he name was illegible. The name of some long gone riverboat captain etched in glass above the door to the decaying mansion set deep on the dark bluff above an ancient Mississippi River. Passing the house in the midnight hours when the rest of the town's population totaling 200 slept, we, a few of the crew of the Julia Belle Swain, spoke in hushed whispers, as every home was dark and still. Watching the blue smoke of my cigarette carry towards the door, I envisioned the mansion in another time with light from behind the glass illuminating a home within. But now it was still, dark. The mansion loomed like an old uncle, terrifying in age and mystery. That quality gleaned from intense wisdom attained only through past folly. And not even knee level, this young nephew watched precariously, unsure of what it was I wondered at. The steam-driven stern-wheeler Julia Belle Swain was tied to the shore of this river town for the night to take a bit of rest and take on diesel and water. We left with the morning light, the last leg of the final trip in the fall of 1988, the "trip around" to Henry, IL where she'd rest the winter. No one on board but the crew. No duties but a little steering and waking up to get through the locks.

Owner, designer, builder, Captin Dennis Trone, was at the wheel. We were "Heading down into the mystery below," as John Hartford once sang. John was with us on that trip. A Grammy winning artist who wore second-hand vests without a tie, a bowler hat, and a shag dog look of friendly forethought. He was a multi-millionaire who rolled out his sleeping bag on the hard steel decks of the boat with the rest of us 'cause he had the self-same love we did for that Boat. John took his persona from those waters, a beautiful surface with layers below you'd never know. Besides his music, I remember him only in brief edits of full summers and years. Dripping ice water down his shirt to cool himself in the deep summer heat. Rifling through the kitchen looking for crackers and cheese. A tutorial in the pilot house on the imporatance of a good signature.

John and Denny passing sealed off a door to a generation I knew only by hindsight. Captain Dennis Trone always at the helm. He was the wildest of the wise. He had a military sense from his days at Annapolis that he somehow merged with the uncomplicated audacity that building a steamboat might be fun. He came from Petersburg, Illinois where young Abe Lincoln first loved and lost and where the poet Edgar Lee Masters slipped in a line or two past the Eastern gaurds. After springing from the same sod that was populated by those resting in pages of the Spoon River Anthology, he built himself a few boats, including the Twilight and the Julia Belle Swain, and a little world separated by two sides of water. And he let you visit now and then if you didn't mind a bit of work. Denny was tall and lanky, with a temper quick and hot enough to blow itself out by the time the day was done. I learned too much from the man to take up a novel let alone a paragraph. I remember him calling in to the Baton Rouge, our warf boat, from the Illinois side. I took the call. He needed someone to come over with the luggage van and pick him up. The throttle cable had broken in the single engine two-seater seaplane he buzzed around in, and he had brought the thing in for a landing on the River with the throttle full open. I drove over to get him. He greeted me with that amazing smile as he tied up the plane to some surprised stranger's dock. "That was a close one," he laughed. Almost twenty years later, his end came quick and by surprise, but I doubt he'd have chosen another way. Something went wrong with the antique "bathtub" open-cockpit, single engine, airplane he was flying and his long life of 77 years was cut short in a field in Wisconsin. Our Captain was gone.

The first time I met John wasn't on the River but at a folk festival. I must have been no more than 12-years-old at the time. My father, Art Thieme, also performing at the festival, was a friend of the promoter. There was this stack of posters this friend had with every performer's signature on it but John's. Now John was not too happy as reality conflicted with expectations, and a few coarse discrepancies between the two men did not bode well for an autograph session of some twenty odd posters. I don't know where I got the gumption, but I piped in and said, "I'll do it. I'll get him to sign them." An incredulous look washed over the promoter's face. Then it was replaced by a quick "what the hell," and he handed me the stack. I walked over to John who was sitting out behind the main building. Stepping around the corner, I saw John on a low ledge tuning his banjo. He was near enough the corner that I was able to hide the stack from view while still keeping them in close proximity. I took just one of the posters and said, "Mr. Hartford, would you mind signing this?" "Why sure," he replied pulling out his ever ready felt tipped marker. Soon as he finished with a flourish, I pulled the rest of the stack into view. "And these too," I said deadpan and straight. John had a second's pause as the situation became clear to him. Nevertheless, he dutifully took the stack and began signing away. Without a look up, without missing a beat of the repetitive composition, he said, "You're Art's son, aren't you?" "Yes," I replied. "Wellp," he said, "it figures." After he completed his task, I quickly thanked him and proudly returned with my victory to my father and his friend. Years later when John and I met again on the Julia Belle, we never talked of that. I forgot about it myself until later years, as I'm sure he did as well. Even to me it's a copy of a copy of a memory. I'll think on it a dozen times more if that, then I too will close my eyes and remember to forget.

