Captain Red Mays called me one time over marine radio and wanted me to meet him in Columbus with my boat and my sign painting equipment. He wanted me to paint the signs on a new boat the company he worked for had just bought. He assured me that the old signs had been whitened out. I hooked up my boat and headed out with my tools.
The first thing you noticed about a boat is how well it is kept. Any boat Red was captain of was sure to be immaculately clean and fresh painted. This was not a new boat but it looked it. The engine room was clean as an operating room.
There are three signs on a tow boat with the name of the boat. The pilot house had one on either side and one on the stern. The two on the pilot house are no problem but the one on the stern are hard to say the lease. With boats, especially tow boats, passing constantly, along with the wind make it challenging. I would imagine it is like a woman putting on makeup while riding a horse, camel or elephant. Anyway I got it done and he called me a couple more times to meet him in Columbus when the company got a new boat. He bragged that I did not hold a gun on him. He was used to paying big bucks just to get them on the river. I charged him for the paint job plus a reasonable fee for using my boat, travel and inconvenience.
After he formed Mays Towing, he was working on the new bridge across the Mississippi river at Dyersburg. He had one boat, the Peggy Mays, which I also painted and he had just bought another. He called me to see if I would come down to Cottonwood Point, I think was the name of it, to put in and come down the river a few miles to the job site and paint a new boat he had bought. That was the tow boat Connie Mays.
I told him that he could probably hire a local Dyersburg painter a bit cheaper than I would. I would have to drive nearly to Dyersburg, put my boat in and run several miles. I do not remember Reds exact words, but in no uncertain terms he expr I did not hold a gun on him here and he sure wanted me to paint it there. “If I wanted someone else I would have called someone else and if you do not want the job say so.” I hooked up and headed out for Dyersburg and the new interstate bridge site.
Having never been on that part of the river and no charts I could only head it out and keep the black buoy on my left side and run downstream.
This was right after one of the Mississippi`s bigger floods. This was the one that caused the wash out below Columbus. I know for at least a mile I drove through ten to twelve foot sand on either side of the road that they had graded out. It looked like a moon scape.
I had stopped by my father in laws in Hickman and he decided to go with me. We launched the boat and headed down river. Soon we met a boat and I gave her wide berth on her starboard. It was the United States. After passing I moved back to the river and all of a sudden I was in swells so high and deep that in the bottom I could not see the banks. I had power trim so I slowed to nearly an idle and when I hit the bottom I trimmed back to raise the bow and angling into the next wave I would goose the throttle. Once I got a chance to look back and check on Cecil and his eyes were slightly larger than lemons. After a few repeats of up and down we were out of the turbulence and headed on our way. I soon realized that two tows had just met were the United States and now I was passing the America. No wonder it was so bad. At that time they were the two biggest tow boats on the Mississippi river.
We headed on the rest of the way with no incident and I got the Connie Mays painted. I do recall that there was an unusually heave boat traffic that day while I was painting.
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