Life Lesson on the Mississippi

There was a time when all I wanted was to go to work on a towboat, pushing barges up and down the Mississippi River. After being turned down repeatedly for lack of experience and being warned by friends and family that it was a tough, demanding life, I went to work on a towboat anyway. It was important, so I stuck with it. I finally found a company that was willing to take a chance on a green hand.

I worked on a small boat, for a small company. It was hard work. I was excited to be out there, floating through the woods for days at a time. Sure, it was hard work, but it was a small price to pay. I was grateful for the opportunity and anxious to learn my new trade.

Eventually, I found a job on a larger boat with a larger company. I got good at it. I started as a deckhand, worked my way up to First Mate, and then to the wheelhouse. The romance never wore off, not to this day.

To me, at the time, it was the only way of life that made a lick of sense. To some of the guys it was just a job. They would mark days off the calendar and could always tell you exactly how long they had left to go. They reminded me of prisoners.

At times, the water gets higher and the channel gets swifter.

It was on my first boat, the little one, on my first trip up the river that I witnessed something that made a lasting impression.

One morning during high water, I went off watch at midnight. I looked out the galley window and saw the light of a day marker blinking on the bank. When I came back on watch at 6 that morning, I looked out the same galley window and saw the same light flashing. I double-checked. Sure enough, it was the same one. The water was so swift that all of our engine power could not push us up the river. The best the Pilot could do was to keep us from going backward. We sat out in the middle of the river and did nothing more than hold our own for 6 hours, burning up diesel fuel.

There are buoys in the river that mark the channel. The Coast Guard guarantees at least nine feet of water between the buoys. The Pilot stayed between the buoys like he was supposed to. Then the Captain came on watch.

Captain Louis was well past what many consider retirement age. He was in his seventies. He had long white hair. The cottonwood trees could not rival him for posture. Captain Louis learned the river before there were reliable buoys, wheelhouse radar, and other navigational aids. Captain Louis could read the water. He knew every tree, every sandbar and how it had changed since the last time he’d seen it. Captain Louis knew how deep the water was outside the channel. He could look at a mark that the rest of us could not see and determine the depth and location of underwater hazards.

When Captain Louis came on watch, he took us into the slack water and we made progress up the river. When the Pilot came back on, he set the boat between the buoys and we sat there for another 6 hours, making a lot of noise, churning a lot of muddy water—an impressive sight, to be sure, but going nowhere.

Technically, no one could fault the Pilot. He was going by the book. On the other hand, what were we being paid to do?  Our reason for being out there was to push propane barges up and down the river. The Pilot was going by the book. Captain Louis was getting the job done. The Pilot had a lot of respect for Captain Louis. We all did.

Rules and guidelines are fine, some may even apply most of the time. I’ve also been on boats during low water and those buoys can be mighty comforting. If a boat or a barge drags bottom, even a little bit, it can do major damage. Still, there are times when the rules get in the way of what needs to be done.

What if each of us did our job as well as Captain Louis did his?  And why don’t we?

Towboating was more than a job to Captain Louis. It was a way of life, a life he loved.

I’ll never forget Captain Louis.

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