Lila Perry Steinhoff Archives

August 21, 2013August 22, 2013

American Queen

I see in The Missourian that The American Queen has stopped in Cape again. I shot her when she paused there July 7, 2013. You can click on the photos to make them larger.

Ambassador of the Boat

There’s a security checkpoint at the gangplank to keep non-passengers from boarding. I’d like to nominate this guy as Ambassador of the Boat. He’s the crewman who has to tell folks, “No, you can’t tour The American Queen” and to answer hundreds of dumb questions from guys like me (and worse).

I looked at his name badge and said, “Your name is Ronald Watchman, right?”

“No, Watchman is my title; my name is Ronald Moore.” Watchman Moore retired from the Memphis fire service after more than three decades as a firefighter. After about a year, he was bored with retirement and applied for a job on The Queen. He was hired almost immediately as a porter.(A percentage of the crew must hail from the home port of Memphis.)

After a short period of time, the captain called him aside and said that his skills were being wasted as a porter, and he was promoted to work security.

He’s a good-humored fellow who enjoys chatting with people and seemed to know every passenger by sight. It was clear from the way they spoke to him that he was well-liked. If he’s typical of the rest of the crew, service must be first-rate.

“I’m a character”

Passenger Lesa Knight, center, said, “I’m a character.”

“Most folks I run into are characters, so I’m not surprised.” I replied.

“No,” she protested, “I’m REALLY a character. I wear a penguin costume at the St. Louis Zoo.”

I couldn’t argue with that.

Bikes on board

I spotted several fluorescent green bikes on the streets in Cape. It turned out that they were bikes carried on board for the passengers to use when the boat docked. I asked one passenger who was returning to the boat how he liked climbing the Broadway hill. He admitted that he had walked up the hill, but it was worth it to be able to see some of the landmarks in the Tour of Rush brochure.

I should have confined our conversation to biking. He didn’t share Wife Lila’s Uncle Ray’s opinion of Rush as a “horse’s patootie.”

Tour buses followed The Queen to all if its stops to take passengers sightseeing and shopping. If a passenger literally “misses the boat,” it’ll haul them to the next stop so they aren’t left on the riverbank, Watchman Moore said.

American Queen built in 1995

I was surprised to learn The American Queen was built in 1995. It reminded me of the Delta Queen docking in Cairo in 1968.

The company that built it went under (a bad choice of words for a steamship company), and it was laid up until 2008 when it was refurbished. Most of the reviews I read were gushingly favorable, but a few folks weren’t happy with various things on their cruises. It seems like most of those were in the early days when service and mechanical issues were being worked out.

Some folks can find fault with anything. The boat has to take on water from the shore more often than fuel. One of the last things the crew did before shoving off was to disconnect the hose feeding Cape water into the storage tanks. A non-passenger on the shore commented, “I’d never sail on that boat. I saw them drop the water hose into the river when they were pulling it in.”

“Do you realize that up until recently all the drinking water in Cape came out of that river?” I asked.

Stacks lower

Because the level of the river fluctuates, some stops have to be bypassed when the water is either to high or too low to dock. The stacks are designed to lower if they need clearance to go under some bridges.

Rooms open onto decks

Some of the cabins have private balconies, but most of the reviewers liked being able to walk directly out on the decks to mingle with other passengers.

Boat has elevators

Unlike early riverboats, The American Queen has elevators to make the boat handicapped accessible. Since it sounds like there are a lot of passengers in their 70s and 80s, that’s important. Getting onto and off the boat can be a bit tricky for those with mobility issues, the review warned.

Good view from the top decks

This view from the Common Pleas Courthouse shows how The Queen towers over many of the downtown buildings.

August 21, 2013

Blue Moon, Clouds, Lightning

I noticed the moon was big when I was unloading the van last night. Wife Lila pointed out that tonight was the Night of the Blue Moon and suggested we go to a nice place on the beach for dinner and to watch it come up.

Just like when I shot the full moon over Tower Rock last month, the cloud show at sunset was arguably better than the moon. Click on the photos to make them larger.

One minute the clouds were white.

Then the sky caught fire

In a matter of seconds, it was like someone had touched off a massive brush fire in the sky.

The sky got angrier

Just before all the color disappeared, the sky got angrier.

The moon made a brief appearance

I was chomping away at my dinner when the server came over and pointed up at the sky. According to my handy-dandy Moon Phase program, it wasn’t supposed to rise out of the ocean for another 12 minutes or so, so it caught me by surprise.

It made a brief appearance, then was eaten by the clouds, giving me an excuse to turn back to my food.

Here comes the storm

A heavy thunderboomer was off the coast moving to shore. I kept trying to get a good lightning shot, but most of the flashes were well to the north of us. This was the best I could come up with. It didn’t begin to compare with this video I shot of a storm out to sea.

So, it wasn’t a GREAT night for full moon pictures, but it was a fun evening. The company was good, at least.

August 8, 2013August 8, 2013

Steinhoffs Converge on Cape

Mother’s Birthday Season, which is actually centered on October 17, started early this year by accident. First, Wife Lila, Friend Anne and I showed up in June. Brother David’s family – David, Diane and Amy – showed up later. Son Adam, with Carly, Graham and Elliot, got into town Tuesday. Son Matt, Sarah and Malcolm rolled in on Wednesday.

