river rat: Route 209 Flosh, flosh, flosh...flosh, flosh, flosh.... Paddle wheels thrashing water make this sound. Over the steady chug of an oil soaked diesel engine and amid the rustling flaps of flywheel belts slapping, the flosh, flosh, floshing of the foaming wheel of the Roaring Bull III ferry boat can be heard ten or more times a day on Route 209.
Since the early part of the 19th century a ferry service has operated between Millersburg and Liverpool Pennsylvania. The ferry service lands on the Western shore of the Susquehanna River just south of Liverpool at the Ferryboat Campsites after a mile floshing across the shallow channel from the center of Millersburg's shoreline. On maps and along side routes 11 and 15, north of Harrisburg the Millersburg ferry is Route 209
The first time I saw the ferry boat coming across the water towards the pick-up point I was five or six years old. I remember standing all fidgety at the bottom of the crumbling concrete ramp at the water's edge wondering when the boat was gonna come. The patience of a five year old led me to catching crayfish knee deep in water at the very point where the ferry would soon ease into shore.
I became more interested in catching critters and soon forgot all about the approaching ferry. In the shallows at the end of the ramp where the ferry docks, thousands of crayfish beckoned with their flitting tail sections and snapping claws, taunting me to catch them.
The flosh, flosh, floshing got louder as the boat closed the distance between us and soon my mother picked me up and dragged me out of the water just before the ferry's heavy beamed loading ramp lowered onto the battered concrete ramp. She didn't yell, she didn't chide, she simply picked me up and placed me safely on the shore while continuing the conversation she was having with whoever was riding with us that day. In today's PC conscious, frighteningly overprotective world, my mother allowing us to play so freely as the ferry neared would get us all turned over to some child protective services.
On the ramp and waiting for the cars and walk on passengers to disembark I was suddenly fascinated by the ferry. The Roaring Bull III appeared massive to my young eyes. It had a pair of white washed paddle wheels and rust colored red sides and a cabin and cool heavy beams and rusting steel bolts and a diesel engine...and, and...I was in love.
The cabin where the captain and passengers sat was a small square area lined up with the engine compartment and the paddle wheels. My mother led me onboard and into the cabin area as I became uncharacteristically quiet. Staring at every rusted rod and bolt holding the beams together and the heavy chains that raised and lowered the simple loading ramps; I was transfixed on my perch atop the worn plank seats that encircle the cabin's footprint.
The interior of the passenger area was spare with bench seating made from rough sawn planks whose surfaces had been polished smooth by the butts of thousands of passengers over many decades of use. Rough stenciled letters shouted out in blotched red type "LIFE JACKETS INSIDE SEATING" or something along those lines. I found this interesting as I'd never really been in water in the river that I considered even remotely dangerous. My young brain and frequent swims in the river couldn't reconcile the fact that people actually drowned in it.
I watched as the cars loaded onto the ramps and pulled slowly into place at the direction of the first mate. One, two, and then three cars queued up causing the boat's beams to creak and its waterline to raise higher and higher on the crusty sides of the barge. The first mate inched the cars close together with an air of professionalism and friendliness that you don't find on such small time operations. I thought at that time how cool a summer job that would be for me someday.
Along with the cars, eight to ten walk-on passengers boarded. Everyone paid their fare to the mate and seated themselves in the cabin. From the cabin we could see both sides of the water and straight ahead. It made me feel like I was about to go across the river riding on someone's porch.
My dad spent the first part of the trip back inside the room behind the public part of the cabin with the captain. By the time he retired from the job, Captain Jack Dillman was the man who piloted the ferry longer than any other captain had in the history of the Millersburg Ferry.
I didn't know him then, but did recognize him as somebody my dad hung out with. I was so excited that my dad was hanging out with the captain that I nearly peed my pants. It turned out that my dad and Jack were two of the three people to graduate from their high school in 1948 and had been river rats together since childhood!
Once the boat was underway my dad scooped me up and took me out onto the deck where the cars were parked. He walked with me back to the engine compartment area where it was possible to see all the moving parts of the ancient diesel engine that powered the pulleys that drove the belts that turned the paddle wheels. Huge flapping belts, black with soot and grease turned slowly making the wheels flosh through the water as the diesel chugged and sputtered with a comforting constancy. It all seemed so primitive and wonderfully gigantic to my eyes at the time.
I followed my father around the deck, making sure to hold onto the giant threaded rods that held the boat together and kept it stable under the weight of automobiles and bodies. I remember sliding my hand through the giant turnbuckles, feeling the ridges of the threads on the rods and the scaly rust; wondering how it was all assembled.
Dad held me up so I could look down over the slight falls that defined the downstream side of the channel in which the ferry runs. He told me that each year they had to dredge out the channel before the ferry started running again in the spring and that the falls were created over years and years of piling the dredging on the downstream side. From my new vantage point, high in my father's arms, I marveled at how small the campsites from where we launched had become. The ferry runs at the widest point on the river and I'm pretty sure that I had not yet been taken out on the water that far south of town. All the campers and all the colorful lanterns that had been strung in the trees gave the appearance of a gypsy carnival that had crashed ramshackle on the river's edge.
