The BELLE, memories

AVALON 1952

I saw the AVALON and GORDON C. GREENE together in Davenport in 1951, according to my father, but I don't remember that. In 1952 she started playing from Rock Island rather than Davenport and my family went down to our levee each of the nights to listen to her calliope concert, which was almost an hour long. We sat on our campstools under the old FERRY sign and watched her go out on her moonlight trip. Then we would ride the Sunday afternoon trip, sitting up on the Texas stern. Of course that calliope player was none other than Clarke C. Hawley, who noted that only in RI and Muscatine did we applaud his playing by honking our car horns. On my first trip on the NATCHEZ in June 1980 I was standing out on the roof as that same calliope player serenaded the NOLA passengers. I have pictures of the RI levee days, which I'll post when I find them.
As to a BELLE memory, in June 1977 Jim Blum was DQ Captain and there were a number of steamboaters aboard. He announced that our stop in Louisville would be extended to 4:30 so passengers (and he) could go over and ride the BELLE. I couldn't help but cry when I came up those stairs and saw the beautiful ballroom and overall great shape of a boat I hadn't seen in 16 years, when she was in need of a facelift. As we were making our approach to turn for the landing, the DQ was blowing her 20 minute warning whistle, but we had no fear of missing the boat since her Captain was with us.

*Those AVALON/BELLE Memories*

*Those AVALON/BELLE Memories*
Steamboating colleagues:
Great initiating post from A.J Richardson for sure and I'm certain more will come through from others who saw, rode and worked on the AVALON/BELLE. Judy on the money; so why not poke those memories well back to the 1950s? The AVALON was a real fixture here docked behind the GREENE LINE wharfboat or at the cobbled Public Landing or steaming up by old Coal Haven Landing here with, then, the smell of good old coal burned in her boilers before conversion to oil and installing of boilers from the GORDON C. GREENE. If any of you want detailed writing, memories of her then pull down your copy of 'MOONLITE AT 8:30: The Excursion Boat Story,' Capts. Alan L. Bates and Clarke C. Hawley. Their history of the AVALON entering service here after the loss of the last ISLAND QUEEN too detailed to relate here. And then appeared the personage of Ernest A. 'Woody' Meyer her later impresario and promoter. That in itself a book. I've numerous news clippings her of the AVALON from the 1950s with one covering her early spring awakening with work, painting, cleaning by the crew.

I remember my first AVALON trip in the early 1950s boarding her from the GREENE wharboat; later right off the Public Landing. An adventure for me but not one for my mother who wasn't keen in boats or water in any way, shape of form muddy or salt water. Dad and I toured the boat from stem to stern with the boilers roaring. Don't ask who was who aboard then other than old family friend Emory Edington. Capt. Doc Hawley wasn't long in following with Capt. Ernest Wagner. To many the boat was something of a let-down compared to the last ISLAND QUEEN. I thought she was a beauty then and still hold to that now. She and the DELTA QUEEN both together at the same place being once true packet steamboats. Imagine that?

In not too long, Betty Blake departed WLW-TV here as a PR gal, joined the AVALON in their offices located in the then Duttenhoffer Bldg. here in town--now a part of the giant P&G corporate operation--where she did the scut work as the 'head or promo' man/gal with all the rest of her fascinating story pretty much known. I remember as a kid phoning the AVALON office for information leading to my sunday school excursion. This lady named Betty answered in a dusky voice. "Sure, we'll do all we can to welcome you...spread the word if you can," she said. She was kind in sending information and we all went again on the boat. Little did I know that in later years Betty's and my shadows would meet on the highway of life.

As a prelude to the AVALON here it should be remembered that Ed Schott of CONEY ISLAND had pretty much thrown in the sponge after the loss of the ISLAND QUEEN with no replacement due to well-known demogaphics of changing habits, excurion boats, cost of building or purchasing a new one. That issue surfaced for some years with no planned boat for CONEY ISLAND.

Sure the AVALON was considered 'old' even them, lathered with paint thick as icing, but she was clean and fun. Mother again was a little dubious seeing, hearing those boilers roaring, steam hissing, engines coming to life with that certain vibration and slap, slap, slap of her red wheel. I can't recall any food or drink purchased aboard my first trip--if any. Dad and I were glued to the boilers, engines, decks above watching the passing shore up to near CONEY before turning around and back down. Another time we steamed well beyond CONEY and then on other trips down river. Passing under the bridges with her whistle and calliope playing resounded like no other sound I've ever heard. The smell of river smoke, steam and muddy water just as intoxicating then as now.

