The pilothouse of the gambling boat is six stories above the Ohio River where I am gazing out the window watching a passing parade of towboats shoving their barges and trying to figure out a beginning for the story that brought me here, over fifty years since the day I was no longer terrified of the river.
Aunt Mary was an alluring blonde who charmed the deckhand on the Anderson’s Ferry to let her to drag her feet in the water as she sat on the stern of the boat as it crossed the Ohio River from the Cincinnati side to the Kentucky shore. Mother’s eyebrows arched in disapproval as she watched her younger sister hanging her legs over the transom just above the churning propellers of the small ferryboat as the boatman gave her his undivided attention, waiting on her every whim, even leaving his post to fetch a towel for her to dry her feet on as the boat neared the shore. The short trip was nearing an end.
Inside the boat a terrified, panic-stricken child believed he was about to see his “Other Mommy”, as he called his dearest aunt, pulled into the thrashing water angrily erupting from beneath the back end of the boat. But just as he was about to emit a terrifying scream, the leering deckhand handed the thin blond a clean, dry towel, and she pulled her shapely legs back onto the safety of the deck and dried herself. Panic stayed with the boy until he was lead off the ferryboat and his small feet were firmly planted on the concrete ramp now filled with automobiles speeding across the steel apron and up the steep grade. He turned to give the boat one last glance before following his mother and aunt up the hill, but the gut-wrenching fear returned as soon as he looked back, so he returned his gaze to the top of the grade and comforting warmth returned as he left behind him a place he hoped he would never see again. Thus was my introduction to the river.
