Being on the river, being a son, and remembering the anniversary of my dad’s death
Dad in Florida in 1955. Long before I was a thought. He always had something of this swagger in him. Always.
The river rose and fell quick.
A late August sweat box, the Ohio Valley
takes its pound of flesh
one drop at a time.
I’m smoking on the wharf before the Sunday cruise. It’s almost time to go get ready to light back off and wait for the telegraph to tell me to Stand By before it tells me we’re going Slow Astern. You get used to the telegraph calls; some pilots use that telegraph like a gear shift, and some don’t. And not every telegraph call means something has to happen. Sometimes the boiler is tuned in and all you have to do is be prepared in the event something happens. Sometimes there’s an audible, an unusual call. That can take the form of a call that the boat is going Half Astern instead of Slow, and there are several reasons for that; and if I mention any of them here, I will surely leave out the one that an old captain will tell me I left out the most common one, so I’ll just say that the unofficial official policy on the matter is that there is no such thing as a normal cruise, a typical cruise, or a normal day. Unless, of course, the captain refers to it as such and then, as stated in the introduction to the official Rules of the Road for the Western River System, the rules apply except for when the rules don’t apply. If there is a rule that is an inviolate rule in regards to steamboat life, in probably life on the river in general, it’s this: Take Your Break When You Can.
The American Legion was in town, en masse, over the weekend for a convention at which the Secretary of Dude Brahs was slated to speak. A huge group of the American Legion folks rode the boat, and I always enjoy interacting with veterans. By and large, they’re a no nonsense bunch. And because there’s a slight similarity between riverboat culture and military culture, they are generally good passengers. Curious, especially the Navy folks, like visiting the boiler and, like stationary boiler operators, have a base of knowledge and experience that can drive the conversation into more interesting places.
My dad was a veteran and while he didn’t hang out at the Legion Hall, I did, for a while, have a gig playing ‘Taps’ for military funerals in my hometown of Bethel, Ohio. I kept dress clothes in my locker at school and when I was called, I’d get out of class, grab my clothes, bring my trumpet, and go honor the fallen dead. I took this very seriously. The guy who always picked me up was this guy named Archie Boyce. Archie had this thick, immortal mustache and barely restrained eyebrows, but I’m pretty sure that was all the hair on his head. He was always nice, always talked nicely about my dad, even though they hadn’t really talked in years. When I was a kid, Bethel and Tate Township were dry and Legion Hall 406 was the only actual bar in town. The bar was in the basement and sometimes Archie would take me to the legion hall and let me saddle up to the bar. He always made the same joke about being too young to drink. The honor guard was usually there, pre-gaming for the funeral.
As I’ve gotten older, I understand this better. While I didn’t go the military route, I have a lot of friends who have, and when I was younger and after my dad died, I spent several years hanging around several Vietnam Vets, one of the wars my dad served in (the other was Korea, another war that wasn’t considered a war in the name of a legal loophole.) I don’t remember the condition of the honor guard when we buried my dad. In the end, it didn’t matter because nothing mattered. The rifle shots seemed louder to me then than at any time before.I remember very little except that it rained and it was the last time I played “Taps.”
I developed the tendency of sons
of dead dads to hunt out father figures.
17 year-old-boys have so much to learn
between that and watching him
die for a decade, most of what I needed
just confused me, slow and stubborn
living in the echo of honor guard rifle shots
and a trumpet note lingering long
in the September rain
“Getting your break in while you can, eh?”
It was one of the passengers, an American Legionnaire who was waiting to board. I affirmed that I was. Did I mention that military folks understand the schedule? River time has in common with military time the concept of “hurry up and wait.” No one asked me what time boarding was because they already knew to a person when they were going to be able to get on the boat. As I was talking to him, it came out that I operated the boiler. He’d been in the Navy, and had read all about the Belle. So we talked about the boat, about the boilers, about the engines and steam pumps. I invited him to come down and look at the boiler, which he did after we were underway.
My dad was one of those people who could talk to pretty much anyone. My wife is that way. I am not. It takes a certain amount of work and putting on a bit of my father’s face to interact with people. Left to my own, I’m quiet, broody, and full of conflicting currents. I alternate between peace and violence, song and silence, fire and ash, flash floods and calm waters. I have days of boundless energy and vision; then I have days when I can see nothing, feel little, and have the energy to turn over and go back to sleep. Most of the time, I make myself move on days like this. I don’t remember dad ever acting like he was having a bad day, though I know he had them. When I was 10-years-old, he and my mom came home from his doctor’s appointment telling me and my brother that he would need to wear an oxygen bottle. They were still trying to figure out what caused it. The default explanation was that he smoked when he was younger; but he quit before he turned 40. At this conversation, he was almost 50. People who quit smoking report better health over time. Neither my dad nor the Department of Defense thought his time in the Navy, working in the belly of a diesel gunship on the North China Sea, nor his time as a jet tech and mechanic during Vietnam, preparing jets for bombing raids into North Vietnam, had anything to do with his lung problems. But he seemed to adapt as best he could. Or, that was what he let us see.
My status on the boat is both easy to explain and difficult to make myself understand. I’m there, but I’m not there. I work a few cruises a week, and I’m grateful for the work. I like being back on the river, back in the firebox, back in the engine room. There’s a telegraph in my core that rings messages from the invisible pilot house, telling me whether I’m heading ahead or astern, slow or full, or even half. I shift between being on the boat in a familiar pool and being cast off onto unfamiliar currents and conditions. I know I’m lucky to live the life I’m living and I’m more or less enjoying the ride. I find myself wondering what Dad would think about all of this, but I can’t live in that space too long because the dad in my head is a me-at-17-year-old-dad. This may or not make sense. You don’t get to know your parents as adults until you ARE an adult. Everything else about them is a product of what you need them to be. I’ve found this is true even when the dad in question wasn’t a good dad, though I was fortunate in that regard. Dad was good at being a dad, and where he failed was because he, like all dads, was just a human being and not the second hand of God he was in my head when I was small. But when my current status is confusing, even to me, I’m comforted by the thought that my me-at-17-year-old-dad would think it makes perfect sense. When I smoke my pipe, I think he’d probably chide me a little and tell me I should quit. But then again, his father smoked cigars. And it wasn’t the cigars that killed him.
[first published on my substack: https://eymick.substack.com/p/the-condition-of-the-honor-guard]