Robert Steen (F)
(7:00) Mr. Steen describes choosing an occupation after graduating college and gives a brief description of different jobs on the riverboat.Florence- Lauderdale Public Library Digital Archive Interview with Robert Steen April 14, 2008 Florence, Alabama Conducted by Ken Johnson Clip 6 Robert Steen: M...
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Florence-Lauderdale County Public Library
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| Online Access: | https://cdm15947.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/oral_hist/id/242 |
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Electronic |
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Oral Histories Collection |
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Florence-Lauderdale County Public Library |
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Florence-Lauderdale County Public Library |
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Oral histories -- audios and transcripts |
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Oral histories -- audios and transcripts Robert Steen (F) Florence-Lauderdale Public Library |
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Oral histories -- audios and transcripts Occupations; Tugboats |
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(7:00) Mr. Steen describes choosing an occupation after graduating college and gives a brief description of different jobs on the riverboat.Florence- Lauderdale Public Library Digital Archive
Interview with Robert Steen
April 14, 2008
Florence, Alabama
Conducted by Ken Johnson
Clip 6
Robert Steen: My senior year in, in college, the company sent word for me to come over and talk with them about a job and I had not asked them for employment and so I went over and they basically offered me a job; couple of things they wanted me to do was to take as many courses as I could get in the transportation area and they also wanted me to apply for as small amount of time as I could get in the Army. First, the college did not have any transportation courses and secondly, the Army kindly did me in because they delayed my entry into the Army for almost a year and somewhere along the line I decided that I did not want to work with the company, but I did go back on the river for that, for that fifth summer and work and that was one of my eighty- nine days that I, that I spent, but here I am back on the river during that summer doing the same job, a college graduate and somewhere along the line kind of woke up one morning and said, “ Hey, what am I gonna do? I know that I’m not going on active duty for some time and what, what am I going to do?” And so I called from the riverboat and it had to go through a relay system in Memphis, it’s not as sophisticated as it is today and it’s kindly push to talk over type thing with the radios and I said, ah, I called Allen, Mr. Allen Thornton, who was the superintendent of Lauderdale County schools and ask him, told him I was interested in teaching school. And so he told me to call him back in about three weeks and he would tell me where I was gonna go. And so, I called him back in three weeks and he said, “ You’re going to Central to teach seventh grade.” And so, three days before school started I got off the riverboat, hadn’t had a shave or haircut in, in, ah, in that eighty- nine days, but I did shave and get a haircut before and I looked a little decent when I started to school so I worked on there. One of the interesting stories I like to tell, that we were going up above Chattanooga, Tennessee on the way to Knoxville and one of the locks up there, I think it’s probably Fort Loudoun and there’s a group of people on the lock wall on a Sunday afternoon watching the boat go through and I’m on this particular barge that’s going through and this lady struck up a conversation and she was telling me that she was a school teacher, but then she proceeded to tell me that I appeared to be a pretty nice person and that she thought that there were a lot of things out there that I could do other than being a river rat and no doubt looking like I was with a shave— without a shave or a haircut and I let her talk for a few minutes and at that time I had already had promise of a job as a teacher and I, I told her, later on I said, “ I am a college graduate, I am going to get off here in about two weeks and I am going to also teach school.” So she didn’t have much more to say and she kindly ended the conversation. The riverboat, again, was a challenge, hard work, you had to, you had to put forth and do a day’s work. It, ah, looking back over those days, I wouldn’t take anything for them.
Ken Johnson: You mentioned the school teacher that was giving you this free advice. Did you have a chance and run into many interesting people in the work and along the, ah, all I can think of is coastline, but along the places where you might tie up and such as that?