I caught Denny, John, the Julia Belle and the River at the end of an era that sailed on its laurels past the glory of The Vagabond River Days of the 1970's when currents carried a boat full of young and hopefuls into adventures beyond their wildest dreams, past a century that had been built on steam and steel, past the elegance and mud that made a nation. The old crew told me of the 1970's when they'd pick a town on the river charts, set the steam calliope (that's "kaleeope" on the River) playing loud and strong to encourage the good towns folk to fork over a dollar or two to see their home in a different light. A light that some like myself couldn't just take one look at. I remember the sheer wonder as I first saw the small Illinois River town where my family and I lived through the pilothouse glass. I was just sixteen at the time, but I knew I had to come back. That high vantage magically took that mundane little town and turned it into a Grant Wood landscape. I had to become a part of that world. There was so much preceding each of us that came aboard the Julia Belle. We knew that even in the intoxication of youth. And when we left, a good solid chunk of us stayed behind. Due to hard-times in no small part stemming from the introduction of Riverboat gambling, Julia passed out of Captain Trone's hands as he refused to welcome slot machines on board considering they always had strings attaching them to the shore. The Twilight is guided now by the Stier family, whose possession of the company and the boat gives a bit of faith in continuance when all the rest seems to fade. Although a younger boat by a decade, she carries her own set of stories and youthful dreams. And though Julia has passed into other hands, she's got a crew that loves her dearly and watches out for her.

I remember watching the blue glow of a newly set sun bathing the Julia Belle Swain in a magical light as she lay nestled and tied to the island near Galena, IL for the night. She looked beautiful, three stepped decks high with the pilot house set atop behind the two great black smoke stacks topped with bulbs of iron feathers. She watched us with that same damn intensity of age. I remember as two fellow crew and I slipped beneath her shadow in the canoe we set out floating into the water which was quickly turning to glass in the stillness of the evening. When her boiler brewed and her whistle blew and her engines cranked and clanged, she was so much less intimidating. You could tell her next actions and suppose her destination. But when she sat still and quiet, when she rested after the day's labor, this was when she exuded the most mystery. So too it is with Denny and John, now that they are gone. John and his dear wife Marie slumber as the Cumberland River breeze comes to hint at a presence but never fully disclosing a validation. Denny's probably striding the decks, his tongue touching the tip of his narrow nose as he pulls a deep thought to the surface. "Now..." he states curtly to properly prepare your attention for the wisdom he's about to dispense, not wanting to waste time while you mentally focus, he gives you a second to snap to before continuing. If he is there, he's not alone. Denny's brother, Moon Trone was also quite a character. An accomplished lawyer, he was rarely seen in anything but his traditional mechanics overhauls that he wore no matter what the occasion. He passed some years before Denny, and I have it on good solid word that the ghost of a stout and tall man in a gray mechanic's jump suit has been seen treading the decks. Those that see him often never knew the history behind the now missing "T" still silhouetted in the filigree that binds the tops of the two tall stacks together. And so many others. Dorothy Anton sneaking a cigarette on the starboard side second deck hoping her husband Paul won't catch her knowing full well that he'd never leave the engines unattended while he stares out at the shore from the open main deck like he's spotted something the rest of us will have to be content with the mystery of. So many. All images fading. Only a few words left in the mind despite best efforts. Brief laughter and sun. My memory seems like that dilapidated old mansion high on the bluff of some forgotten Mississippi River town. Ghosts flit behind dusty glass as the house settles. Termites feed on the foundation. It might on some chance be wondered at by some youngin' smoking a cigarette, passing by on some occasional midnight. But it will not be known. And it will be forgotten.

Now there are stories I could tell, of the human nature that shows itself when you live in such close proximity. Some are good for a laugh; some would make you recoil and doubt your wonder. Stories about the greater and lesser deeds of all of us, myself included. But they aren't the type of stories one shares lightly. There are certain stories that are all right to tell among family at the dinner table, but it isn't proper to go tell strangers. Some stories might just die with me, and there's plenty to tell besides them. If on the off chance I amount to anything anyone would ever want to find a piece of after my passing, look there for me standing out on the open front of third deck, staring up into the stars. And you might hear the faint echo of music, beautiful, sonorous, sad, and yet you'll never be able to place the song. That's where you'll find me, at least the case beyond the carcass. I too will have passed into a place I can feel only in the darkest midnight after all my world has gone to sleep.

In that darkness I can hear the Julia Belle's multi-toned steam hissing whistle pulled long and feel her turn against her own wake as we pull into port. I'm ready on headline kevel, watching the first stars break the haze of twilight. A shooting star cuts across to answer my most recent question. We're coming home, but we never arrive. That's the place of awful memory. A place where the loss of an age exudes mystery. A place where silence replaces sound, static replaces kinetic, and all replaces I. Lost in the memory of images, we are too often awed not by the presence but by the shell, which, if held just right against the ear, can take us downriver "Toward the Gulf" and issue its memory of the sea.

Images taken during a trip aboard the Twilight in the Summer of 2001.

John Hartford Web Site

River Cruises/Twilight Web Site

Julia Belle Swain Web Site

Back to the Between