The rhythm of river life

When Samuel Clemens piloted a steamboat on the Mississippi River, he relied on a keen eye, an ingrained knowledge of river currents and a deckhand with a rope, knotted at 6-foot intervals, to gauge the channel.

When two knots disappeared beneath the water, Clemens heard the deckhand call out "Mark Twain," which meant deep water and safe running.

Aboard the towboat Arthur E. Snider, pilot Bob Allen relies on electronic depth finders, radar and a computer that shows his position on the river using satellite navigation.

Deckhand Dallas Sharp, left, and mate Mike Sandmand made their way between two barges loaded with cement while walking back to the the towboat Arthur E. Snider on June 11. With everything secure, the boat began its 26-hour journey south on the Mississippi River from Cape Girardeau to Memphis, Tenn. (Don Frazier)

He also must call on a keen eye and ingrained knowledge of the current.

A single blinking light, more than 2 miles off, gives notice of a sharp bend. On a night when thick clouds block all light from the full moon above, experience with the current tells Allen how to guide the towboat pushing 5,400 tons of cement in three barges squarely under the Interstate 155 bridge south of Caruthersville, Mo.

"Beyond the bridge on the left-hand side, there are control structures pushing the channel," Allen said as the bridge passed overhead. "Any time you come down out of a bend like you just came out of, you are going to get an outdraft that will push you out."

Allen, 68 years old with 47 years on the river, still has the straight back of a Marine. His full head of white hair is swept back, his black cowboy boots a clue to his off-river life on a Montana ranch in the Rocky Mountains.

Like Clemens in his day, Allen is responsible for every movement of the boat during his watch. And like the pilots of old -- including Clemens -- Allen has built a prosperous life on the river.

When he first signed on as a deckhand, Allen was recently discharged from the Marine Corps. "I had to have a job," he said. "I've just got a high school education."

Any job that paid enough to support a young man considering marriage would have been fine, he said. The river "wasn't a magnet, no. It wasn't nothing like that. It was just the fact that I needed the job. And I got to like the days off."

As a pilot with 34 years' experience, Allen makes top pay. He receives $425 a day, working 28 consecutive days on the river. When that stint is done, he's off for 28 days.

"It's a different kind of life," Allen said.

The Arthur E. Snider is one of nine towboats operated by Missouri Barge Lines of Cape Girardeau. Named for the company's longtime port engineer, the boat works the waters between Cape Girardeau and Memphis. The towboat, with its crew of six, carries on a 195-year tradition of mechanically powered riverboats.

The towboat itself is almost identical in dimensions to the original Mississippi River steamboat, the New Orleans, which entered the Mississippi from the Ohio River on Dec. 17, 1811. The New Orleans was 148 feet, 6 inches long; the Arthur E. Snider is 152 feet long. The New Orleans was 32 feet, 6 inches wide; the Arthur E. Snider is 34 feet wide.

The similarities end there, except in one respect: speed. The New Orleans ran at about 12 mph downstream and 4 mph upstream. The Arthur E. Snider moves at about the same rate.

Distance on the river isn't measured in miles, it is measured in hours. The run from Cape Girardeau to Memphis takes 26 hours, a distance that can be covered by car in less than three hours.

"You are out here for days and days," Allen said. "You are not in that pace of the rest of the world generally that is moving so fast."

The busiest and most dangerous moments come as deckhands tie barges together with thick steel cables and set them loose at the destination. Those cables must be checked at the beginning of each six-hour watch.

When a trip is underway, life settles into a routine. The deckhand on duty must scrub the boat, wash dishes, make the captain or pilot's bed and paint when necessary. Of the six crew members, four -- the captain, pilot and two deckhands -- have regular six-hour shifts. Two, the engineer and the mate, must be available for work at any time.

For deckhand Randy Holmes, the river is also measured in years. He began working on the river 35 years ago at age 15.

He goes about his duties quietly and efficiently. As he pauses to reflect on raising seven children on a deckhand's pay, he said he knows his days on the river may be over before long.

"I'm 50 years old, and they're not going to want me much longer," he said.

Rob Erlbacher, owner of the barge line, said Holmes' worries are unfounded. The company has at least one deckhand in his 60s, Erlbacher said.

Life aboard a riverboat means distance from friends and family, missing birthdays and holidays. Many who try it leave quickly, said Rodney Barber, captain of the towboat.

One deckhand making his first trip became embroiled in a fight, Barber said. "I had to call them up here and I said, 'I like watching a good fight. I am going to shove into the bank and put you off. You are both fired, and I am going to sit there and watch you wing it out.'"

The new hand "decided before the end of the day that this job wasn't for him and he decided to get off the boat," Barber said.

