Summers on the Mississippi: My unforgettable Mark Twain experience working on a fireboat on the Big Muddy

This week summer truly arrived in the South Carolina Lowcountry. The heat index got to the mid 90s the past couple of days; I heard the first tentative sounds of annual cicadas in the trees in the garden; and those hallmarks of the coming season — big, puffy-white cumulus clouds — are floating majestically across our harbor like ships in the sky.

Ahhh, the “good old summertime.” I imagine also it’s going to be getting hotter and more humid even than here in Charleston in my hometown of New Orleans. Summers are very intense there, with saving afternoon thunderstorms to cool things off just a bit.

This time of year also stirs powerful memories of my two summers in college working on a fireboat on the Mississippi River in New Orleans. It was an unforgettable experience which I wrote about back in 1999. I kept a journal in the summers of 1971 and 1972, and being the budding writer and journalist I later became, I recorded thoughts, impressions and feelings about that memorable time. Some of the writing from that 20-year-old’s journal was incorporated into the personal essay that follows, but much of it came from my then recollections of an experience which filled two of the happiest and most liberating summers of my life.

I guess you could say it was the first actual paying job I ever had; that is, a paycheck every two weeks, instead of a few dollars each week for mowing lawns in the neighborhood. I was really anticipating this new summer experience, not only because of the improbable nature of the job and uncertainties about why it even existed in the first place, but because it offered a way out of the house, a new routine, a new adventure, as it were. And what better way to have some new experiences than to work as a summer deckhand, on, of all things, one of two fireboats operated by the Port of New Orleans. And, they were moored on the Algiers side of the Mississippi River, just blocks from where I had graduated from high school only two years before.

Now the Board of Commissioners of the Port, in their civic spiritedness, and to take part in hiring youth for the summer, I imagine, received funding for four positions involving various upkeep jobs on the two boats. I and another student were stationed aboard the Fireboat Bourgeois and two other guys were assigned to a newer, sleeker boat.

The boat I was on was really an old relic from the 1940s, with manual signals from below deck in the engine room sent up via pipes and whistles to the captain operating the boat. It was all very strange and interesting.

One of my acquaintances from high school was on the other boat, and I was paired with another eager kid from across town who was as naive, enthusiastic and ready for new experiences as I was. After all, I had just completed two years of college, and this was a chance to finally make some money. Not much, but something. Getting hired was not exactly an accident, either. It helped that one of the higher ups at the Port just happened to be my father’s best buddy from merchant marine days during World War II. I didn’t ponder the larger ramificaitions of this at the time. I was just glad to have something different to do so I wouldn’t be sitting at home brooding and writing melancholy journal entries, which I had been prone to do the previous summer, not to mention getting into arguments with my father about why I was brooding and not out doing things, such as working.

Well, as any one who has been to New Orleans in June knows, it’s very hot and humid, and here I was going to my job on a fireboat (incidentally, this would make for great stories to tell in the fall back at school). Basically, our job was this: we chipped paint off pipes, railings, the sides of the boat and in the steamy, hot engine room, and then applied new paint. It was noisy, somewhat dangerous, and hot, hot, hot. But we loved it for some reason because we were out on the fabled Mississippi, catching the breeze off that mighty waterway, watching freighters from all over the world steam toward the Gulf of Mexico, and getting to know some really, shall we say, interesting people — the regular crew of the boats. They were rather like sidelined seamen, wipers, deckhands, engineers, and others, all of whom were trained in the job of responding to, and putting out, fires on vessels along the river and adjoining waterways such as the outlet to the lake and Intracoastal Waterway.

This, needless to say, was a very rare occurrence, but it did happen once, that first summer, when we received the alarm and instructions, and furiously sputtered to life, cast off from the banks of the river, and madly dashed to a small fire on a ship a couple of miles away on one of the connecting waterways. Horns blared, drawbridges opened up for us, and we raced to the rescue. I was very excited by all this and momentarily swelled up with pride and self-importance. However, to our great disappointment and disillusionment, when we got to the scene, they made me and my co-worker ignominiously get off the boat and go home, since this was a job for the trained big boys. Disappointment was writ large on my face as I sulked on the bus making its way back across town.

