The Keelhauler's back in town! It was a rough couple of weeks out on the big ocean, but he's back on land. The transition is always a little tough, so to make it easier, I printed out some pictures of towboats he crewed on when he worked on the Mississippi, as kind of a game, to see if he'd recognize them. The boats in the pictures are approximately 1/2-inch long, so I thought it would be a challenge. He looked at the first picture, in which a 1/2-inch boat is silhouetted against the light reflecting off the water, and dwarfed by a smokestack from a nearby factory. After one second, he said, "That's the Itasca, southbound, with one barge, at the High Street bridge," or something like that. Whatever he answered, it was correct--I had the answers written on another piece of paper. He identified all the boats correctly, including where they were on the river, and what they were pushing.

The Keelhauler loves to impart information, and I like hearing it, especially when it involves Dangerous River Adventures that may or may not be 100% true. The first time I met him, and I asked him what he did for work, he answered, "I work on towboats on the Mississippi River." This was a new one to me; my boyfriends all worked in offices or music stores, so when I heard "Mississippi," I was magically transported to some fictional Mark Twain universe, where gruff but fair riverboat conductors ordered their puckish roustabouts around, incorporating colorful curses and smoking pipes. "That's so romantic!" I responded, which so, so, so proves just how naive and idiotic I really was (slash, am).

My idea of his "romantic" job was soon buried by descriptions of rusty steel cables, black ice, and sinister characters closer to "Deliverance" than "Huck Finn." The final nail went in when The Keelhauler described picking up a coworker's severed fingers off the deck, and putting them in his own shirt pocket to deliver to the paramedics. Life on the Mississippi!

The Keelhauler hasn't worked on the river in a while, and he was enjoying looking at the pictures, and explaining all about ratchets, and drew a helpful diagram of one, and he pointed out a door on one of the boats. "My room was right behind that door," he explained, "right over the engine." The engine in question was a "GM 671," although The Keelhauler explained that anyone who knows anything about diesel engines knows what a 671 is, and wouldn't need to use the brand name (that would be the "GM" part, I guess). He described the noise of the 671 as "the soundtrack of Hell," then caught himself and amended the statement. "In Hell, you can hear the Rod Stewart music over the 671s." He was referring here to a favorite game we play called "Push the Button," in which each player is allowed to push a button which will entirely eliminate one singer or band's music from existence, past or present. It's kind of an entertaining game, because before you press the button, you have to consider whether the band in question influenced any bands you actually like, because that influence then would be nullified, as well. My decision tends to vary, but I've pushed the button on the Doobie Brothers, Chicago, and the Miami Sound Machine, but The Keelhauler always, always, ALWAYS chooses Rod Stewart. See ya in Hell, Rod!

Star of the day. . .Sterling Hayden