Going with the Floe

By Susan Tifft

For towboat crews, life on the Mississippi is a chilling experience

It was around Thanksgiving that the square-bowed towboat Cooperative Vanguard revved up its diesels in St. Paul and headed down the Mississippi, bound for St. Louis. In its charge: an unwieldy string of 15 barges, each filled with 1,500 tons of corn, soybeans or other grains that were being rushed to market late in the navigation season to capitalize on rising prices. The 680-mile trip usually takes six to ten days, depending on the traffic at the 26 locks and dams along the way. This time the floating entourage did not reach its destination. A sudden blast of arctic air froze sections of the Mississippi solid, trapping 'the barges near Keokuk, Iowa. Sighs Tom Michael, Cooperative Vanguard 's engineer: "Every time I look out, there's the same old ice."

Michael has plenty of company. Strung out over a 240-mile stretch of the upper Mississippi, embedded in the ice like pieces of an unfinished mosaic, are 49 towboats pushing more than 600 barges with cargoes worth an estimated $150 million. Each boat carries a skeleton crew that is responsible for upkeep and for starting the engines once a day to prevent ice buildups on the propeller and the hull. "We're just baby sitting a boat," says Leo Hallinan, 40, a deckhand aboard the Ann Blessey. "If the TV ever went out, they'd have to carry us off in ambulances and straitjackets."

The glassy-eyed boatmen are more drowsy than cold. The crew of the Cooperative Vanguard hand-lettered a sign that sums up " their plight: WELCOME -- BOREDOM CITY -- POP. 16. Says Doug ("Pee-wee") Flannery, 24, a deckhand on the White Knight: "You just watch the second hand go around." To keep busy, the crew of the Hawkeye has adopted four mallard hens; the men aboard the Ann Blessey cast for carp using hot dogs and cheddar cheese. One deckhand reportedly persuaded the pilot of the White Knight to steer a ragged course around the ice floes in pursuit of real or imagined silver foxes.

Most days are whiled away staring at TV, smoking cigarettes, drinking countless cups of coffee and dredging up new stories to recycle. "You start running out of lies to tell," says Bob Wills, a three-decade river veteran and captain of the Ann Blessey. To pass the frozen hours. Wills and his two-man crew enjoy a friendly game of poker, with a nickel limit on raises. Over on the White Dawn, gambling is not allowed. Nevertheless, the crew has worn out three decks of cards playing no-stakes spades. Deckhand Tommy Kelly, 36, from rural Sugar Tree, Tenn., feels safer that way. Says he: "If I ever lost $200, my ole lady would be waiting at the door with a shotgun."

Every morning deckhands check the barges for leaks. It takes Phil Popham. 23, about 30 minutes to inspect the 15 barges hooked up to the Cooperative Vanguard. He moves gingerly across each slippery deck, shovels snow from the manhole covers that conceal the eleven-foot-deep buoyancy compartments, and peers inside with his flashlight for telltale ice or water. He passes the rest of the day reading dog-eared copies of Playboy, Popular Mechanics and western novels by Louis L'Amour.

The barge companies try to rotate personnel every 30 days, but some men have been afloat since the vessels got stuck. Money is one reason: Scott Knapp, engineer of the Ann Blessey, makes $110 a day to run the tow's engines for an hour. Wills' $210 a day comes painlessly as well: he spends about two hours monitoring the radio and "wheel-washing"--wagging the boat's tail to keep the craft from becoming frozen in place like the barges.

The freeze-up has bottom-line consequences. The idle towboats and barges eat up about $5,000 a week in (diesel fuel, insurance fees, crew salaries and supplies. Meanwhile, the barge lines must sublease other boats to carry cargo on existing contracts. What is more, corn and soybean prices have jumped 10-c- to 15-c- per bu. in some markets, but the grain companies cannot cash in. Agri Industries, a large Des Moines grain concern, has ten barges of corn and five barges of soybeans worth about $3.85 million stuck in the river. "It's going to be costly, no question about it." says Lloyd Eneix, senior vice president of Agri-Trans, which has half of its ten-boat fleet immobilized. "The whole industry is going to suffer considerably."

Except for the tedium, however, the crews are not suffering. The barge companies supply all meals, and the fare is fine. The men on the Ann Blessey polish off inch-thick steaks several times a week. Lunch one day last week on the Hawkeye consisted of fried chicken, mashed potatoes, tamale pie, green beans, pineapple upside-down cake and fresh bread. "The cook's probably working harder than anybody," says Dennis Drury, captain of the Cooperative Vanguard.

Once or twice a week, the crews unlash their towboats from the paralyzed herd of barges and bull through the ice into Keokuk (pop. 13,940). There they pick up cigarettes, toiletries, groceries, drinking water and mail, and make calls from the outdoor pay phone near the lockmaster's office. The rawboned Driver town is hardly humming (KEOKUK, HOME OF LORI FROELING, MISS IOWA 1979, brags its welcome sign), but the residents are friendly, and alcohol, strictly forbidden on the boats, is amply available. John and Donna Coffield invited several of the stranded bargemen into their home for Christmas and New Year's. "The last time they came, they drank 26 pitchers of beer," recalls John, "and they claimed they weren't thirsty."

For one crew member, a tipple on the town led to chills and thrills. After unwinding at the Tee-Pee Lounge and Chintz's Bar on a Saturday night, Hallinan slipped on a jetty as he was boarding the Ann Blessey and fell into the icy water near the bow. It took ten minutes for the crew to fish him out. "That was the biggest excitement we've had," said Wills. "Leo joined the Polar Bear Club."

It may be the biggest for a while: temperatures remain well below freezing, and underneath some of the barges 15-foot-to-20-foot ice buildups have sprouted that will take longer to thaw than the river. Predicts Wills: "The tows will be here till spring."

-- By Susan Tifft. Reported by Richard Zacks/Keokuk

With reporting by Richard Zacks/Keokuk