The River: The Captain is back at keyboard (with ear to door), sharing tales of life on river as he lived it

By Capt. Don Sanders
Special to NKyTribune

(The riverboat captain is a storyteller, and Captain Don Sanders is sharing the stories of his long association with the river — from discovery to a way of love and life. Welcome back, Captain!)

Three months ago this week, my life changed as suddenly and dramatically as it had while practicing stalls in a U. S. Air Force Cessna T-41 Mescalero trainer, and the plane unexpectedly broke into a “graveyard spin” spiraling toward the earth. With a similar unexpected urgency, my darling wife Peggy suffered a cataclysmic medical condition.

Only now do I feel that she has recovered sufficiently to allow me to distance myself from the constant affiliation we have both shared since the middle of December. Still, one ear remains canted toward the doorway and the stairs for any unusual sounds that may indicate the necessity of my presence on the level below. The resonance of our oldest son’s voice is a welcome reminder that Jesse is nearby his mother’s side which allows me the confidence to restart this babble where I left off late last autumn.

The world is a far different place than it was when I abruptly stopped pecking on my computer keyboard. But, of course, anyone reading this knows how much everything has changed in the past three months, so I won’t attempt to reiterate those things we all know.

I appreciate my editor, Judy Clabes, for holding my Sunday slot open on the NKyTribune while reprinting selected columns from the past. Thankfully, 204 stories existed to find appropriate examples for reruns. Or as Ginnie Rhynders, a steamboat fan of renown from upstate New York, graciously commented:

“I’m enjoying the ‘reruns’ as much as when they were first printed.”

With the global COVID-19 pandemic hopefully on the wane, the inland river cruisers have enthusiastically anticipated the upcoming 2022 cruise season. Viking River Cruises, for example, announced the launching of a new vessel made exclusively for trips on the “Father of Waters.” The 386-passenger VIKING MISSISSIPPI” “touched water” for the first time, recently, after floating off a drydock in Houma, Louisiana.

Houma is also where the venerable river steamboat, the Steamer DELTA QUEEN, awaits her fate depending on whether the QUEEN’s owners can procure the funds necessary for its revival. When someone suggested that the owners of the DELTA QUEEN were “awaiting donations necessary to progress,” Philip Johnson, a partner within the proprietorship of the historic vessel and former Chief Engineer of the Rafter CLYDE, countered:

“Not donations but investing partners. A project this size will never happen based on donations. The boat can be profitable. It’s just a sizable upfront investment to get it making money again.”

BB Riverboats in Newport, Kentucky, also announced recently, “Our 2022 schedule is OUT! However, all of your favorites are back for the year. Cruise dates, times, pricing, and additional cruise information is now available! We look forward to a great year!”

Further downstream, above the Falls of the Ohio River, Captain Pete O’Connell was busy repainting the name boards belonging to the Steamer BELLE OF LOUISVILLE. At the same time, Fireman John Paul Wright helped rebuild a steam-driven water pump in the engineroom of the 108-year-old steamboat.

Sixty-three years ago this summer, I practically ran away from home to join the crew of the steamboat, then known as the Steamer AVALON. Last week, the BELLE posted an ad for crewmembers noting that some positions started at $15 an hour. In 1959, my beginning salary was $19 a week plus “three hots and a cot.” Looking back, that was the best money I ever made during my life, considering all the excitement, adventure, and joy I received along with the token pay.

As you read this, the Ohio River gauge at Cincinnati should be reading about 40-feet. So although the water will be some 12-feet below flood stage, the river will still be in the “action stage.” Thankfully, Ohio is falling and not rising.

Late at night, when all else is still, and I am in bed, the rumble of straining towboats laboring against the current of the river, not too far beneath my bedroom window, enter into my room and cause me to dream. Perhaps only a boatm’n would find the reverberations soothing as a nostalgic reminder of times past on the water. But, except for frequent steamboat dreams, the growl of passing towboats underneath my bedroom window is as close as I have been to the fluvial world afloat in a long while.

With my return to these pages, I must reestablish contacts within the river community while exploring dimming, distant worlds fading with each passing day to make them live again with the written word. Few of us remain who worked alongside steamboat men and women from the 19th Century. While it’s still possible, I will further explore the tail-end days of the Golden Age of Steamboats on the grand Mississippi River and tributaries as those old-timers encountered along the watery way and I lived them.

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.