Later I was down at the GREENE LINE wharboat the day the big auction was held for the AVALON going to Louisville. She was laid behind the GREENE operation with windows down, lights on, people coming and going. And there was a feeling of loss when she left Cincinnati for a newer, more caring home. Will others with those early memories please step up to the microphone. Well, again, what do I know?

R. Dale Flick who will never see age 70 again.
Coal Haven Landing, Ohio River, Cincinnati.

Pure Magic

My first experience with the Belle was in Cincinnati. I do not know why, as I was a steamboat newbie, but apparently, the DQ was overnighting and the Belle was there, so I went over to take an excursion. I had never seen it before except in pictures. I cannot recollect how, but by some special dispensation, I was allowed in the pilot house. C. W. Stoll was the pilot. He informed me that he was using the old bell system as the engineer on watch knew "the bells". I was in hog heaven. It was like finding something you've been looking for all your life. I might have even been allowed to steer a little, even though it was at night. I was walking on air a good while afterwards.

Thank you Judy, Dale, and Lexie for sharing. Come on everyone else, don't be shy. The Belle has touched so many people I know there's a lot more stories out there just waiting to be typed.

Aaron

Growing up in Cincinnati, my first recollections of the Belle were as the Delta Queen's rival every year for their race. Of course, I rooted for the DQ then. My family moved to Louisville, though, when I was a young teenager. The first year we lived in Louisville we road the Belle on one of her Fall lock trips. Of course, the boat was packed! One of the most poignant recollections of that trip was feeling the heat and noise coming from the boiler room. As many times as I've had the experience, I've always enjoyed the first time steam is brought back to a cold boat. Their is a smell I've caught before anything else that tells me there's steam on her. Each boat--Belle, DQ, AQ--though, has its own unique scent--but I know it's the scent of steam!

A funny story

I saw the Avalon several times on the Ohio River as a teenager. Then in 2003, arriving on the American Queen, I walked into the Ohio River Museum and the first thing I said was "What happened to the Avalon?" They looked at me very strangely and then told me the Avalon had been the Belle of Louisville since 1962. I must have sounded like I came from outer space or something, not knowing that. So I bought Alan Bates's book about the Belle and looked forward to riding that boat someday.

I have had some wonderful times on the Belle since then. But the greatest experience was riding the Belle from Louisville to Cincinnati for Tall Stacks in 2006!!

Sigh! AJ, Judy, Dale, Pat and Dan...I've posted part of this before. Can't say it was the first time I saw her...I was fascinated by the Greene Line Wharf and the boats often moored there...but in the mid 1950s the AVALON was there loading from the Public Landing. A succession of oil trucks came down the landing and discharged their load into the Avalon's tanks. Then she started loading for Coney Island. I had neither the time or the money to join them, but did stay to see them off. Those three big whistles blended their tones to send their message to the far reaches of the valley, echoed off the buildings in town and lifted the hairs on the back of my neck! The stage was raised and she was put in reverse and nothing happened! Nothing but the churning up of the bottom of the river and sending waves crashing on the landing...and the smell of the river bottom...then much more noisome than now. Rudders were cut one way and another but to no avail...her stem was hard down on the bottom. Finally, a little fellow, (Doc Hawley?) herded all the pax aft and she floated free. Again, that BIG whistle and off she went. Like Pat, my most memorable trip was to Cincy from Louisville to attend Tall Stacks. During 2005, under Chief McCoy, Bruce Babcock recruited a group of steam engineers to give the BELLE an "EKG". Among the group were Keith Baylor...an engineer from Cummins Diesel and myself...being a licensed steam engineer in Ohio. Kenny Howe and Alan Bates were an integral part of the "home team". I could tell from the sound of the exhaust that SOMETHING was wrong...the port engine exhaust did not sound the same as the starboard engine...at least one of them had to be wrong and the indicator cards confirmed it. I understand that work on the poppet valves that winter helped oil consumption if not speed. To get a more protracted reading, we did it going to Tall Stacks in October of 2006. Keith brought his lap top to read and record the pressures and since his GPS would not read in the engine room, somebody had to take it to the pilot house. Sigh, I had to do it...communicating with Keith in the engine room via two-way radio! Kevin Mullen was Master and Bill Ray was pilot and I sat the Lazy Bench. And, yes, pilot house chatter has lost little, if any, of its savor, range of topics and learned opinions on sex, steamboat collisions and other calamities since Mark Twain laid down his pen! Unlike Judy, I know where my photos of the event are and, given time and encouragement, may post them. One of the very real plusses of the BELLE was meeting and getting to know all of the above named and many more of you reading this...including our web master and Carman. In the mid fifties, when I first saw the AVELON, I never thought I would have my own steamer and many of you would join me in enjoying it. Cap'n Walnut.