The opposite side of the water--our destination--was a lush park leading up to a quaint town as foreign to me as Paris or London and just as fascinating. I had seen the lights from Millersburg for years as they sparkled in the distance, far away south of town. Now I was going to see our sister town up close and personal. It grew closer with every flosh, flosh, flosh and my eagerness grew along with it.
Dad set me down and walked back to talk with the captain again. I followed like a puppy dog and sat next to my mom as she chatted with her friends on the benches in the cabin. Dad beckoned me to him and I stumbled among the jumble of adult legs lining the U shaped benches until I was between him and Captain Jack.
Captain Jack leaned down to me and said what any boy my age would give his baseball glove and possibly even his puppy to hear, "Do you want to drive the ferry, son?"
I don't know what I may have said. I have no clear memory of it-probably because it floored me to even consider the opportunity and probably also because I had been secretly eyeing the captain's wheel from the first minute I stepped into the cabin.
I jumped at the chance and soon was steering-actually steering-the ferry boat! Captain Jack told me to move the wheel this way and then that way and to feel and see that I had real time control of the direction we moved. An overcorrection made him tell me to turn hard to the right and soon we were back on track. Not once did he lunge for the wheel, he just patiently gave direction and chuckled with my dad as I knowingly overcorrected again so I could feel the power I had in my hands.
Inside my head, as the captain and my father yammered on and on about something, I was taking off down the river with the ferry. Down the river was not the course that the captain had in mind at all. This was now my ship and we were going to do things MY way. I imagined all my friends on the ferry with me and all of us dressed in the rags of pirates who'd been at sea for a year without sighting shore.
We boarded other boats and stole their stores of gold and chocolate and Slim Jims, even though I was pretty sure that pirates didn't have Slim Jims or chocolate. I was the captain of the Roaring Bull III and it was my daydream to create-and in my pirate world pirates sacked ships for Slim Jims and Hershey's Kisses.
We'd make our way to the mainland, whatever mainland that was, and come ashore to trade our loot and take some women. At the age of five I wasn't sure exactly what a pirate did with a woman when he took her, but from all the Sinbad comic books and Saturday TV shows with pirates and seafaring scoundrels stowed away in my head I knew that it was a pretty important part of the pirating gig.
After a great time of looting and pillaging and eating chocolate after bedtime, my pirating days as captain of the Roaring Bull III came to an end. Captain Jack picked me up and stood me on the bench seat nearest him as he lined up the ferry for its docking on the eastern shore.
I was a little bit bummed at having to give up the helm and at how Captain Jack didn't even acknowledge the pointy end of my pirate's hook and how fearless and dangerous a customer he had on his hands. My disappointment was soon overtaken by a dripping peanut buster parfait acquired by my mom and dad as we strolled through Millersburg.
I felt huge. I felt like the ferry had been mine and I had a secret "in" with the captain who was also my dad's best pal from high school. It was certainly one of the red letter days in my childhood, and as befitting of all red letter days, it ended with ice cream.
Just a month ago I drove up to Pennsylvania to see my dad and stepmother and also to introduce them to my sweet girlfriend. I had so many things to show her and so many places to see for old time's sake that I nearly forgot about the ferry.
We made the five minute drive to the loading area and saw the ferry on the opposite shore loading up for the return trip. Waiting for the ferry is one of the most relaxing waits one could imagine. On either side of the river a dozen or more old timey swings are set up under the shade of massive oaks and birch trees overlooking the water.
If the wait seems longer than usual and no activity is spotted on the opposite side of the river an ingenious system of signaling is employed to notify the ferry to return. A five panel door is hung up on a door frame mounted to a pole in plain view of the ferry boat captain. It's just a door swinging out there in space, mounted to an eight inch pole sunk into the ground back ten meters from the water's edge. If the door is swung out and parallel to the river, showing its full face to the opposite side, then that is a call for the ferry to please return. If the door is turned perpendicular to the river and thus not visible from the opposite side, then there's no need to rush things at all.
When my girlfriend, Traci, and I went to the Millersburg side as passengers the whole package of memories rushed back to my first trip on the ferry. The captain is new-Captain Jack now runs the pleasure boat ferry at City Island in Harrisburg-and the boat seems much smaller than it was back when I was captain for that brief, golden moment.
In Millersburg, as a young boy, I was more interested in the ice cream cone my folks bought and maybe the airboats that lined the shore than I was in the quaintness of the town. On my most recent visit I appreciated the architecture of the Victorian era preserved, in some cases, to museum quality along with the serenity that sharply contrasts the Ferryboat Campsites on the opposite shore.
During the ride over and back the river seemed exactly as I had left it. The diesel engine hadn't changed except for some new grease and certainly new belts to drive the wheels. The cabin's accommodations were exactly as I'd remembered, except that they too, had shrunken down over time.
I knelt down on our return trip as we neared the shore and tried to imagine my hand fitting inside the turnbuckle that had fascinated me so much over three decades earlier. My little finger found the familiar area of threads, and for just a second as I closed my eyes, I was a five year old hearing the same flosh, flosh, flosh for the first time; hoping against hope that the captain would turn over the wheel to me.
