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July 26, 2011

When I was a kid, we spent several nights a summer on the John Theodore D, a Sternwheel Riverboat my dad’s business partner built and stored at the Harriet Island Marina. I can remember being very young, three or four, and Howard giving me a captain’s hat, sitting me behind the wheel, and teaching me to steer. The tendency to overcorrect is strong, he said, so you need to focus on a point far away.

I was too young to understand what drunk was, I just knew that everyone on the boat was always in an incredibly good mood. I was, too, because there was an unattended bar soda gun. I mixed all the flavors together and refilled and refilled and got a sugar rush that lasted the whole trip.

I was amazed that we drove 15 minutes and entered a landscape that was seemed totally wild and foreign, and that the real captain had built this boat himself. I’d later learn that he also planned an amazing number of the communities around the metro, even designing a subway system for the Twin Cities that passed the legislature in the ’60s before being killed in committee.

That’s all a very long prologue to saying that I’m thrilled that we have Captain Bob Deck of the Jonathan Padelford, another boat from the same marina, presenting tonight at Give & Take // Lowertown. He’s been on the river since the ’70s - incredible. The rest of the line-up (Wren on vanity plates, Stacy Becker on online dating) is equally good, I just have a soft spot for riverboat captainry.

First photo credit, second photo credit

11:55am | URL: http://tmblr.co/Z0GFYy7YDf4D

(Notes: 12)