been traveling ever since. His name was Walter, but just about everyone called him “Walt”. Walt Hoffmeier.
Walt was born on a shantyboat on the Licking River sixty years before he and my father became pals. He and his tiny wife, Lorraine, owned a fifty-two foot, wooden houseboat called the PAL-O-MINE, a boat well-known in the Cincinnati harbor long before the Hoffmeiers bought it at Henry’s Boat Harbor above the city. One early summer day, in 1952, just a few months after grandpa died, Walter and Lorraine invite the young cops who directed the traffic in front of the liquor store, and their wives, for an evening cruise on the PAL. Again, the old fear returned when my mother and father were late returning to grandmother’s house where we boys were staying while they were house-boating on the river. Tears streamed from my eyes while I stood on the bottom rail of the white picket fence that enclosed the front yard of the bungalow on 38th Street as I prayed for their safe return.
Two weeks later, mom and dad were invited to ride the PAL-O-MINE, again, but this time we boys were invited to ride, too, and whatever happened on that day changed my life forever. Now as I sit looking out the window of this pilothouse, six stories above the river, I am still enchanted by that magical spell that started the first time I stepped onto the wooden deck of the PAL-O-MINE and met the small, bony man who became my first teacher and mentor. This is what I later wrote of him:
Walter Hoffmeier made it possible for me to become a riverman. Walt and his wife, Lorraine, owned a 52-foot, wooden houseboat that they invited my family to ride on in the summer of 1952. A love of the river was immediately born that first year and continues, half a century later. Walter had a enormous influence on a kid who'd never been much good at anything in particular until he met this skinny, hard-cussing, taskmaster who taught him carpentry, painting, and river skills. Most of all, he taught a boy what was expected of a man if he wanted to hold onto on a job, though the wages he paid were a evening's supper and the opportunity to be on the river working in every kind of weather, on all stages of water from a lake-like pool to raging floods and crushing ice. When I began steamboating at age seventeen, I already had seven years of experience that quickly caught the attention of Captain Ernest E. Wagner who continued the education that Walter had begun.
For better or worse, I harbor no regrets that the river has been my life.
(C) Captain Donald J. Sanders 2006
Saturday, February 18. 2006
The Introduction (Part III)
The Incinerator was a squat brick building set upon massive limestone blocks, carved and dressed in the manner of late-nineteenth century craftsmen, with a red tile roof and a high chimney that seemed too wide for its height. Massive steel roll-up doors were on either end of the rectangular face of the structure, and cement ramps set upon limestone allowed garbage trucks to drive up and into the inside and exit out and down the other side. Once within the incinerator, the trucks were weigh on an old-fashioned balance beam floor scale by, as mother described, “a dried-up little old Italian man” who worked in a tiny corner office and weighed and recorded all the weights of the refuse coming into the incinerator to be burned under the thick concrete floor that covered entire open interior of the building. His name was Walter Questa.
Walter was a dear friend of my grandparents. He roomed with them, sleeping sitting upright in an overstuffed armchair on the second floor of their West 38th Street bungalow. His arthritis was that bad. In the 1930’s, before my parents were married, Walter, Grandma Edith, and Grandpa Jesse jointly owned the Questa & Sanders Saloon on Madison Avenue, across from Anna Belle’s Beauty Shoppe, where mother’s Aunt Anna Belle and her husband, Alton Hull, specialized in applying “permanent waves”, then popular with the young women of the ‘30’s and remained a favorite of that flapper generation well into their old age, thereby assuring Aunt Anna Belle and Uncle Alton a life-long source of income that lasted until their patrons became too old, or infirmed, to come to the beauty shop that later moved fourteen blocks south on Madison, or died. In the latter case, my aunt and uncle would go to the funeral home where the deceased’s body was being prepared for burial and give their faithful customer one last permanent wave.
But it was in the saloon, in 1936, that the eldest son of one-half of the partnership was tending bar, when a young girl from Ludlow, the next town down the river and a niece of the beauticians, came over on a hot, summer day to fetch a glass of ice water for her aunt, met, later married, and became my parents.
Covington’s garbage incinerator sat on the riverbank at the foot of Main Street before the floodwall was built around the town that stopped the annual inundation of the Ohio River. The nearest neighbor to this building, built of oversized bricks perhaps a left-over lot of street pavers, was a graceful shantyboat set upon steel oil drums on the riverbank, far enough up the hill to keep the boat out of the water except for the highest floods. The shantyboat men kept water inside the wooden hull so that the cypress planks were always swelled tightly for those times when the river reached the top of the drums and set the tiny ark afloat. In an earlier life, this boat had a paddlewheel on the stern end, but since becoming a permanent home on the riverbank, the wheel had long since been removed and a back deck built in its place.