Those who stay find a life running on a different rhythm. Once aboard, crew members stay aboard until relieved. Entertainments are limited -- television and reading, for the most part -- and meals become a highlight of the day.

At a recent noontime, most of the crew gathered for a meal of two kinds of baked chicken, mashed potatoes with gravy, asparagus, carrots and cake. As they ate, they talked about how they started on the river and why they stay.

Mate Mike Sandmand, 43, moved to Southeast Missouri in 1997 so his wife could be near her father. While working at Briggs & Stratton in Poplar Bluff, his neighbor told him about her well-paid brother, a towboat master.

"My first trip on the river was 48 days," Sandmand said. The trip took him to Minneapolis.

"I just fell into it and started liking it," he said. "After the first year, you start getting used to it. I got a different outlook as far as wanting to be home."

Convincing his wife to endure long absences was difficult, he said, "but she kind of fell into it, too."

For engineer Mike Ott, 48, the pay was a clincher. He compared river wages to factory wages and realized he would be better off working on a towboat. Born in Bakersfield, Calif., raised in Washington state, he moved to the Midwest in 1988 with his wife, Sandra, and twin daughters.

As engineer, he watches over twin 16-cylinder, 3,200-horsepower diesel engines. The constant throbbing of the engines is felt and heard everywhere on the boat.

"The first four years, I wore earplugs when I slept," Ott said.

His biggest regrets, he said, are the basketball games and other activities he missed. "I had to beg a partner of mine so I could get off early to see my daughters graduate high school," he said.

Now a grandfather, Ott said his time off focuses on his family. "Fishing, barbecues, whatever. This time home, I'm planning on taking both grandchildren to the St. Louis Zoo. You try to make up for what you miss."

Barber, the captain, said he had to choose between a home life and a river life. When his children were young he worked on harbor towboats where the crew goes home every evening.

He gave that up in 1994. "The children weren't out of high school, but I was tired of the dinner-bucket boats," he said.

The youngest member of the crew is deckhand Dallas Sharp, 23. He's not shy about discussing the troubles he had before signing on with Missouri Barge Lines four months ago.

He was kicked out of school in the seventh grade -- "I was the only one in my class who could drive." His father sent him to the Job Corps. That lasted three months because he didn't go to class.

A job at Procter & Gamble, working through a staffing service, followed. That, too, ended in firing. His father was a cook on a boat years ago and told him it was hard work with good pay.

He applied at Missouri Barge Lines and didn't take "no" for an answer. "I was down there every Monday morning, asking them to give me a chance."

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A towboat offers few places to be alone, and being in close quarters means everybody must get along, Barber said.

"It is really important to get a good crew chemistry for work production. There is a lot of joking around, and yet I want them to know when I am serious. As master of the boat, you have to keep control of it.

"I'm like a mother hen out here, being captain. Sometimes you have to settle little domestic disputes."

As the Arthur E. Snider plows southward, river life seems no more dangerous than any other line of work. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers maintains a wide, deep channel as the river winds through the alluvial soil south of Cape Girardeau.

When the New Orleans steamed into the Mississippi River in December 1811, the river was a mass of hazards with thousands of snags and dangerous shoals. Those hazards are now gone, but new ones have emerged. Pleasure boaters sometimes pay little attention to the barges, pulling skiers into their path or playing chicken.

Once, Barber said, he was piloting a towboat with two rows of empty barges. The barges, running high in the water, had separated slightly. "The ends of the barges created a V, and an idiot ran his outboard boat right through the end," he said. "Fortunately, he made it. They don't realize how long it takes to stop this thing, with 5,400 tons moving 10 mph."

Along with changing dangers, the Mississippi River has itself changed dramatically since the corps first sought to assert control over it in 1837. That first effort, to open ocean passes south of New Orleans, fared poorly.

Rock jetties today force the river's flow into the shipping channel, cutting off paths behind sandbars that pilots used as late as the 1970s to save time and fuel running against the current.

"You are just better off staying in the channel nowadays," Barber said.

Life on the boats has changed as well, he said. Crews are smaller, most boats run 24 hours a day and alcohol is strictly forbidden. When he first worked on the river in the 1970s, Barber said, one grocery supplier in Perryville, Mo., automatically added three cases of beer to every order.

As of June 20, he said, every barge will have a breathalyzer. Anyone with even a trace of alcohol in their system when an accident occurs will be suspended from work.

"I've had guys come in who had too much to drink the night before," he said. "I send them to bed and work their shift. I would rather sacrifice a night's sleep rather than have something happen to him."

That concern for safety and protection of a fellow river man's livelihood is also part of the tradition of the river. Those who can't handle the life are called "one-trip wonders."

Those who do fit find a life that's different from any other job. "They say if you wear out the first pair of boots you will make it," Ott said.

rkeller@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 126