Another look at a story...

March 24, 2016: This one is kinda strange. It was originally posted on a MySpace blog and referred readers back to this blog. But now that MySpace has dropped their blogging feature, I'm moving the handful of posts I was able to download over there to this site. Anyway, following is the original post, including the editorial comment at the top:

Earlier today I posted a story over on my Studio 1050 site about a trip on the St. Croix River aboard the Jubilee II, back in the summer of 1976. As I was poking around my archives here, I realized that I'd written about it back in 2002 as well. It was interesting to note the differences. I still think I remember it, but in terms of a couple of details, I don't remember it exactly the same way now as I did then.

I was a deckhand on the Jubilee II, a paddleboat on the St. Croix River back in the summer of 1976.

One time we had an afternoon excursion with about 200 folks from a nearby nursing home aboard. For whatever reason, the captain decided he was going to pilot the boat that afternoon, even though we had a couple of the regular pilots along.

We were waiting to go through a railroad bridge in a narrow channel down by Hudson, WI, and the captain steered that big, flat-bottomed boat right up onto the sand of a nearby island, while making way for a barge or something to go through.

Well, the captain had a few drinks in him (as was often the case), and instead of asking one of the more experienced guys for advice, he just put the thing in full reverse.

Now think about the way that paddlewheels work. When you're going forward, they kick all kinds of water back behind the boat. So when you put them in reverse, that water goes into the engine room.

Of course the captain is in the pilot house, two decks above, and he has no idea that water is pouring out from under the doors of the engine room and flooding the main deck. The old folks are beside themselves, near panic, thinking we're going down.

We explain to them that we're ALREADY on the bottom, that's why the captain is trying so hard to back us out, but that doesn't do much to reassure them.

Anyway, one of the pilots goes up and throws the captain out of the pilot house, takes control, and with a delicate manipulation of the two paddlewheels, manages to get us off the sand and back out into the channel.

The other deckhand and I start cleaning up the water (there were only a couple of inches at the worst), and the captain settles the passengers down in his usual inimitable style: He opens up the bar and offers free drinks to everyone.