The thick, sour darkness of night on the Mississippi River had started to dissolve by the time the Conti Betty Lynn, an 827-ton towboat shoving 24 barges, began its journey north to St. Louis.
The boat, named for the wife of a shipping company owner, was among the earliest to return to the river since it hemorrhaged over its banks earlier this summer, claiming nearly 50 lives and wreaking at least $10 billion in destruction.
And, as Capt. Kenneth Bain eased from the dock at Wickliffe, Ky., with his tow of empty barges and those filled with salt, he and his crew perhaps knew they were embarking on more than another two-day trek to St. Louis. After six weeks of being sidelined, they were casting themselves back to an increasingly precarious existence-to an industry that struggled even before the flood, then lost nearly $4 million a day during it.
“I worry about the future out here,” the boat’s engineer-poet, Chuck Cobb, said. “I pray about it all the time.”
People on the barges that chug up and down the seemingly endless, winding miles of the Mississippi River have been subjected to harsh realities in recent years, as many companies have shrunk, consolidated or gone belly up. Still, the river continues to draw a cast of characters that makes for rich folklore spun by dozens of writers, including, of course, Mark Twain, himself a riverboat pilot on the Big Muddy in the 1860s.
The Conti Betty Lynn is an authentic example.
There is Capt. Bain, who never left the river after taking a summer job following his freshman year at Memphis State University 28 years ago; chief engineer Cobb, a recovering alcoholic and reborn Christian who writes poetry about life on the river, listens to taped sermons his church sends him and toils in an engine room that regularly reaches 130 degrees to pay his daughter’s way through nursing school; Jimmy Douglas, a former all-star high school center fielder who still laments missing a chance at a college scholarship when a scout visited his home while Douglas was on a barge; and Houston Thacker, a black crew member in an industry dominated by whites.
Many of them have practical considerations for returning to the river, despite their fears. The wages and benefits are far from extravagant but much more generous than most could make at jobs in their small hometowns, if they could find work.
The flooding dealt a staggering blow to the barge industry, which carries 15 percent of the nation’s freight and has been reeling since then-President Jimmy Carter imposed a grain embargo on the Soviet Union.
Each month the upper Mississippi River was closed, $108 million in personal income was lost by ports, according to the Maritime Administration. Illinois ports took the biggest hit, losing more than $62 million.
Thacker estimates his slice of those losses amounted to about $6,000. Thacker, 28, of Paducah, Ky., and Todd Franklin, also 28, of Dexter, Ky., are deck hands on the Conti Betty Lynn. A week ago, they were making their first trip on the upper Mississippi since the flood.
“I’m just glad that we’re back moving again,” said Thacker, who added that he was off the river for nearly two months. “Hopefully, it’ll stay like this for a while. Everybody will be back in the groove soon.”
Franklin, who said he was out of work for about one month, estimated he lost about $3,000.
While both said they were able to manage financially without too much difficulty during the flood, they and most of their colleagues were excited to return to the river.
“It seems like it gets in your blood,” Thacker said. “You can feel the river running in your veins. You just can’t let it go. I don’t know why. I guess maybe you become married to the river.”
Dorothy Fleetwood, whose mother and sister were barge cooks, is the Conti Betty Lynn’s gastronome. She came to the Mississippi in 1979 after her marriage of 23 years ended in divorce and she “just sort of wilted for awhile” before deciding to get on with her life.
“I guess I like being my own boss, more or less, and I like meeting different people,” Fleetwood said. “And, you get to do a little traveling. That way, you get out in the world a little bit.”
Deckhand Michael Gish celebrated his 22nd birthday Aug. 27, the same way he celebrated his 21st, on a Mississippi River barge.
“I can’t see having a real land job no more,” said Gish, a Paducah, Ky., native who sports five tattoos and is reserving room for more. “It takes away your feeling of freedom.”
He said his life is “like two different lives,” one on the river and one at home.
“At home, you’ve got 200 things to do and you know you’ll never get them done,” Gish said. “Here, you’ve just got a set number of things to do and you get them done. It’s more stable and it may be a little humdrum, but I like things to be in a certain order.”
Though life on the barges certainly has order, it remains free from dress codes, office cubicles and non-smoking policies-and that, perhaps, has contributed as much to rivers’ allure as have stream enthusiasts as artistically diverse as Twain and David Byrne.
But mostly, life on a Mississippi River barge is thoroughly unglamorous. It is rote, back-breaking, sometimes perilous work-water transportation occupations rank slightly below the construction industry in the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ ratings of job-related injuries or illness-done in conditions that range from blistering August afternoons to icy winter nights.
Most boats are staffed by two small crews that carve up the 24 hours of a day in alternating six-hour shifts. One crew starts work at midnight and works through 6 a.m., while another crew eats, sleeps and spends whatever remaining time in leisure activities. The two crews trade places at noon, and that schedule continues for the length of their time on the boat.
Crews on the Conti Betty Lynn, owned by ContiCarriers and Terminals Inc. of Chicago, work for 30 days on the boat and are off 15 days. They are paid by the day. Captains, also known as masters, earn the highest salary, typically about $260 a day. Deckhands and cooks, lowest on the wage scale, earn about $100 a day.
