Jeannie and jimmyt! It doesn't get much better than that. How wonderful to see old friends stopping by for a cuppa.

Ruth and I just got back from a trip out to my home town in Wisconsin. I thought I'd relate a story.

Many years ago, I wrote a song, The Silver Queen, remembering those summer nights when I was a kid, when my mother, my two older sisters and my cousin Jeannine would walk down to the river and out to Riverside Park to catch the Silver Queen. The Silver Queen was an ungainly looking boat, used for moving houses on the River. It had a large, flat deck that rested on oil drums for a float that was large enough to transport a house, or during the War years, a good-sized crowd of dancers. I was a little kid during the second World War, and I'd tag along for the ride (which cost all of ten cents,) a bottle of Squirt and a bag of Okee Dokee cheese covered popcorn. I'd sit on the benches around the perimeter of the floor, which had been converted into a dance floor with genuine japanese lanterns artistically strung from light posts, and watch the young men and women dancing to the latest hits on the jukebox over in the corner.

After the War, the Silver Queen was intentionally deep sixed, or maybe deep-twelved, to the bottom of the River just south of the Four Mile Bridge. The little that was of any value was taken off, and the boat was unceremoniously sunk to the bottom of the river.

In the 70's a young couple who lived on the river, Ralph and Nanci Zigler, took advantage of a lowering of the river to see what could be salvaged. They asked the owner of the boat if they could keep whatever they took off the boat, and he gave his permission. They had no diving equipment, and the boat was still under several feet of water, but Ralph, his son and a friend attached a chain to the brass propeller and tried to pull it off, by attaching the other end of the chain to a hoist on a truck, with no luck. They finally had to take turns hack-sawing the propeller off of the shaft, with the person sawing as much as he could, before he ran out of breath, and the others helping to hold him under. They also were able to salvage the steering wheel.

When we were in Janesville, I did a concert, and at the request of Ralph and Nanci, who I met for the first time, I sang The Silver Queen. Afterwards, they invited Ruth and me to their home, so that they could show us the propeller (now made into a glass-topped coffee table, and the steering wheel. We sat on their sun porch, looking down on the River and drank peach iced tea, and looked through their scrap books on early boats that plied the River lazily flowing below us.

"Living on the river was nice and easy
People on the river just take their time"

                      Living on the River

They still do.

Jerry