The riverboat captain is a storyteller, and Captain Don Sanders will be sharing the stories of his long association with the river — from discovery to a way of love and life. This is a part of a long and continuing story. This column is reprinted from August, 2021, in honor of the birthday of Anna Margaret Sanders.
By Captain Don Sanders
Special to NKyTribune
Sunday, August 22nd, was the eleventh anniversary of the loss of one of the most preeminent “River Gals” I ever knew – my mother, the beautiful Anna Margaret. Her close friends call her “Margie,” but she eschewed being called “Marge.” She tolerated me calling her “mom” if I didn’t repeat myself too often. A more formal “Mother” suited her ears better. Mother firmly believed in the dictum of her generation for rearing offspring: “Children should be seen and not heard,” an adage that gave a name to my era of succession, the “Silent Generation.”
Anna Margaret was born in Cincinnati, but she grew up in Ludlow, Kentucky, downriver from Covington. Although she spent the rest of her life in Covington after she met and married the handsome Jesse Sanders, Jr., her heart often yearned for Ludlow and the friends and family she remembered before her mother, Bessie Lee, died unexpectedly during Mom’s senior year at Ludlow High. Bessie was just 33 when she succumbed to pneumonia following an otherwise successful operation. Ether, the commonly used anesthetic of the mid-1930s, was the culprit that caused Grandmother Bessie’s “pulmonary mischief,” or so a medical journal of the day described the often fatal malady.
Before she met “Jess,” as he preferred to be addressed, Anna Margaret, and everyone else, assumed she’d marry George, her hometown boyfriend, after graduating with the Class of ‘36. She and George spent many idyllic summer days canoeing the first roller behind the side paddlewheel of the Coney Island steamer, the ISLAND QUEEN. “It was great fun,” as I often heard her tell. The canoe always upset, throwing the occupants into the churning waters behind the grinding maul of the massive wood and steel wheel driving one side of the steam-powered behemoth. When asked how she survived though she couldn’t swim and never wore a lifevest, Mother nonchalantly replied, “Oh, I just held onto George.”
A short eighteen years after Margie and Jess exchange conjugal bonds, they wed their names together for the signboard of a stern paddlewheel houseboat named the MARJESS in their honor. Mother took to the boat like the proverbial duck to water. She transformed the former Great Miami River sternwheeler into our floating, family home in the refreshing evening fluvial breezes away from the sweltering city onshore in the days before air-conditioning became a popular household “necessity.”
My mother, not my father, was the parent who stoked the fire for my love of the river. Dad went along with it all as he realized river life was righteous family entertainment and loved by us all. Once, when he dithered at the suggestion of joining us on the MARJESS for his dinner break from work, Mother firmly announced, “If you want supper tonight, it will be served on the boat.” What amazes me still, after more than 60 passing years, is knowing that she prepared sumptuous meals for both them and three hungry boys on a single-burner hot plate aboard a rocking and rolling riverboat.
Anna Margaret’s favorite word was “NO,” and she could wield it like a sword. For most people, being able to tell someone they cannot do what they desire is difficult. It’s often easier to allow them to go about doing what they want instead of stirring a cloud of controversy by denying their expectations. Mother never had that weakness. I know from experience as she must have told me “NO” a zillion times – “NO, NO. NO, and NOoooo….”
On one hot summer day as the MARJESS lay moored at Walt’s Boat Club, I watched Mother in action denying a freeloading couple who thought they were coming aboard the boat for an afternoon of unfettered food and chilled drinks at our family’s expense.
It must have been on a Saturday afternoon for the headboat at Walt’s was filled with people swizzling cold beer, wolfing down bags of potato chips, and swaying woozily to the tunes on the jukebox when an overly-dressed man and woman came toeing across the gangway from the shore to the headboat. They might have stopped to question a reveler as to where “Jess Sanders’ boat was docked” before they resumed coming toward our paddlewheeler. While I watched as the strangers headed our way on the swaying floats, Mother was inside the boat with Bob and Dick. Dad was working as a city police officer.
The woman, outfitted in what looked appropriate for clubbing at the Beverly Hills Night Club, wore a wide, sweeping party dress, and worst of all concerning boat etiquette, had on high, spike-heeled shoes. The man’s cheap suit, vest, and tie caused him to sweat profusely in the afternoon, summer sun. Surely, his parched throat screamed for a cold brew.
At the first indication of a high-heeled shoe tapping onto the wooden front deck, Anna Margaret shot from within the dark, cool, interior of the MARJESS, thereby thwarting any intentions of intrusion into the inner spaces of her paddlewheeled family boat.
“May I help you?” Mother demanded of the strangers as her hands stubbornly curled like fists against her hips.
“Why, hello there…we know your husband from down at the courthouse, so when we heard he had a boat here on the river, we decided to come down to pay a visit.” By then, I could see the woman was sweating, too.
Mother’s brow wrinkled at the woman’s words while she looked the strangers as directly into their eyes as she could and fired back,
“NO! No, you are not coming onto my boat! Who are you, anyway? Get yourselves off ‘a here, onto the dock, and up the hill to wherever you came from.”
It didn’t take more for Anna Margaret to shatter those freeloader’s dreams of an unfettered day on the river with complimentary beer, grub, and free service. Neither, bothered, however, to argue with the former Ludlow High Panther, so off they hurried grousing as they stumbled through the crowd on the headboat, across the jiggling gangway, and up the hill to their car in the tiny parking lot. Mom was still miffed when Dad arrived for dinner. He hadn’t invited the pair to visit the boat, he said, and the only connection he knew about either of them was, the woman worked in the county clerk’s office, and the man did something or another around the courthouse.
Over the years, both of my parents eventually grew to understand my preoccupation with the river, especially after I was the Alternate Master of the DELTA QUEEN with Captain Ernest E. Wagner, and in later years, when I became the Senior Captain of the GRAND VICTORIA II gambling boat in Rising Sun, Indiana. All in all, my folks should have understood, for it was through them that I had my first taste of the river.
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.
My mother, Anna Margaret, was a woman ahead of her time. Of all things great and small in her life, she loved her family, her husband, Jess, Jr., and in their time, the river and our boat, the MARJESS. This column is reprinted on the occasion of the 11th anniversary of Anna Margaret’s death.
Simply beautiful. Heartwarming and tear-inducing is this tribute to your mother who was the heart and the heartbeat of your family. Blessed are those of us who have now or once had this model of a mother!