RS: No. We would tie up occasionally at places, you know, Cairo, Illinois, Paducah, Kentucky, Evansville, Indiana, and Knoxville, Tennessee, but you didn’t have much time off that you’d go around and I think the, the riverboat workers kind of takes, took some bad, had some bad reputations that I don’t think was deserving; you know they were good, hardworking people. Some of them probably liked to spend a little time in the bars when they were off during the off time, but, you know there’s none of that going on on the riverboat and it was really a regimented way of life, even though we looked a little rusty, I guess, as we’re going through the locks and we’ve got on probably our worst work clothes because we’re having to handle a greasy [ unintelligible].
KJ: And you provided your own work clothes. Is that right?
RS: Oh, yes. Yes.
KJ: While you were on the river did you— you must have run into some people who had been working there for a long, pretty long period of time, and such as that. Did you run into any, we’ll say, unusual customs or superstitions or fears or anything about the nature of the work that was a little unusual?
RS: I don’t think so. You know, they were just good old country boys on there trying to make a living. Most of them— many of them had families. Some of the people were kindly professional I guess you would call them, because they, you take the pilots, that’s a pretty rigid test they, they have to pass in order to be a pilot on the riverboat and they’ve got to know, I mean they’ve got to know that 650 mile stretch of the riverboat like the back of their hand, what buoy is over there, what the depths of the water where the next turn is, what, what point to put the light on to try to get them a beacon. And then you had the engineers. I have, I have an uncle who was on the boat that I was on for a small part of the time, but most of his time he spent on the, on the bigger boats, the Stanton K. Smith and the Robin. Those are the thirty- five hundred hor— thirty- two hundred horsepower and I mean he, he was an expert on the diesel engines and so he was engineer, chief engineer on those boats for years and made a career of it and retired from there, so this was his profession. And likewise for those pilots. But, you know, it ah, the deckhands were low, low people on the totem pole—
KJ: Right.
RS: — and it didn’t take that much education or that much training, just—
KJ: But it did take a lot of hard, strong muscle.
RS: Good, hard, hard work, you know. You, you had a lot of equipment that you were having to carry, some of those metal ratchets and those 1 ¾ inch ropes, you might be— have a hundred feet of one of those, so there was a lot of, lot of work.
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| title |
Robert Steen (F) |
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Robert Steen (F) |
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Florence-Lauderdale Public Library |
| author_facet |
Florence-Lauderdale Public Library |
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FLCPLoral_hist242 |
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https://cdm15947.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/oral_hist/id/242 |
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http://cdm15947.contentdm.oclc.org/utils/getthumbnail/collection/oral_hist/id/242 |
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1782468788764016640 |
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Robert Steen (F)Occupations; Tugboats(7:00) Mr. Steen describes choosing an occupation after graduating college and gives a brief description of different jobs on the riverboat.Florence-Lauderdale Public LibraryFlorence-Lauderdale Public LibraryRobert Steen2008-04-14sound; textaudio/mp3; text/pdfEnglishPart of the Florence-Lauderdale Public Library collectionContact the Florence-Lauderdale Public Library for permission to use.Florence- Lauderdale Public Library Digital Archive
Interview with Robert Steen
April 14, 2008
Florence, Alabama
Conducted by Ken Johnson
Clip 6
Robert Steen: My senior year in, in college, the company sent word for me to come over and talk with them about a job and I had not asked them for employment and so I went over and they basically offered me a job; couple of things they wanted me to do was to take as many courses as I could get in the transportation area and they also wanted me to apply for as small amount of time as I could get in the Army. First, the college did not have any transportation courses and secondly, the Army kindly did me in because they delayed my entry into the Army for almost a year and somewhere along the line I decided that I did not want to work with the company, but I did go back on the river for that, for that fifth summer and work and that was one of my eighty- nine days that I, that I spent, but here I am back on the river during that summer doing the same job, a college graduate and somewhere along the line kind of woke up one morning and said, “ Hey, what am I gonna do? I know that I’m not going on active duty for