*BELLE Memories/Pat's funny story*
Steamboating colleagues:
Just now catching up on all the postings here. Pat Carr's self-confession RE: the AVALON/BELLE well done. Beginning in 1948, when the DELTA QUEEN entered service, there were then and even up until the last years, Cincinnatians with no idea about either the DQ or the AVALON. People continued to ask, "Is that big white steamboat at the landing still running excursions to CONEY ISLAND?" [Meaning the DQ]. This long after CONEY ISLAND closed for a time; then reopened doing fine along with huge SUNLITE SWIMMING POOL now. The CONEY motto said, "You don't stop playing because you grow old, you grow old because you stop playing." How many remember that? Who remembers the faux sand beach next to the swimming pool with the high powered water sprayers to wash the sand off before you went back in the pool? How many remember the landing at CONEY for the last ISLAND QUEEN leading up to the park and through the old stone gate with the little light house on top?

Betty Blake was one sly gal when she left WLW-TV to join the AVALON as the head 'promo' or 'dummer' selling the AVALON in the Duttenhoffer Bldg. here in Cincinnati. Betty negoatiated a contract in which she would be put on commission basis for groups, tours booked here and all up and down the Inland Rivers where the AVALON appeared. And she was always well ahead of the boat even in the winter driving her car to make sales calls. In time head honcho Ernest Myers saw her pay checks on commission that were now dangerously close his own 'cut' of the operation. He made noises to "reduce" Betty's salary. She stood her ground and won. "It's a contract and it must be honored or..." There were no questions after that.

The AVALON, though based here with a local operating season, spent more time on the rivers away from Cincinnati than here. Tom, that oil you saw intended for the AVALON was really nasty, thick stuff if you never saw it up close--almost between a thick goo and tar needing to be preheated before injection in her boilers. The 'goo' was realtively safe and wouldn't have burned even if you put a match to it. It was the 'fumes' off that oil that could be a real danger. Well, what do I know?

R. Dale Flick
Coal Haven Landing, Ohio River, Cincinnati

Well Aaron started this thing so here goes my relationship with the Avalon. So far nobody has talked about Prom night. I did three prom nights on the Avalon, one from my school and two others from my dates schools. It was the "cats meow" to have Prom on that boat. Now I have to admit my attentions were more directed to my date than to the boat. As Dale mentioned earlier about being at the auction, I too was there, now a grown up and representing a possible buyer. As the bids progressed the question among the commercial river group was " who the heck is Judge Marlowe Cook". We found out soon enough as he claimed his boat. If I remember right Judge Cook caught a lot of flack from the Jefferson County taxpayers. Strange but I have only set foot twice, since that auction day, on the boat.

AVALON Memories at Dubuque

It was the last day of August 1955, and I was spending the end of summer vacation as a 7-year old at my grandparent's summer cottage on City Island in Dubuque, about two miles below Lock and Dam 11. My sister and I, along with all our cousins, usually spent a week or more camped on the island at the cottage, swimming over at the sandbar, and cooking out over a campfire. Late that particular morning, the sound of loud, brassy music wafted over the trees, music such as I had never heard before. Racing down to the clearing at the river bank where Grandpa Tschiggfrie had his boat tied off on the float, I arrived just in time to see this gigantic white sternwheeler churn by, calliope a-playing and crowded with passengers yelling and waving. It was my first glimpse of the steamer AVALON, and she looked like the QUEEN MARY as she steamed upriver toward the lock. She was on an all-day charter for Roshek's Department Store, and I was hooked. Those glorious two minutes were burned into my memory and the vision of that grand steamboat haunted me from that day on.

I didn't see her again until three years later, when my dad came home from work one summer afternoon and said, "Dave, how'd you like to go on a steamboat excursion?" And a week or so later, we drove down to the Public Landing at the mouth of the Ice Harbor where I saw that beautiful steamboat once again, stretched out in all her living, breathing glory before my eyes and towering above me in the warm summer afternoon of August 28, 1958. That was the first of four trips I took on the AVALON, and each excursion just deepened my love for the old girl. My last glimpse of her was on the night of August 3, 1961, when she departed the landing on her last Moonlite at Dubuque. As she backed around to head downriver, her searchlight temporarily blinded me as it crossed my face. Little did I realize that night that it would be nearly six more years before I would see her again at Louisville. But that's another story...

