We eventually moved back to dry land but Lou continued to work on the river, accumulating hours to become a towboat pilot. One summer weekend, we went to the Hydroplane Regatta in Madison, Indiana but instead of staying in a motel or hotel, we were on a towboat, tied up with a few others. We ate great towboat food, slept in crew quarters and had a bird’s eye view of the races from the pilot house. In the evenings, the meals rotated boat by boat and each cook made dinner for all of us, showing off their culinary skills. That was my first taste of towboat food from a larger boat where the food served was a matter of pride. We had beer gravy one evening which to a preteen was scandalous. The best part of the weekend was that a boat filled with adventure scouts tied up next to us and there were 30 boys my age and older that I could wave to! They were actually on a working weekend and I wasn’t allowed to board their boat but I had fun giggling over the boys anyway.
In May of 1967, Lou went off for a long assignment on a towboat. One of the most important parts of getting a pilot’s license was to work on boat and accumulate hours. The written test was just one part of the exam. You had to draw sections of the rivers you wanted to be qualified on and you had to have a tremendous amount of hours as a pilot. It was much like an apprenticeship program and it was a difficult task to find a boat where the pilot would work with someone and let them take the wheel to get these hours. Lou had taken a position as a first mate and pilot on the Ohio River working on the project to replace locks 43, 44 and 45 with the large Cannelton Lock and Dam and was gone from the family for the first time in our lives. My stepfather sent the following letter home which I have included to provide more details on how things were. He wasn’t a letter writer so this was a rare letter home to us. You can tell by his reference to working in trees that he was happy with his new profession.
It reads:
Dear Flo – Judy – Dave:
About halfway glad that you all never came down this week because it is a cold and gloomy day down here. Would like to see you all though. Hope you won some money at Bingo Sat. nite. Flo? I think this portion of the River is as pretty as I have ever seen and in all the twenty seven miles there is only a couple of little towns and only one factory to take away the beauty of the hills. Some spots have great big cliffs and it looks like there might be caves in it. We only have to make 5 trips a week and it takes about 3 hours to go down from Kosmos to the quarry. But we have to wait there until they load up our barges. That usually takes about 8 hrs. counting the time it takes us to hook them up again. Then we start up the river at the tremendous speed of about three miles an hour. We will make a lot better time when the river gets back in pool but then we will have to lock through at Dam 43. It is a real narrow dam and lock and a lot of boats have to use it so we may have to tie up there now and then. Then on Friday as soon as we get back here we all are taking turns going home. I will be home Fri. nite and won’t have to be back until Sun. nite after 8 o’clock. So I’ll see you all then. I’m lonesome for all of you but I think this is a fine job and I guess I’m making good money. My watch is from six till 12 and then I sleep and read or cook up something fancy. Jim sure puts plenty of food on the boat and anything we want we just add to the list and he gets it for us. I’m getting pretty good at running the boat and in one more week I’ll be able to run it all by myself. I sure have learned a lot about diesel engines and boats in general and we are getting all the bugs out of the boat slowly but surely. The job is real easy compared to climbing trees but if I’m not careful I’m going to get awful fat. Hope that you all will be able to live all right until I do get paid. I didn’t know they only paid every two weeks but after this week you should be in pretty good shape. I’m going to buy a carton of cigarettes and give up cigars. I think cause they’re too expensive. I’ve got $10 so I’ll send what’s left home in this letter. I don’t need any money for anything but stamps so we should be able to save a little when we get caught up. Let’s all four of us work real hard together and maybe we can do a nice vacation when I get off after 3 months.
I love all of you very much and I will see you all Fri. nite or early Sat. morn.
Love, Louey
In his continuing attempt to stockpile river hours and to earn some extra money when he was on his days off from a tow, Lou would work on any vessel he could. In the summer he would drive to a parking area at Schmit’s Field off of US 50, we would board the Jubilee and take it down to the public landing to pick up passengers. The boat would then cruise up to Coney Island for a few hours and then back to the public landing with the returning passengers. Sometimes it was a short trip up to the bend above Coney, now best known for the Riverbend Music Complex, and then just turn around and cruise down river back to the public landing
Sometimes there were sing-along on the boat, depending on the crowd or the best local pop and rock bands. My favorite was the band Hay Market Riot because they sang "Dear Prudence" to me and I would get cokes and ashtrays for them. At the end of the cruises I would help clean the boat and made a few dollars. Best of all, when Lou had to go to the bathroom or just wanted to let me, I would take over the wheel and pilot the boat up or down the river. He’d look back at the wake the boat was leaving and grade me on handling the boat. Back in the 60’s the boats had real wheels, not just rudder sticks and I had to stand on a wooden coke box to be able to navigate.
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