some time and what, what am I going to do?” And so I called from the riverboat and it had to go through a relay system in Memphis, it’s not as sophisticated as it is today and it’s kindly push to talk over type thing with the radios and I said, ah, I called Allen, Mr. Allen Thornton, who was the superintendent of Lauderdale County schools and ask him, told him I was interested in teaching school. And so he told me to call him back in about three weeks and he would tell me where I was gonna go. And so, I called him back in three weeks and he said, “ You’re going to Central to teach seventh grade.” And so, three days before school started I got off the riverboat, hadn’t had a shave or haircut in, in, ah, in that eighty- nine days, but I did shave and get a haircut before and I looked a little decent when I started to school so I worked on there. One of the interesting stories I like to tell, that we were going up above Chattanooga, Tennessee on the way to Knoxville and one of the locks up there, I think it’s probably Fort Loudoun and there’s a group of people on the lock wall on a Sunday afternoon watching the boat go through and I’m on this particular barge that’s going through and this lady struck up a conversation and she was telling me that she was a school teacher, but then she proceeded to tell me that I appeared to be a pretty nice person and that she thought that there were a lot of things out there that I could do other than being a river rat and no doubt looking like I was with a shave— without a shave or a haircut and I let her talk for a few minutes and at that time I had already had promise of a job as a teacher and I, I told her, later on I said, “ I am a college graduate, I am going to get off here in about two weeks and I am going to also teach school.” So she didn’t have much more to say and she kindly ended the conversation. The riverboat, again, was a challenge, hard work, you had to, you had to put forth and do a day’s work. It, ah, looking back over those days, I wouldn’t take anything for them.
Ken Johnson: You mentioned the school teacher that was giving you this free advice. Did you have a chance and run into many interesting people in the work and along the, ah, all I can think of is coastline, but along the places where you might tie up and such as that?
RS: No. We would tie up occasionally at places, you know, Cairo, Illinois, Paducah, Kentucky, Evansville, Indiana, and Knoxville, Tennessee, but you didn’t have much time off that you’d go around and I think the, the riverboat workers kind of takes, took some bad, had some bad reputations that I don’t think was deserving; you know they were good, hardworking people. Some of them probably liked to spend a little time in the bars when they were off during the off time, but, you know there’s none of that going on on the riverboat and it was really a regimented way of life, even though we looked a little rusty, I guess, as we’re going through the locks and we’ve got on probably our worst work clothes because we’re having to handle a greasy [ unintelligible].
KJ: And you provided your own work clothes. Is that right?
RS: Oh, yes. Yes.
KJ: While you were on the river did you— you must have run into some people who had been working there for a long, pretty long period of time, and such as that. Did you run into any, we’ll say, unusual customs or superstitions or fears or anything about the nature of the work that was a little unusual?
RS: I don’t think so. You know, they were just good old country boys on there trying to make a living. Most of them— many of them had families. Some of the people were kindly professional I guess you would call them, because they, you take the pilots, that’s a pretty rigid test they, they have to pass in order to be a pilot on the riverboat and they’ve got to know, I mean they’ve got to know that 650 mile stretch of the riverboat like the back of their hand, what buoy is over there, what the depths of the water where the next turn is, what, what point to put the light on to try to get them a beacon. And then you had the engineers. I have, I have an uncle who was on the boat that I was on for a small part of the time, but most of his time he spent on the, on the bigger boats, the Stanton K. Smith and the Robin. Those are the thirty- five hundred hor— thirty- two hundred horsepower and I mean he, he was an expert on the diesel engines and so he was engineer, chief engineer on those boats for years and made a career of it and retired from there, so this was his profession. And likewise for those pilots. But, you know, it ah, the deckhands were low, low people on the totem pole—
KJ: Right.
RS: — and it didn’t take that much education or that much training, just—
KJ: But it did take a lot of hard, strong muscle.
RS: Good, hard, hard work, you know. You, you had a lot of equipment that you were having to carry, some of those metal ratchets and those 1 ¾ inch ropes, you might be— have a hundred feet of one of those, so there was a lot of, lot of work.
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