"Under the Spell of the BELLE"

My dear parents rode the Str. AVALON for the New Albany High School prom in April of 1949. This was before we had a floodwall here and she tied up to the old cobblestone wharf at the foot of Pearl Street. My dad remembers seeing coal shoveled into the boilers and the intriguing engine room. Mother recalls walking on tiptoe across a series of wooden planks to reach the stage and getting her white ballerina slippers coated in river mud! Pictures in the NAHS yearbook show most all the young men wearing STEAMER AVALON caps -- and I jokingly asked my then parents-to-be why they didn't buy me one!!! Little did they know what was coming some years later! (Thanks to Mrs. Grace Hawley, I now have one of those caps!)

When I was in second grade in 1962, astronaut John Glenn orbited the earth and the nation was abuzz about NASA and the dawn of the space age. I paid little attention to it and by early 1963 was obsessively enthralled with the old sternwheeler that was tied up at the Louisville wharf and much-in-the-news called the BELLE of LOUISVILLE! I'd already been introduced to steamboating by Mrs. Loretta Howard during a school tour of the Howard Museum -- and not long thereafter, when crossing the bridge one evening and looking down upon the beautiful boat bedecked in lights with her calliope playing, I was hopelessly hooked forever! At the time I had no idea that in a few short years I would be playing that calliope as a member of the crew and that this would lead to so many other adventures and fabulous friendships with river people who became "family"!

Indeed, I was another of the legion who "fell under the spell of the BELLE"! May her paddlewheel churn forever!

Who knows where and when this was taken? Cap'n Walnut

My guess is that it was taken at Carrollton, Kentucky when both the SPIRIT and BELLE were on their way to Cincinnati for Tall Stacks. Don't ask me when, as I haven't the foggiest notion. It looks as if the gent sitting to the left of the photo is Capt. Kevin P. Mullen.

*Betty's commission/Steamboat Agents*
Steamboating colleagues:
To an E=Mail here. You bet Betty Blake's commissions selling the AVALON in her PR/Promo/'Drummer' days paid off and very well. Betty had earned her college degree in business/marketing in Kentucky and put it to good use in her time with WLW-TV here in Cincinnati. Included were her travel expenses then usually all by car with her driving untold thousands of miles up and down the rivers and the hinterlands. She meet with business, schools, organizations etc. months in advance fair and foul weather charming all of them in one way or another. Why wouldn't she deserve her commissions? Same goes today in travel companies and other lines where sales reps sell. In later years Betty didn't wear that full-length mink coat for nothing. Travel by air to points in the U.S. and abroad common. She worked up early on links with European travel and German LUFTHANSA airline among others. The removal of the DELTA QUEEN to New Orleans later not spur of the moment. This discussed here in the past. Cincinnati did not "let the DELTA QUEEN get away from us" as it had been in the works for sound business, logistical reasons. I read the proposal, met the expert who met with Betty. He the one who suggested more 'one way' DQ cruises from port to port and not long round trips. People didn't like it but, again, that's the way it turned out.

When Betty joined the DELTA QUEEN and GREENE LINE she had her work cut out for her that would have killed an elephant. All work then by phone, typewriter with the inevitable big ROLODEX circular file on her desk. And she was relentless as we all know from promos in major magazines, attending travel forums, getting 'spots' with national TV, TIMEX watches, general products to which she could find a nice 'hook.'

In her early years with the DQ, she still continued 'on the road.' One winter she was on a rep trip with it cold, snowy, icy. The trunk of her car was loaded with bochures, promotional materials, pictures, films in boxes. While unloading her feet slipped and she went down on the car bumper breaking a couple of ribs. She slogged on and when I saw her here later she was taking little quick breaths in pain. Her work in the same line as the former old time steamboat agents who represented many boats at one time--and all on commission basis. It was a business--a job--and that's the way it was then. It was sell, sell, sell to make the money to fire the boilers to keep the wheel turning and to pay all the crew. Hopefully with enough profit left in the books. And it could be a very 'ify' proposition as many of you know.

As discussed on here previously, the last old time steamboat agent I knew was Horace P. Lyle, and he went back, way back. Horace ended his career with the GREENE LINE for the DQ in the old wharfboat offices.

In all candor, I have to say that even way, way back in the AVALON's earliers years here I had no illusions. Again, people "took her for what she was." Only later when interests in Louisville stepped up with ideas, talent, money, expertise did the boat emerge as the beauty most know today. The AVALON wasn't always that way way back then. Well, again, what do I know?