So far, I’ve moved to three different sleeping locations depending on the combination of people at the house. Once Mother gets shed of all of us, she’s hopping a plane to spend a Labor Day week out in Austin with the Texas branch, fresh transplants from Colorado.

By the time her actual birthday rolls around, she may want an empty house and peace and quiet for a present.

Graham, 2, loved the firetruck at Discovery Playhouse, so we walked across the street from Mother to Fire Station #4 where he could see the Real Deal.

I wanna be a firefighter

The nice guys at the station have been great neighbors for Mother. She’s asked them for help of a non-emergency nature over the years, but she never had to dial 9-1-1 until recently when she was suffering chest pains. It turned out to be nothing, but she won’t wait so long if there is a next time because she was impressed with how professional the crew was. They not only took care of her medical needs, they made sure her doors were locked when they left.

The firefighters opened every compartment to show him what the truck carried, but what Graham really liked was being at the wheel of the fire engine. He spent the afternoon running around the house putting out fires. (I had to play the part of the fire.)

I don’t like THAT!

Graham reconsidered his thoughts of joining the fire service when the fireman demonstrated the big air horns on the rig. Lights, OK. Sirens, OK. Big, loud horns, not so OK. He was ready to crawl down.

Checking out the Shed in a Box

David, Mark and I assembled a Shed in a Box, a 10×10 tarp-like structure mounted over a metal frame. The directions say that 2+ people should be able to put it up in 2 hours. Well, it took combinations of two people 2.5 DAYS to put the thing up.

Graham checked out the shed and Mother’s riding mower in it and pronounced both acceptable.

Pilgrimage to Wib’s BBQ

No Steinhoff visit to Cape would be complete without a trip to Wib’s BBQ in Jackson.Graham opted for a hot dog, fries and chocolate milk.

He takes his chocolate milk seriously.

Elliot’s first trip

Five generations of us have eaten at Wib’s. This was Elliot’s first visit.

Cars and Trucks

Way back when, I created a mix tape of travel and truck drivin’ songs we used to launch every family trip. It’s been digitized and still gets played.

Here’s a video Matt, Sarah and Malcolm shot driving the Tail of the Dragon. I’ll let him describe it:

Wanna know what it is like to road trip with the Steinhoffs?

We’re traveling down US 129, Tail of the Dragon; 318 turns in 11 miles. Sarah has taken enough Dramamine to kill a pony. My car’s “we’re all going to die” traction-control alarm is lighting up the dashboard in a trippy, disco sorta way.

What a better time to fire up Jerry Reed’s ‘East Bound and Down’ from the Smokey and the Bandit soundtrack, right? Gotta balance the iPad on the swearing wheel, queue up the song and see if we can make it to the end of the track before the fully-illuminated shift knob falls off and we end up with 30,000 pounds of mashed bananas on Dead Man’s Curve.

You can click on the photos to make them bigger, but don’t make them too big. Kids are a lot cuter when they’re little.

July 12, 2013July 12, 2013

1-2-3 JUMP!

Here are five young women Friend Shari and I met at the Old Appleton bridge. They said they are all from Cape.

I went to the trouble of getting their last names, but in case anything they did needs plausible deniability, I’ll just go with first names, left to right: Makayla, 16; Nicole, 16; Sara, 17; Sylvia, “almost 18,” and Autumn, 16.

I dubbed Makayla The Smart One because she didn’t engage in any of the Tomfoolery of her friends. She hinted that she might do so when there would be no photographic evidence around, but I don’t know if she did. (Click on the photos to make them larger.)

The Wild Child

“Almost 18” Sylvia was quickly named The Wild Child. When I first met her, I asked what the girls planned to do. “You’re not going to do anything crazy like jumping off the bridge are you?”

“Do you want me to?” she asked.

“No, no, no,” I replied. “I wouldn’t ask you to do anything like that. People drown here all the time.”

The next thing I heard was “SPLASH!”

The floodgates opened

After Syliva’s head popped out of the water attached to the rest of her body and she pronounced the water deep enough that she hadn’t even touched bottom, the rest of the girls, minus The Smart One, lined up. There was some discussion about jumping on “Three!”

The message was garbled

Sara, The Countess, jumped ON three.

Countess Sara was all alone

I thought maybe the other girls wanted TWO water safety checks before they launched, because Sara was on her own.

The first shall be last

The Wild Child must have heard that “the first shall be last,” because she was the last of the quartet to hit the water this time.

Getting it together

The girls lined up for another go. I heard them working out the details. “This time I count 1-2-3, THEN we all jump.” The timing was a little better this round.

Time to dry out

Shari and I left the crew hanging out and drying out. I took a careful count to make sure we were leaving behind the same number of girls we saw when we arrived at the bridge. If anything happened after that, I’d go looking for The Wild Child.

Former Wild Child Shari was content with wading in ankle-deep water below the dam. Wife Lila, in a text message, commented, “I jumped off that bridge once. Glad there are no pictures.”