While few of the barge workers will get rich on their salaries, barge life has its attractions. Food is one.
Fleetwood’s cuisine has achieved the distinction of being among the best on the Mississippi. She is from Lafayette, Tenn., and her repertoire borrows extensively from the South’s traditional homestyle cooking with an emphasis on frying and volume.
Besides the food, living conditions compare favorably to most college dormitories. Fleetwood has her own room with bathroom, as does Captain Bain, engineer Cobb, his assistant and the pilot.
Deckhands pair up in individual rooms and share a bathroom down a hall. On the lower deck is a laundry room and lounge with a color television, VCR with tapes and boom box. Another lounge houses an exercise bicycle.
Alcohol and X-rated videos are prohibited. And only the captain can distribute prescription medications to his crew.
Flooding on the Mississippi couldn’t have come at a more inopportune time. The history of river commerce has been tumultuous, but over the past decade one gets the impression that prospects for a healthy future may be washing down the river along with the gray-brown water that empties into the Gulf of Mexico south of New Orleans
“It has been an economic disaster for all carriers,” said Robert L. Gardner, vice president and general manager of ContiCarriers and Terminals Inc. “When we’re completely stopped, it’s a disaster for everyone. There is no revenue coming in.”
Gardner and other carriers found relief Aug. 22 and 24, when the river was reopened with restricted barge traffic between Cairo, Ill., and Keokuk, Iowa. Last Tuesday, virtually all the restrictions were dropped.
In the context of river barge history, the 1993 flood may someday be recalled as little more than a blip.
Perhaps the most devastating blow to the river’s commerce occurred in 1861-65, when the Civil War halted traffic. From about 1885 to 1917, predatory pricing from railroads put most of the steamboats on the river out of business.
During World War I, river commerce got a boost from two government initiatives: construction of locks and dams and creation of the government-run Federal Barge Line, which was sold in pieces to private industry in 1953.
By the 1970s, the barge industry was thriving, due in large part to grain exports to the Soviet Union, with about 36,000 barges and 5,100 towboats running the rivers.
With the imposition of the Soviet grain embargo, the export grain market dried up almost overnight and the river barge industry found itself with a huge surplus of equipment. The fleet had shrunk to 4,500 towboats and 30,000 barges by the mid-1980s, and the industry was struck by a number of consolidations and bankruptcies.
Then the drought hit.
Low water on the Mississippi in 1988-89 closed sections of the river and disrupted the routes that remained open. Overall, the barge industry lost an estimated $150 million to $200 million from June 15 to Sept. 30, 1988, because of low water.
That history, particularly the recent past, has raised plenty of anxiety among those who work on the river, anxiety that has been exacerbated by the flood. This summer was the first time Bain drew an unemployment check.
“You just never did think anything like this would come,” he said of the flood. “I’ve been dependent on this river nearly all my life and I didn’t realize that it could just stop overnight like it was.
“I know it’s going to be a long time for things to get back to normal,” he added, “and I know a lot of it never will get back to normal.”
Gardner is less troubled by the flood, saying it “will be a non-issue down the road, with the exception of creating more consolidations.” He is more concerned by what he considers two, more complicated, far-reaching dilemmas facing the river barge industry: declining foreign demand for U.S. grain and replacement of river locks and dams, which could total billions of dollars.
Grain export demand has dropped, Gardner said, because U.S. grain prices are higher than those of other countries. For markets to improve, Gardner said, the federal government must make three critical changes: stop paying farmers to reduce grain production, allow more acres of marginal land to be farmed and keep farm loan rates low.
Replacing the 26 locks and dams, which allow barges to navigate through shallow and uneven sections of the river, boils down to one issue: who pays.
President Clinton’s deficit reduction plan originally included a $1-a-gallon barge fuel tax to help pay for reconstruction of the locks and dams, many of which were built in the 1930s. The House of Representatives cut the tax in half, however, and the tax was dropped altogether in the final plan.
Such concerns seem distant from the grind of life on the Conti Betty Lynn, but the dramatic changes in the river perhaps serve as a foreboding reminder.
Miles and miles of lakes have been created behind levees where farm fields once stood. Buoys that served as guide posts have disappeared.
A few stray barges that ran aground during the flood remain stranded. There is a “dead line” on trees where the water has washed away life about 12 feet up the tree and down to the water, leaving only the stark, brown trunk and branches.
Near Valmeyer, Ill., Michael Gish took a short break to call his girfriend, Cristel, over his cellular phone. He was unsuccessful. Jimmy Douglas was grilling steaks and hamburgers for the crew’s dinner, talking about how he’d give anything to return to those glory days on the baseball diamonds around Rombaur, Mo., and looking forward to the birth of his second child in October. Houston Thacker and Todd Franklin were waking up for their next shift.
Closer to St. Louis, Chuck Cobb dug out a couple of his poems about the river, one that reads in part: “A day on a towboat is sometimes unreal . . . you’re always in a battle between water and steel.”
“For some of us, a lot of us, we don’t have the great education,” said Cobb, 46, of Wappapello, Mo. “This is all we know. Yeah, we’re scared but all you can do is hope for the best. That’s really about all I know.”
