Washington PA Observer-Reporter
20 November 2005
ALONG THE MONONGAHELA RIVER -- The Arkwright's engine rumbles, sending short blasts of air to the tugboat's rudders, enough to steer it from shore.
The captain peers from the pilothouse, following orders to hook up with a dozen coal-filled jumbo barges and push them down river to supply a power plant.
While Capt. Don Lowe is at the helm of this 54-year-old tugboat, its seven-man crew is well-aware that the women in the galley will call most of the shots while they are on board for the next week.
"When they say the captain of the boat, they don't look at me," Lowe says earlier, while seated at the dinner table. He rolls his eyes and smiles at cook Mary Husser, stepping into the kitchen to follow her standing rule to rinse his dinnerware before retiring it in her stainless-steel sink. "You don't want to piss off the cook," said Lowe, 49, of Pittsburgh's North Side.
"They get told about washing your hands. Don't go into that refrigerator, into that ice cream without washing your hands," said Husser, 52, one of just 10 remaining female cooks who work the tugboats plying the Monongahela River and moving tons of coal, gravel, diesel fuel, fly ash and other products to market.
Competing towing companies have opted to pay deckhands a few more dollars a day to prepare their meals to cut shipping costs, said Capt. David J. Podurgiel, who coordinates boat traffic for CONSOL Energy, which owns the Arkwright. That setup is bad for morale, Podurgiel said, and can lead to laziness and uncleanliness among boat crews without a woman to mother them.
Husser does not tolerate obscene language, cigarette smoke or co-workers who skip too many showers.
"If we're back in the galley, we try to keep our language clean," said Pat Snyder, 22, of South Park, who has yet to log enough hours on the river to master the job of roping and securing rusting steel barges.
It takes muscle to work these boats, a role that is especially grueling during winter months, when most new guys quit because they can't take the bitter weather, said Russell Wiseman, 49, of Monessen, the lead man on the barges who assists pilots in guiding them along the water.
"You make it through the winter, you're good to go," said his deckmate, Kenny McDonald, 23, of Cheat Lake, W.Va. "If it's 20 degrees out there, it's 5 degrees out here. You get the wind blowing off the water...."
"These are a different breed of people out here," added Husser, of Millsboro. "I give them a lot of credit."
Husser was drawn to the Mon 15 years ago, when her two sons were in high school and old enough to fend for themselves while she is away from them, and her husband, Eric, every other week.
"It's hard enough for a guy to do this with little kids, let alone a woman," she said. "Working out here, you miss a lot."
"You miss a lot of kids' birthdays, weddings," added Wiseman, after the Arkwright left its moorings in Speers, moving north to Locks and Dam No. 2 in Charleroi at a crawl of 4 mph.
Named after an old deep mine near Morgantown, W.Va., the Arkwright is pushing three barges, each of which is 195 feet long and brimming with 1,500 tons of coal. It will return to Speers to pick up three more loads of coal before embarking for Elizabeth. There are six more barges waiting there for the pass to Pleasants Power Station on the Ohio River in Eureka W.Va., a 406-mile round-trip that will last four days. It would require two, 100-car trains to move this amount coal, at a far greater cost.
And, this voyage requires a grocery bill of $650 to feed the men who work rotating six-hour shifts between six-hour rests in cots in tiny rooms whose walls vibrate around-the-clock with the steady hum of the engine. They earn between $9 an hour and $12.43 an hour for an 84-hour work week, depending on their seniority. Their living room is just big enough for a few chairs; a television with a 12-inch screen and built-in videocassette player is mounted in one paneled wall.
"It's small," said Husser, whose quarters are just beyond the first door from the stern. "It's the size of a cell, really," she said, unpacking a suitcase carrying her essentials, which include DVDs and paperback books. She has a private bathroom, one smaller than a bedroom closet found in most houses on land.
In the galley, her three refrigerators facing the starboard are freshly stocked with 12 pounds of ground beef, 11 pounds of chicken, 6 pounds of Delmonico steak, nine heads of lettuce, 15 dozen eggs and three pounds of butter. Forty pounds of potatoes and six pounds of onions are brought on ship, too, for the journey.
"If someone gets up from my table hungry, it's their problem," Husser said. "I make my own bread, buns and cinnamon rolls. I make a to-die-for peanut butter pie," she said, announcing to the crew that this dessert will be on the next day's menu.
"Christmas comes early," said pilot Vince Dentino, 27, of California Borough, reaching for a sample of the first day's menu, which always includes hot dogs, kielbasa and chili prepared by the cook whom Husser is relieving.
She's quick to say that this job is no holiday. Once, 18 inches of water rushed into her bedroom in a wake caused by the tugboat, which was moving faster than its haul, causing it to dip under the barges. "Shoes were floating around," Husser said.
Her worst scare came when her boat "got caught in the rolls," or whirlpool below Point Marion Locks and Dam while the vessel was moving a derrick barge, one designed for crane or drilling work. "The oldest deckhand panicked," she said, before the pilot regained control of the boat.
Other times, Husser finds herself mediating arguments between deckhands whose patience has been tested by spending too much time together in close proximity.
"Donny and I are like the psychotherapists on the boat," she said. "The captain and the cook become the mother and father of the boat. Just think if you are stuck in the house with the family for seven days. It takes some getting use to."
On this day, the cruise down-river is delayed about an hour while mechanics make repairs to the massive, spit-shined engine, which fills the boat's hull. Another half-hour is lost while the Arkwright detours from its route to rescue the stalled Jacob G. and tows that tugboat owned by Mon River Towing Inc. back to shore in Speers.
Wiseman and McDonald finally secure three coal-filled barges to the bow of the Arkwright before it chugs toward the aging and crumbling Charleroi locks, which are scheduled for replacement by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The barges are lassoed to the lock wall, its front and rear gates swing shut, and gravity lowers the water 16 feet to match the river level in the pool below the dam. The front lock gates open and a whistle sounds, alerting the pilot that the Arkwright can continue is long journey.
Husser's day will end at 7:30 p.m., after the sun has set and no longer casts long shadows across the river, rolling with a blanket of new-fallen, yellow leaves. She will return to the galley at 4 a.m. to begin breakfast. It's her favorite time of day, she said, when the moon reflects on the near-still current, making it look as if it were a sheet of black glass.
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