R. Dale Flick
Coal Haven Landing, Ohio River, Cincinnati

Sigh! Yeah, Frank...right on all counts! Donno who the rest in the photo were/are. I might suppose the security light to the right, in Indiana, belonged to or was near the Huffman's digs I seem to remember that the SPIRIT rafted up to the port side of the BELLE. Record sez 9-30-2006 10:10pm. Cap'n Walnut.

Pictures worth 1000 words

Wonderful photo! Did you take it? Maybe it was 1968, but it is timeless. (The next photo in this thread with the campfire is also priceless and timeless.)

Lex: No, I didn't take the photo. Yes, it is from 1968 (the year I first played the calliope!) but it is the beautiful image of the boat and wharf that remains indelibly branded into my mind from that day 50 years ago when I became a "follower" of steamboats!

Sigh! Lexie. I appreciate your comments about my and Keith's photos. I take thousands of pictures...some nearly every day, and, as is to be expected, every once in a while, one is good. I've got a BUNCH of the BELLE, dating from when my kids were small. But I NEVER took one that combined the seemingly disparate components of the one with the campfire which begs the question "What's going on here?" Keith's, in contrast, begs the question "is she loading for a prom...wedding...private cruise...Tall Stacks?? How much romance was fostered on those decks?...among passengers, crew, idle observers? Keith's soft focus gives his a dreamy aspect. Those figures around the campfire could be us at one time or another...in person or in our dreams. Cap'n Walnut

*That 'moody' BELLE night photo*
Steamboating colleagues:
Tom, you and Keith--along with many others here--take great river photos always with camera in hand, eyes looking for the right composition, opportunity anticipating that moment when to snap. It's a skill, talent and art.

The fine night photo above reminds me more than a little of the early pioneer and later steamboat painting by renowned artist George Caleb Bingham and our own Mike Blaser. If ever there was an 'Ohio River school' of paintings and phtography, this is it. Thanks for sharing. Are there others?

R. Dale Flick
Coal Haven Landing, Ohio River, Cincinnati.

And luck

Others, lots of others. Of course in the pre-digital days, you never knew if the photo was good til you got the film developed. So, in unusual light, it was a crap shoot. Take enough exposures and you might get a winner. Artists have the advantage of making it look good if it isn't, taking artistic license, whether it's with a paint brush, dark room, or computer.

My first memory of the AVALON dates back to 1953 when I was in the third grade at I.N.Bloom school. It was on a school sponsored trip; I believe the tickets were sold at school through the PTA as a fund raising effort.
It was in the early Spring I think. My memories of that ride, besides the whistle, the paddlewheel..which needed painting.. was standing outside the boiler room door watching the fireman shoveling coal. Where I was standing was a deck drain, I remember hearing water gurgling in the drain. I was bent over looking at the drain when suddenly a spout of muddy river water shot up out of the drain and drenched me in the face. There were kids standing around me and they all started laughing, it was embarrassing.
That drain was still there when I first went to work on the BELLE 10 years later (1963). There was supposed to be a working check valve on that drain line to keep it from back flushing when a wave hit the side of the hull, I guess the check valve wasn't working the day of my first steamboat ride.

*Jim Reising's 1953 AVALON Memories*
Steamboating colleagues:
JIm, thanks for those 1953 AVALON memories when the boat burned coal. There was nothing like the smell of a steamboat burning coal or the big steam locomotives in those days. Never mind the local smoke abatement officers were lurking around by the river watching even when steamboats burned oil. Back then cinders raining down nothing unusual.

Jim, refresh my memory about the AVALON's coal boilers. Wasn't there a kind of trough where they raked out the ashes that were flushed with water down and out? That's the way it was then. On one trip I remember a big summer thunderstorm came up with passengers seeking cover above or running inside. Remember those long rows of sash windows all along the guard that lifted up? Rain was blowing in on the starboard side. A well-meaning lady came along, closed the two open windows, then on the port side. I don't know who was working in the boiler room, but a man came out seeing her. "Thank you very much, but we have to keep those windows open no matter what the weather for air into the boilers." That low rumble, roar of the boiler fires, near white-hot glow never to be forgotten.

Many to most of the OHIO RIVER CO. steam tows burned coal down to the bitter end as that was the commodity they trasported. I am sure I remember the OMAR, ORCO, GEORGE M. VERITY burning coal in my time with automatic feed stokers. Bill Judd could enlighten us for sure. Well, what do I know?

R. Dale Flick
Coal Haven Landing, Ohio River, Cincinnati.