Mostly, though, the days were very uneventful, and we had a lot of fun, mercilessly being hounded and kidded by the crew who looked upon us a mere pups, upstarts and spoiled college kids, who they nevertheless grew to like, and we them. They didn’t do too much as far as we could tell, and most hot mornings while we were chipping paint, they were sitting in the air- conditioned galley playing cards or dozing in their bunks, despite the racket we were making with our paint chipping guns.

By far the highlight of the day was the noon meal where all ten or so of us congregated in the galley and feasted on good Louisiana cooking done to perfection by certain of those crewmen who prided themselves on making everyone fat and happy with a huge meal each day. We all chipped in a dollar or so, groceries were procured, and the good smells would start hitting us about 11. I can honestly say that I had never before, nor have I since, experienced such an intense appetite for, and enjoyment of, food. We would be famished and just stuffed ourselves, all the while listening to the ribald jokes, crude comments, bragging, laughing, tales of sexual exploits, real and imagined, and every other kind of talk you could imagine that would impress and intoxicate two know-nothing college kids from the suburbs who had lived pretty sheltered lives.

The crew knew this, and as I said, they hounded us mercilessly: mock insults, disparaging remarks, every imaginable cuss word and foul piece of language that you thought could be uttered, and more. But fortunately, they took a liking to us, and we got along great. In fact, it was, up until that time, one of the best experiences I had ever had. I was really pretty green in those days, having spent the better part of two years with my nose in books, lying on my spartan bed in a dorm room studying, walking to and from classes, keeping largely to myself, but never imagining what lay ahead of me that first summer on the fireboat.

All these years later, I can see certain of those crew members now — big, fat, distended bellies squeezing through the narrow doors to the galley or the head, torrents of curse words whenever anything struck them as stupid or messed up, and, of course, toothless Carlos who was about the most comical character I had ever met in my life up until that time.

I did this for two summers, in 1971 and 1972, and with the same crew and the same co-worker. We painted that whole boat. I remember finishing up at the end of the day, cleaning all the paint off my hands, t-shirt soaking with sweat, tired and ready to go home, but satisfied with my lot that summer on the Mississippi. I guess at times I thought I was some kind of modern-day character out of a story by Mark Twain from his book Life on the Mississippi. We really got into the whole adventure aspect of the job, its pure novelty. It was like nothing we had ever done before, and we would surely never do anything like it again.

Here is what I wrote in my journal about the experience:

From my journal, June 24, 1972, age 21

Working on the fireboat again this summer has lifted me up and I feel very much the way I did last summer. In fact, in many ways this whole summer seems a duplication of last year. On the boat this month I seem to have forgotten everything about school, and this past spring semester has faded into vague recollection. Time is going by too quickly, but it is good to be at ease once again.

Sometimes I feel painfully inadequate when I discover, at my own expense, how little I know…But I manage to easily merge with the crew on the boat and understand them because they are so fundamentally decent. Behind all the crude humor are truly down-to-earth people who wouldn’t want to hurt you for anything..

Their lives seem to center around the most basic human drives, and I suppose sex becomes almost a sort of folklore topic that is always discussed with unabashed frankness. Novelty and imagination never wear thin in this area, and I am often convulsed in the general laughter of their stories and never-ending anecdotes. Even the new hand, a 19-year-old wiper in the engine room, can hold his own with the most seasoned deckand, seemingly.. Among those I work with the most happy are the most natural and spontaneous. One instinctively rises to meet their optimism.

And this is what I wrote not long after the job concluded at the end of that second memorable summer:

From my journal, August 26, 1972:

This is an exceptionally beautiful late summer afternoon — skies are richly blue and clouds sharply defined. It is also two days until the start of school, and already a week has gone by since leaving the fireboat for the summer. I was rather gloomy and dejected that day because I hated to see this summer end. We had a farewell party on the boat. It was sad saying good-bye to everyone. Hector is one of the gentlest, best-natured human beings I have ever known, and Carlos, well, he is unforgettable and unquestionably the funniest, most comical character I’ve ever encountered. I wouldn’t trade the experience of knowing them and some of the others for anything.

(Written July 10, 1999)