The shanty boatmen also had a fleet of several jonboats they used to fish the waters of the Ohio River for catfish and carp they cleaned and sold uptown. These practical wooden boats, with double square ends, sported a luxury few other boats of their class had. Over each johnboat, a canvas canopy stretched between upright wooden posts that protected the fishermen from both the sun and the rain, for they spent incalculable hours upon the river tending their trot lines, mining the murky waters for the riches contained in the flesh of fish.
A friend of the shantyboatmen, also a close friend of both grandpa and Walter, worked for the city waterworks and had a name that was musical to a small boy’s ears. He was named Chalk Kuhn, but the way grandmother pronounced his name it sounded like “Chaw-Coon”. It became a mantra. Mr. Kuhn was often at the incinerator, both on the business of the city government and to visit Walter and grandpa, and I thrilled to hear the music of his name. Chaw-Coon also fished in the little boats that bobbed on the river on windy days with their colorful canvas tops flapping like luffed sails.
Grandfather Jesse was the first policeman at the Boone County Airport, and in fact, he was the only police officer the airport had at the time, soon after the War had ended. Uncle Ray had made it home safely from the Navy though he had narrowly escaped death in the frigid waters of the North Atlantic before going overseas to the Pacific where he fought in many of the famous sea battles of the War. He was aboard his ship, in Yokohama Bay, when the Japanese signed the surrender on the USS MISSOURI, not far from where his was anchored. “I shot down a Jap Zero,” he admitted, years later, as he reflected while lying on the bunk of our sternwheel houseboat, MARJESS, where the rocking of the boat must have taken him back to his Navy days. That is about all Ray ever told me about the War, except that he hated it.
Grandfather was at the incinerator quite often, and as I tagged along with him ever chance I could, so I, too, was a frequent visitor there where the little fishing boats bobbing in the wind held a special fascination. By and by I began to fantasize that I was in one, rocking with the rhythm of the river. Eventually this fantasy was put into words that soon reached Chaw-Coon’s ears, and he suggested we could go down to the river’s edge, with grandpa’s permission, of course, where we would get aboard one of the beautiful jonboats with the vibrant canvas tops. Chaw-Coon promised grandpa he would take good care of me in the boat, and grandfather trusted his old friend enough that he gave him his approval to take his oldest grandson on his first river adventure since the ferryboat fiasco of a few years earlier. So it was set for me to go. All I had to do was take Mr. Chalk Kuhn’s hand and thread my way down the worn path to the river’s edge where a chain was shackled around a willow tree and out to the bow of one of the prancing boats.
How I wanted to go. But at the last minute my courage fled and the old gripping fear returned. No matter how much anyone around me encouraged me to go, I could not overcome the dread when it was time to fulfill my fantasy of being on the river in one of the tiny boats. This was the same loss of courage also experienced at various other times in my life as when I wanted to ride the Shooting Star roller coaster at Coney Island, jump off a high willow tree limb and into the Licking River, or ask Darryl, the popular girl next door, for a date. The sensation of unqualified, raw, absolute terror, though, had subsided somewhat, and in its place a curiosity for the river was beginning to bud, though I was not aware of the change just yet.
The memory of that beautiful shantyboat has remained with me over the decades as my special dream “hide-away-place”, a mental refuge where I have often escaped. Years later, as the shantyboatmen grew old, they offered their immaculately-kept boat to my folks for a thousand dollars, who after a quick deliberation, promptly turned down their offer. Consequently, the boat ended up in a barge fleet as an office where it lasted but a short time amongst the mammoth steel monsters and became kindling for the descendants of the fish once mined from the river by the original owners of the handsome shanty.
Walter Questa died in grandpa and grandma's home on 38th Street in November 1947, and Grandfather Jesse Sanders, Sr. passed-away in the same house on February 9, 1952, the worst day of my life that I pray remains so, for I could never again handle such a tragedy. He was only fifty-eight. Grandmother Edith outlived him by thirty-two years. Chaw-Coon lived another thirty-some years, or so, and Uncle Raymond Robert Sanders died a year before his mother, breaking her heart. The green-shingled bungalow at 110 West 38th Street in Covington, Kentucky was sold to a near-by church congregation who immediately tore it down, breaking my heart. It was to houses what the floating shanty was to boats. The steamer ISLAND QUEEN was still running excursions during my early years, and I have vague recollections of riding the great white sidewheel steamboat, but the memories, like mostly-forgotten nightmares, recall sitting on hard benches on the open top deck, at night, dreading the deafening shriek of the steam whistle. When the Coney Island steamer exploded at the Pittsburgh Wood Street Landing in 1947, the Cincinnati press and radio coverage has seen its equal only in the more recent reportings of the Kennedy assassination and the 9-11 tragedy. As a second grader absorbing every word coming over the radio, I recall the ISLAND QUEEN explosion as clearly as I remember the more recent two.
