Life on the Mississippi: Workers share stories of employment on river

A barge travels down the Mississippi River along the River Wall in Cape Girardeau. According to the Missouri Department of Transportation's 2018 Economic Impact for Public Ports study, the SMEO Port provides 2,925 jobs.

Photo by Jasmine Jones

Situated along the Mississippi River, river transportation is vital to the economy in Southeast Missouri. The SEMO Port provides 2,925 jobs, $174.5 million in labor income, and $20.9 million in state and local tax revenue, according to the Missouri Department of Transportation’s 2018 Economic Impact for Public Ports study. In 2016, public ports in Missouri moved 4 million tons of freight, equivalent to the freight that could be moved by nearly 100,000 trucks.

The people who do this work play an important role in this region. Here, meet two of the men who have worked on the river, one above deck and one below.

Below Deck: Gene Maevers

Cape Girardeau resident Gene Maevers worked in the engine room on a barge during his youth. With his barge days behind him, Maevers still enjoys sitting by the Mississippi River and watching barges navigate the waters.

Photo by Jasmine Jones

Several mornings a week, Gene Maevers goes to the Mississippi River Wall and Cape Rock in Cape Girardeau to watch the barges go by. He enjoys seeing the boats maneuver their way along the river, speculating about what is going wrong when they have difficulties and reminiscing with passersby about his own time working on a riverboat.

“I got binoculars, I always come down here,” Maevers says.

Maevers was born in a house on a farm along Route 177 in Cape Girardeau and says he has always lived by the river. When he was 18 years old, he got a job working as the cook’s helper or “mess man” for Mobil Oil, thanks to a recommendation from his brother-in-law who also worked on a riverboat. For three trips as they hauled crude oil from Beaumont, Texas, to refineries up the river in St. Paul, Minn., and Chicago and brought gas to Cape Girardeau and Bird’s Point, Mo., he washed the dishes for the 18-man crew, mopped floors and tidied the captain’s room.

Then, he chose to work as an oiler in the engine room because he knew if he worked there, he would get to “wear short sleeve T-shirts year-round,” unlike the deckhands, who had to work in the cold during winter months. The downfall to choosing the engine room, he says, was that it was noisy, but he chose it because he wanted to learn more about mechanics. In the engine room, he also knew he would get paid $25 more a month than the deckhands.

In the engine room, Maevers worked the aftershift, from Midnight to 6 a.m. Then, he would be off for six hours and work again from Noon to 6 p.m. He says he liked this schedule because if the boat was tied off for the evening, he was free to go and explore the town where they were docked.

At the start of his afterwatch shift, Maevers says he would start one of two generators and shut down the other one because a generator could only run for 24 hours per company policy. Then, he checked the bearings in Shaft Alley to make sure they had enough oil to keep them from getting hot or cool. When one of the 12 pistons on the boat was weak, he would also clean it. In addition, Maevers controlled the throttles as the captain’s ringing bells told him to, to give the boat more or less power. This type of boat is now obsolete, Maevers says, and the pilot operates the throttle.

Maevers says he enjoyed working on the river because “it was a good job and good-paying job.” He says he was always able to have a nice car. He bought a house when he was 20 years old and paid it off at 23. He enjoyed working for Mobil Oil because he says they always kept their boats clean, unlike some other companies’ boats.

Maevers enjoyed working with the crew on the boat, and says when they got tied up because of fog, they would play card games, betting up to a quarter on each game. He also kept in touch with his relief, the guy who would do his job when Maevers was off for approximately 30 days at a time after working for approximately 30 days.

“Everybody was nice. … Never heard of anybody ever missing nothing,” Maevers says. “They used to say, money you can lay around, but don’t lay nothing down you can read or want to look at. It’s plumb different lifestyle. … Every guy on there was good. … Everybody wanted to help each other.”

Maevers worked on the boat for five years, until his wife gave birth to the first of their two daughters. Whenever he missed his daughter’s first Christmas and her first birthday due to his schedule on the river, he decided it was time to find a new job. He gave his boss two months’ notice. Then, he went to work as the assistant manager at Plaza Car Wash, which is now Plaza Tire, and later, as a salesman at Montgomery Ward.

It’s his experiences of working on a riverboat that keep him coming back to the river at 82 years old.

“It’s because I worked out there that long, I just like to come down here,” Maevers says. “This is just a wonderful place to come.”

Above Deck: Bill Klingel

Bill Klingel looks down the Mississippi River along the River Wall in Cape Girardeau. Klingel began working on the river as a deckhand in 1982 and now works as the manager of safety and training at Luhr Brothers.

Photo by Jasmine Jones

Bill Klingel, manager of safety and training at Luhr Brothers, began working as a deckhand for Missouri Barge Line in 1982. In 1986, he started working at Luhr Brothers, working his way from a deckhand into the wheelhouse. Ten years later, he became safety manager.

Klingel says he enjoyed being a deckhand but wanted to move from that position into the wheelhouse as he got older, because he realized he didn’t want to continue packing the rigging around all day, with the wires that weighed 85 pounds and ratchets that weighed 68.

Once he was in the wheelhouse, he says he had to “know what [he was] doing.”

“Getting up and down that river, [you’ve got to] know the river, because you’re taking anywhere from 20 to 30 tons of rock plus the barges and everything, so you’ve got a million dollars or so worth of product in front of you, with the barges and the boat and the crew, everything,” Klingel says.

As a deckhand, he says it was also cold in the winter and hot in the summer, while in the wheelhouse, it was cool in the summer and warm in the winter. In the wheelhouse, he was in charge of running the barges up and down the river, and, once they got to a job site, unloading the rock.

Now, as a safety manager, Klingel trains new employees on the company’s safety policies and procedures, leading the onboard vessel orientations.

Luhr Brothers barges carry rock from rock yards in Alexandria, La., and Port Allen, La., up the river. They also do Corps of Engineer jobs such as putting out dikes on the river to control the flow of it.

Klingel says more material such as coal can be hauled via river transportation than on railroad transportation, and because of this, barges are important for the country and Southeast Missouri.

“[River transportation is] very, very vital to the economy,” Klingel says.

Klingel enjoyed his time on the river.

“They took care of you,” he says. “When you was out there, you was fed and everything well. You had everything you needed — all you had to do was carry your clothes out with you. They furnished all the bed linen and everything. … You worked 28 days, you got off 14. [During those 14 days,] if you wanted to go on a vacation, you could go on a vacation.”