TOWBOAT COOK RECALLS RUNNING THE RIVERS

In the 1940s, Hilda Mae Abernathy, a 1937 graduate of Jackson High School, modeled fashions and sold products. She was featured in magazines and newspapers, long before starting her second career as a river towboat cook.

The former California and St. Louis fashion model -- tall, thin, proper -- sat in the lonely, messy lounge of the towboat company's dispatching office on the bank of the muddy Mississippi at Cairo, Ill., waiting to venture into the marine world as a towboat cook.

It was 11:30 p.m., Sept. 15, 1976. She would soon board the Jefferson for a series of river adventures that would make Mark Twain envious.

Nine years later she would return to her hometown of Jackson and write her lively memoirs, "Mighty Crooked Waters," and the book, published in 1987, would contain over 100 "river recipes."

While waiting for the Jefferson to dock, Hilda Mae Abernathy Trimble, a 1937 graduate of Jackson High School, was apprehensive.

"I tried to take a nap on the couch but I couldn't sleep," she recalled. "I went for a walk out on the barges, but soon came back inside. It was lonely and creepy out there with the dark waters sloshing against those huge, flat-bottomed freight barges. And the fog was beginning to roll in."

She wondered how she ever got into what she called at the time "a mess like this."

In the 1940s she appeared in magazines and newspapers modeling mink coats and designer clothes. She married an ophthalmologist and lived in California. She had prestige and status.

But a divorce and a series of ill-conceived business ventures while raising her two children caused her to return to the small Missouri town, near the Mississippi River, where she grew up.

"I was no longer young, but I had resolved that I would try for a new beginning of a different nature," said Trimble, serving cake and tea on her patio.

Her daughter-in-law had told her that cooks were needed on towboats that traveled the vast waterways of the Midwest and South -- the Mississippi, Missouri, Illinois, Ohio, Tennessee and Arkansas river systems.

Towboat crews, she learned, worked 30 days straight, then had 30 days off. The jobs were union and benefits included traveling expenses from home to port and back. And the pay wasn't bad -- $22,000 for six months work.

"I really didn't know what a towboat was at the time," she said, smiling. "But I quickly learned they push barges loaded with everything from coal to oil to machines."

Trimble signed on with the Dravo-Mechlin Co., which was based in Pittsburgh. The company owned 15 boats and employed 210 crew members to include about 30 cooks. Most of the crew were men and most of the cooks were women.

For the next 8 1/2 years -- from 1976 to 1985 -- until the towboat unions were busted and Trimble returned to terra firma, she cooked three meals a day for 11 crew members and frequent guests. She also earned the nickname "Schatze," given her by a watchman who spoke German. The name means sweetheart.

Trimble says all Americans depend on river commerce, but few people have first-hand contact with the lives that flow up and down the rivers.

"Few know the joys, the trials, the dangers and the satisfaction only a river worker can know. People watch the boats pass by, but never set foot aboard a vessel.

"The boats carry people who have their own personalities, conflicts, burdens, fears and joys, and they all have their own fascinating stories."

Trimble says each voyage was a trip into the unknown, and boat crews were a motley bunch -- from the roughest tough to the smartest sophisticate, from those who run from the law to ex-college professors.

"It's a sample of society you'll never meet in one place except on a boat," she said, matter-of-factly.

The towboats could push as many as 18 barges and the boats often had as many as four turbo engines and 10 rudders. The barges strung out in front of the boat could be the length and width of a football field.

She says the largest "tow" on record was 75 barges pushed five in width and 15 in length. It was towed from New Orleans to Memphis some years ago.

People unfamiliar with river jargon often confuse towboats with tugboats, says Trimble. "I didn't know the difference until I started working the rivers."

A tugboat is small with a cabin below and a pilot house sitting high on the deck. They nose barges out to the towboats. Towboats are fairly large and the living quarters, to include the kitchen, are above deck in two-story structures.

It took Trimble about six months to write "Mighty Crooked Waters." After leaving the river life, she traveled to California to visit relatives. It was there that "all at once I said I've got to write a book, and it all came flooding back to me.

"I found an old typewriter and got some paper. I'd get up about 4 in the morning and get started."

Trimble says she never kept a diary of her years on the river, and she never kept notes, but the experiences were always so vivid that they were easy to recall. She said she changed the names of some of the crew members if she said bad things about them. The book was finished in Jackson.

This is how a chapter called "A Strange Trip" begins:

"The Illinois River was known to Indians as Mighty Crooked Waters. Three hundred years ago La Salle explored the rivers and dreamed of the Illinois River as a route to Lake Michigan. This beautiful river flows through valleys and high cliffs which rise up to 200 feet. Cyprus trees stand in the water's edge, and tall firs line the banks. Some places have vines and foliage growing to the water's edge, and the undergrowth hides what is beyond the banks.

"We often saw deer swimming across the river and would stand on deck and watch to make sure they made it. Sometimes when the boat was waiting at a lock we caught glimpses of beaver and otter, and once along the way we saw a possum hanging from a tree limb."

