Nostalgia

Alan: A fine way to look at things. I, too, miss the Southern (CNO&TP) locos laboring up the big hill out of Ludlow to Erlanger in full gear. That's about a 4% grade. We could hear that and the steam whistles on the trains as well as the river boats. Streetcars were another attraction and it was a rite of passage to be able to walk the length of the car while it was yet under full speed and sway without holding on. Autos had "cozy wings", running boards and front seats that would seat three abreast. Putting my grandmother on the local from Covington over the "Short Line" (L&N) to Baxter Station in Louisville. She always HAD to be there an hour before the train was scheduled and if they got there a half-hour after, that was fast. Riding the local and seeing the hogger ease the train into motion with no lurch, rattle and only hearing the first chuff out of the loco after you were in motion. The milk men in Covington still delivered using horse and wagon and when my dad built houses, he hired the foundations dug with mule and scoop...and, riding that scoop when it was turned over after dumping to the consternation of the teamster. Watching the riveters ply their trade erecting buildings...the blacksmith heating the rivets in their forge red hot maybe many feet up off the ground and handle them with tongs and a gloved hand and throw them out of the tongs to the riveter, maybe 90 feet or more away...the rivet bucker catching it deftly in a bucket (never saw one miss!). The bucker placed it in the hole for the riveter to do his thing...a lot more exciting to watch than any ball game I ever saw.

Baxter Station in Louisville, Huh? I led a kind of expedition up there last fall with 4 friends. What a sad state of affairs...empty, cleaned out of all appurtanances. There is little to show what a great transportation artery it was to East Louisville, the Highlands, Phoenix Hill, Germantown, and Paristown. It is strange for that name to crop up when the group of friends who went witn me up there were together and just talking about it last night.

About all that is left up in the station waiting rooms and office are the terazzo floors. Even the wood work, doors, windows and such have disappeared. It is apparant the homeless are using it for many purposes..living, artestry, unloading the purses and wallets they have pilfered.

Walking through the rooms of the small terminal building one could feel the excitement of travelers of days gone by. When a cargo train passed us we thought of the feeling one must have had when a train approached and the cargo handlers would que up the luggage and cargo to travel to distant places.

My hopes are that the experience I have related above will not happen to the few steamboats we have left.

~Travis~

Travis: I seem to remember that the passenger trains used to have to back into Baxter station. Would Baxter have been a good connector to the steamboat trade? I don't remember where it is in relation to the public landing. Was Baxter the link to the interurban line that ran up the river. Jim said that MISSIE passed under the old interurban bridge that is now River Road over Harrods Creek when we did the Twelve Mile Island Caper. Cap'n Walnut

Tom,
Baxter Avenue was not a terminal. Trains passed straight through, stopping for passengers and baggage only. All trains were reversed at A-Street Wye, then backed into Union Depot (Tenth Street Station) at Tenth and Broadway. The station that you and Travis remember was built several years after the interurban stopped running. Baxter avenue is about two miles from the wharf. Tenth Street about one mile. Jim was right about the interurban to Prospect. The bridge abutments are still there, one acting as a foundation for a building.
Just north of Baxter Avenue the L&N and the C&O climbed a grade to Crescent Hill, working hard for about two miles.

Oh, boy!, that winter "ice cream" that expanded out of the milk bottle neck. It was real cream, too, not homogenized, supervised, galvanized, reorganized or made into paint, imitation leather or shingles. Milk certainly ain't what it used to be.

Well, as a Louisville native, I've gotta throw in my two cents on this one. I recall my mother taking me to Baxter Avenue station on a cold winter day to catch a train and the train was pulled by one of L&N's three streamlined Pacifics, most likely the 277, and that it was filthy. Must have been around 1945 or 46. Mostly, we caught the L&N trains at Union Station and, on a few occasions, at St. Matthews for the Blue Grass Local to Lexington.

