Summers on the Mississippi (Pt. 1)

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.

(Continued)