Trimble says she saw beautiful red sunsets around cities such as Pittsburgh, Chicago and Memphis, but learned they were red from dirt and pollution in the air. "But the mornings were clean and beautiful ... I wish I could paint them," she recalled, a smile spreading across her face.

But life on the river was also dangerous. Getting on and off the boats during the winter was scary because of sleet, snow and ice.

On one trip aboard the Neptune, the captain, during the night, ran the boat into an old railroad bridge across the Illinois River near Alton.

In her book, this is how Trimble describes the incident:

"The boat seemed spooky. Since there was no one around to talk to I decided to go to bed and read.

"Suddenly I heard screaming! It wasn't a human scream; it wasn't the boat whistle; it wasn't the fire alarm. The discordant noise was more like enormous fingernails scratching on glass, and it set my teeth on edge.

"... I was thrown to the edge of the dining room. I grabbed hold of the ice maker, which was bolted to the floor, as the heavy tables and chairs swept down to the end of the room with a crash, and dishes and pots and pans flew out of cupboards.

"Refrigerator doors flew open and food crashed to the floor. Glass jars on the storage room shelves exploded, and cans crashed as they hit the steel deck. There was a big thud that bounced me up and down, and then the fire alarm drowned out all the other sounds."

Trimble recalls that she clung to the ice maker until the boat stopped bucking. The captain was shouting over the intercom. When a crew member named Ken asked, "Are you hurt, Schatze?" she replied she wasn't.

"I told him I was still hanging onto this Loch Ness Monster," she said, laughing, referring to the ice maker.

Trimble said no one was killed in the accident, but one man was thrown over the barge where he clung to a clavel -- a piece of wood or metal to which ropes are tied -- until he was rescued.

Another man was knocked unconscious after being thrown to a steel deck. He was hospitalized.

"I don't know what went on out on the tow that night, but it must have been hell with the barges broken apart and scattered up and down the river," said Trimble, shaking her head as if in disbelief. "There was busted steel cable and everything torn asunder. I could hear the men shouting and swearing as they tried to corral the barges. One had a hole knocked in it and sank."

She said there was no sleep for anyone that night. She went to the galley to clean up the mess and prepare for breakfast -- the eggs were smashed so she cooked bacon and made toast.

Fortunately, she says, most towboat trips were uneventful, but sometimes a barge would get stuck on a sandbar and it would take days to get it free.

She recalls her first trip along the Intra-Coastal Canal that parallels the Gulf of Mexico and connects New Orleans with Houston. She remembers the hideous swarms of mosquitoes, "and you could see crocodiles on the shore. Sometimes I get homesick for these experiences."

Many crew members had strange nicknames. There was Coon Dog, a Bayou hunter and fisherman who thought the South won the Civil War; Big Mama, a cook on the Pegasus; Captain Clean, a towboat captain who had a phobia about germs; Red Dog, a crew member known for pulling pranks; and another man with an equally colorful nickname, who would disappear into the bathroom when there was work to be done.

"You meet the most interesting people on the river," said Trimble. "I remember Capt. Running Wolf. He was a full-blooded Cherokee and my concept of the typical Indian chief. He never said anything when in the galley area.

"Although he didn't wear feathers and had a modern haircut, one got the impression he had a hatchet in his hand."

Trimble also met an ex-professor who said he was at Kent State University in Ohio when the state's National Guard opened fire on Vietnam War protestors in May of 1970, killing several students.

"He quit and joined the boat as a watchman ... we still correspond," she said.

The towboats pushed the barges up and down about 10,000 miles of navigable waters at a slow pace. To pass the time, the men would play a lot of poker; Trimble would usually stay in her room and read -- "I had oodles of books."

Although alcohol and drugs were not permitted on the boats, she says men would sometimes sneak a bottle of alcohol, or even some marijuana, aboard.

"I didn't squeal on anyone if they didn't cause trouble with me."

In early 1985 the company Trimble worked for was reorganized -- and union labor was out. Most crew members and cooks gave up the river life.

In April 1985, Trimble, aboard the Skylark, pulled into Paducah, Ky., in the middle of the night. The captain disembarked so she spent the night in his cabin. The next morning she found the boat deserted and neglected. It didn't seem the same as when she was cooking pies and roast beef for a bustling crew. She knew an era had passed, and it was time for her to quit.

On the last page of "Mighty Crooked Waters," is this:

"I am waiting in the Skylark lounge for transportation to take me home. The noise of the water sloshing against the tied-up boats and the lonely desolation brings back memories of my cooking career, when I waited at the Cairo landing and wondered what my future would be."

Trimble's future is still unfolding. Several times a year she speaks about her adventures to groups at Southeast Missouri State University. She also recalls her life on the river at club meetings and other gatherings. She entertains audiences by reading from her book.

And every so often she goes to the Cape Girardeau riverfront and sits on a bench and gazes at the towboats chugging by. And she remembers. ...