There was a conductor named Les Sandidge who alternated days working the Humming Bird on the Short Line to Cincinnati with the Blue Grass Local to Lexington. The Lexington train called at 30 stations on it's 98 mile run and it took the long way via Christiansburg to get there. My grandmother would call Mr. Sandidge to be sure he was going to be aboard before we made our annual ride. You see, Mr. Sandidge wasn't just an ordinary conductor, he was a man who loved his job and the people he met doing it, especially kids. He knew farmers at the little towns who sold him fresh eggs and vegetables. He gave candy to kids at stops along the line. He knew everyone, it seemed. We made those trips each year until 1952 and I rode one of the last runs (without Mr. Sandidge in charge) in 1953 before the L&N discontinued the train.

My grandmother also took me on streetcar rides. I recall riding a big Peter Witt car from Broadway out to Iroquoi Park one Sunday (way out to the end of the line and back).

And one other thing she did that created a lasting memory was to take me down to the wharf one day to see the new Delta Queen. We went aboard for a tour and that great big, gleaming brass plated staircase stuck in my mind. That was probably in 1947 and when I finally made my first cruise on the DQ in 2003, there it was, just as I remembered it. I was finally able to realize the trip I imagined from that day with my grandmother 55 years before.

And one other thing about my grandmother and Louisville that I miss: Ehrmann's Bakery's ice cream. I've mentioned it before on here but I have never found anything like it anywhere else. The family that last owned Ehrmann's should publish a book of their recipes if they won't re-open the bakery.

Nobody made charlotte russe as delicious as Ehrmann's.

Alan: I well remember the top being pushed up under the influence of freezing milk and know that it would have been the cream that was being pushed there...but don't ever remember being allowed to sample any of it...most of it belonging to the neighbors anyway. And, yes, that was before the homogenized craze set in about 1940. Here's a question for Jim Reising: back in your DELTA QUEEN days as purser, what was the policy re someone who wanted to ride say from Louisville to Cincinnati on the boat's way back from the lakes or NOLA etc if the boat was not sold out? Would they allow it and what would be the charge? How about in more recent years?

Tom, In more recent years, I'm thinking 2003 or so, Deb and I remember the DQ Purser asking us, on more than one cruise, if we'd like to stay on for the next cruise as staterooms were available. He usually asked us the day of Captain's dinner, the next to the last night. If we agreed we had our choice of whatever staterooms were available. The going rates as I remember was $200 per night for the 2 of us, and being very tempted as some very nice rooms were empty, distinctly remembering 235 and 313 being talked about. As both of us were working full time then we never took advantage of the offers.

Bruno Krause;15045 wrote: Tom, In more recent years, I'm thinking 2003 or so, Deb and I remember the DQ Purser asking us, on more than one cruise, if we'd like to stay on for the next cruise as staterooms were available.

Hi B.

Funny, I had a similiar experience on the MQ in 2006. I boarded in late April and every week they asked if I wanted to stay. I kept sayin' yes and they kept asking and before you know it, it was the end of the season and I'd only been home once while they disenfected the boat.

:O)

Paul

Sure we would accept way passengers, we did it all the time. As far as cost, I don't remember. Back then rates had to be approved by the ICC so we had to go by the published terriff, no discounts, no special deals. The terriff was very specific, I do remember the rate from Evansville to Lock and Dam 46 which was at Owensboro, a distance of about 35 miles, was $7.00...and that included a dinner!

In 1954 I took a troop of boy scouts from Louisville to Potato Run at the foot of Upper Blue River Island on the Delta Queen for a campout in Harrison County State Forest. Doc Carr, the mate, growled, "I been runnin' this river all my life and this is the only time I EVER landed at Potato Run!" The clerk, Bob McCann didn't bat an eye - took the fare and we rode.

For those who are interested in such things, Potato Run enters the Ohio at Mile 661.4. Cold Friday Hollow, the natal home of Chief Engineer David R. Crecelius, is a mile and a half upstream.

Alan: My 1934 "snake book" shows Potato Run and Upper Blue River Island on the up-river side of it and Cold Friday Hollow just above the head of the island. Crecelius Landing is listed in the book at 669.5 in Kentucky...nearly eight miles down-river from Potato Run while Cold Friday Hollow is about nine miles distant by river and in Indiana; a scant three miles for the crow due to the ox-bow bends there in the river.