© Capt. Donald J. Sanders 2006
Thursday, February 16. 2006
Or was it the time, during the War, when we drove “over the river” to the Sears & Roebuck store on Reading Road? Grandmother Edith came along, too. So there was Mother, Dad, Grandma, and I in the “machine”, as automobiles were called in those days. “Don’t ask for a thing,” mother warned. She was especially on guard that I would talk grandma into buying me something that they, themselves, would not want me to have. Surely in the entire store there had to be at least one item I wanted that was the very last thing they would allow me to possess, and it did not take me long to find it.
World War II was raging, and would rage on for at least another year longer as we walked through Sears. All the talk was of the war. Walter Winchell and H. V. Caltenborn’s voices coming over the nightly newscasts on grandma’s living room radio are still haunting today, more than half a century later. I also recollect a neighbor walking past our house on 41st Street, soon after a summer thundershower had passed and a beautiful rainbow appeared, getting into a heated discussion with my father. “Black Market,” yelled the man, fervently, who had just stepped off the Rosedale bus, coming home from work as he did every day at the same time. “Black Market!” What did it all mean, I wondered? The War was constantly on everyone’s mind; even a three-year-old boy was caught up in the excitement and fear that permeated everything and everyone. Dad’s only brother, Uncle Ray, was in the Navy, somewhere in the Pacific, but father, a police officer with a small child, had been able to stay out of the draft this far into the war.
So on this day, we all packed into the machine and took a long ride over to the Sears store, a rare treat in those times of gasoline rationing for the war effort. Grandfather Jesse did not come along, so he must have been at the Bavarian Brewing Company where he cooked the mix of oats, and hops, and barley in huge copper kettles, two stories tall, and made a liquid called Wort. Yeast was later added, and this fermented the wort, and within the precepts of the Zymurgian art, this infusion ultimately became the rich, golden beer that everyone who drank it agreed tasted better since grandpa started working in the brew house.
Without having to search through all the contents of the Sears store, I found myself standing, almost magically, before “her” as she lay in a special rack in the toy department. How her polished wooden stock gleamed! And her barrel, although wood, too, was painted to look like metal, just like the real ones used by “our boys” overseas. Looking around to see if anyone was watching, especially my mother or father, I dared to pick her up and cradle her lovingly in my arms. Her action was silky-smooth and much to my delight as I opened the bolt; there was a golden wood bullet that went in and out of the chamber with the sliding mechanism of the authentic bolt. It was a war-child’s version of the 1903 Springfield Rifle. I was love-struck and had to have that wooden rifle.
“Put down that thing down.” You’re not getting any gun!” My dreams were suddenly shattered by mother’s booming command. Though it was useless to plead with her, I tried my best until she guaranteed a “good whipping” was waiting when we got back to our home across the Ohio River. Reluctantly the dream piece was carefully laid back into the rack, but a sinister thought suddenly came into my mind, and off I hurried to find grandma.
“Ple-e-z-z-e-e.” I pleaded and pleaded until my grandmother dug into her purse that always smelled like White Shoulders perfume, and laid the cash onto the sales counter, and I marched proudly out the door where my folks were waiting and wondering where we had gone. Until we met them outside the store on our way to the parking lot, they did not know that grandma had bought me the wooden weapon. Both exploded in anger when I came out the door with the rifle that they had forbidden me to have. Though my parents and grandmother became ensnared in the chaos boiling around me, I could care less. The angry words spoken between my father and his mother mattered little. My beloved rifle was in my arms and that was all that did. Grandma, now determined that I was going to keep my new gun, both pleaded and demanded with her adversaries to consent to allow me to keep it, but before an a settlement was reached among them, I spied an Oriental couple putting their packages into the trunk of their automobile.
“Look, Japs!” I screamed as the barrel of my new rifle came down and drew a bead on the frightened couple. Carefully I took aim and took up the slack on the trigger. Mother’s screams of “NO! NO!” thundered in my ears, but nothing was going to deter me from my patriotic obligation of shooting two Japanese only three parked cars away from our own. Mother seemed to move in slow motion as she struggled to reach me before I pulled the trigger on my Springfield Rifle with the golden bullet. She was but a short step away when the stout metal spring released and allowed metal parts to come together with a resounding, ringing “CLICK”. As though that was not loud enough, I let fly an even louder, “POW!” That caused the Orientals to jerk nervously as they hastily threw their merchandise into their trunk and made for the safety of the front seat of their machine. Hurriedly, their car backed out and was gone nearly a quickly as the offending weapon had been roughly confiscated and tossed brusquely into the trunk of our own car as I was as unceremoniously ushered into the back seat. Had not grandmother been there, I certainly would have been soundly thrashed, as it was, the tension became so impenetrable that father decided to take a ride down to the river where the ancient cobblestone grade ran down to the Ohio River where the Greene Line wharfboat lay shackled soundly to the landing with heavy iron chains.
The drive down to the Cincinnati Public Landing from the Sears & Roebuck store was tense and not a word was spoken. The atmosphere within the machine felt chilled like grandmother’s living room when Mr. Caltenborn’s voice came over her Zenith radio as he droned on about the War.
The Public Landing was once the doorway to the city when its length of more than a mile was chock-a-block filled with steamboats loading and unloading their wares. Shouts of roustabouts and draymen, the hiss and roar of ‘scaping steam, and shrill screams and deep moans of steam whistles once filled the air, but now the Greene Line wharfboat and the few aging steamboats that still landed alongside it were the only remaining vestiges of that so-called “golden age of steam transportation”. Time, ice gorges, progress, and now the War, had all taken their toll. Only one lazy steamer lay dozing alongside the enormous corrugated floating shed. Fading letters painted in its gabled roof still spelled GREENE LINE STEAMERS, but they were in immediate need of a painting. The only person on the landing was a muscular colored man carrying a paper sack, walking down the cobblestones toward the wharfboat.
The grade from Third Street down to the river dropped off at a fairly steep angle. An automobile turning suddenly off the horizontal surface of the street and onto the cobbles appeared to tumble over the side of the riverbank and down into an abyss that could be frightening to the unsuspecting. Reports of cars running out of control on the Public Landing and plunging into the Ohio River, drowning all aboard, were rare, but they did occur occasionally. The river and the sky were gray as the sludge left on the landing after a flood and the air had turned cold and was spitting snow as we neared the edge where Third Street plummeted onto the steamboat landing.
Since having my rifle confiscated and tossed into the trunk, I sat sulking on the seat behind my father who was driving the car. Grandmother sat to my right, behind mother who was on the passenger side of the front seat. As our machine approached the Public Landing, I looked out my side window, down into the forbidding waters of the river, and felt a foreboding as uninviting as an invitation to doom as unsuspecting flatboat immigrants surely must have felt when they discovered, too late, that that were about to fall into the hands of the river pirates at Cave-in-Rock. Much to my bitter anguish, father suddenly turned the steering wheel over hard, and our machine made an immediate left-handed turn. Just as suddenly, the car made a nosedive onto the cobblestones as it went from the sanity of a level, horizontal surface onto a sharp angle heading down a steep, slippery incline that terminated several hundred feet below where the paving stones met the winter waters of the turbulent river.
Where, but a moment before, I could barely see over the back of the front seat, I now had a clear vision of impending destruction as the hood of our automobile dropped so low beneath my line of sight that it was no visible from my seat, and the spectacle of the angry river, with the great tin warehouse afloat upon it, filled the windscreen. An apprehension, much worse than what I had experienced the day of the ferryboat crossing now filled me with the most malevolent trepidation, and from within the depths of my soul came a primordial shriek so terrifying that my father’s foot slammed the brake pedal to the floor. The tires screamed as the machine froze rigidly to the granite cobblestones. Mother’s head flew toward the windshield, but stopped short of smashing the glass, and her long blond trusses flew out waving like pennants in a stiff breeze. Further down the stone grade, the colored steamboatman stopped and turned around to see what was causing all the commotion on the hill above him. He stared for a moment, long enough to glimpse the blur of blond hair on the inside of the windshield and watch the automobile rocking back and forth on its suspension mechanism. Satisfied that he was out of danger, the boatman turned and continued on toward the ramp of the wharfboat with his sack. Inside the machine everyone was in shock but I, who was just pleased to have been spared from the maul of the river once more.
© Capt. Donald J. Sanders 2006
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