Chapter XVI

_Mississippi Menus_

It was a saying on the river that if you wished to save the meals

a passenger was entitled to on his trip, you took him through the

kitchen the first thing when he came aboard. The inference was,

that after seeing the food in course of preparation he would give

it a wide berth when it came on the table. It would be unfair to

the memory of the average river steward to aver that this assertion

was grounded upon facts; but it would be stretching the truth to

assert that it was without foundation. Things must be done in a

hurry when three meals a day are to be prepared and served to three

or four hundred people; and all the work had to be accomplished in

two kitchens, each ten by twenty-feet in area--one for meats and

vegetables, and the other for pastry and desserts.

The responsibility of providing for meals at stated times, with a

good variety, cooked and served in a satisfactory manner, devolved

upon the steward. Under him were two assistants, with meat cooks,

vegetable cooks, pastry cooks, and bread makers, and a force of

waiters and pantrymen conditioned upon the boat's capacity for

passengers. While the steward was in the thought of outsiders rated

as an officer of the second class, he was as a matter of fact in the

first class. When the pay of the captain was three hundred dollars

per month, and that of the mate two hundred, the average steward of

any reputation also commanded two hundred, while a man with a large

reputation commanded three hundred, the same as the captain, and his

services were sought by the owners of a dozen boats. Likewise, he

earned every cent of his salary, whatever it might be.

Unlike the other officers he had no regular watch to stand, after

which he might lay aside his responsibility and let the members of

the other watch carry the load while he laid off and watched them

sweat. He was on duty all the time, and when and how he slept is to

this day a mystery to me. He might have slept in the morning, when

the cooks were preparing breakfast, had he felt quite confident that

the cooks were not likewise sleeping, instead of broiling beefsteaks

and making waffles. This being a matter of some doubt, and of great

concern, he was usually up as soon as the cooks, and quietly poking

about to see that breakfast reached the table promptly at seven

o'clock. If the floor of the cabin was covered with sleepers, it was

the steward who must awaken them, and, without giving offense, induce

them to vacate the premises that the tables might be set. This was a

delicate piece of business. To send a "nigger" to perform that duty,

would be to incur the risk of losing the "nigger". The steward also

saw that the assistant in charge of the waiters was on hand with all

his crew, to put the cabin to rights, set the tables, and prepare

to serve breakfast, while the cabin steward and the stewardess,

with their crews, were making up the berths, sweeping, dusting, and

"tidying up".

As soon as breakfast was out of the way, the menu for dinner was

prepared and handed to the chief cook. Shortages in provisions were

remedied at the first landing reached, and stocks of fish, game,

fresh eggs, and fresh vegetables were bought as offered at the

various towns. While there was a cold-storage room on all first-class

packets, its capacity was limited, and with a passenger list of two

hundred and fifty or three hundred in the cabin, it was often found

necessary to lay in additional stocks of fresh meats between Galena

and St. Paul. Often, a dozen lambs could be picked up, or a dozen

"roaster" pigs, and these were killed and dressed on the boat by one

of the assistant cooks. Live poultry was always carried in coops,

and killed as wanted. Perhaps the poultry killing, if witnessed by

the passenger, would come as near curing him of the dinner habit

as anything else he might see about the cook's galley. A barrel of

scalding hot water, drawn from the boiler, stands on the guard. A

coop of chickens is placed near the master of ceremonies, and two

or three assistants surround the barrel. The head dresser grasps a

chicken by the head, gives it a swing from the coop to the barrel,

bringing the chicken's neck on to the iron rim of the barrel. The

body goes into hot water and the head goes overboard. Before the

chicken is dead he is stripped of everything except a few pin

feathers--with one sweep of the hand on each side of the body and a

dozen pulls at the wing feathers. The yet jerking, featherless bodies

are thrown to the pin-feather man, who picks out the thickest of the

feathers, singes the fowls over a charcoal grate-fire and tosses them

to one of the under-cooks who cuts them open, cuts them up, and pots

them, all inside of two minutes from the coop. A team of three or

four expert darkies will dispose of one hundred and fifty chickens

in an hour. Are they clean? I never stopped to inquire. If they were

_dead_ enough to stay on the platter when they got to the table that

was all any reasonable steamboatman could ask.

However, the live chicken business is about the worst feature

of the cook-house operations. Of course the darkies are not the

cleanest-appearing people aboard the boat, but if the steward is up

in his business he sees to it that a reasonable degree of cleanliness

is maintained, even in the starboard galley. On the opposite side

of the steamer is the pastry-cook's domain, and that is usually the

show place of the boat. Most stewards are shrewd enough to employ

pastry cooks who are masters of their profession, men who take a

pride not only in the excellence of their bread, biscuit, and pie

crust, but also in the spotlessness of their workshops. They are

proud to receive visits from the lady passengers, who can appreciate

not only the output but the appearance of the galley. It is a good

advertisement for a boat, and the steward himself encourages such

visits, while discouraging like calls at the opposite side.

In old, flush times in the steamboat business, pastry cooks generally

planned to give a surprise to the passengers on each up trip of the

steamer. I remember one such, when no less than thirteen different

desserts were placed in front of each passenger as he finished the

hearty preliminary meal. Six of these were served in tall and slender

glass goblets--vases, would more nearly describe them--and consisted

of custards, jellies, and creams of various shades and flavors; while

the other seven were pies, puddings, and ice creams. The passenger

was not given a menu card and asked to pick out those that he thought

he would like, but the whole were brought on and arranged in a circle

about his plate, leaving him to dip into each as he fancied, and

leave such as did not meet his approval. It was necessary to carry an

extra outfit of glass and china in order to serve this bewildering

exhibition of the pastry cook's art, and it was seldom used more than

once on each trip.

Serving such a variety of delicacies, of which but a small portion

was eaten by any person at the table, would seem like an inexcusable

waste; but the waste on river steamers was really not as great in

those days as it is in any great hotel of our day. Each steamer

carried forty or more deck hands and "rousters". For them, the

broken meat was piled into pans, all sorts in each pan, the broken

bread and cake into other pans, and jellies and custards into still

others--just three assortments, and this, with plenty of boiled

potatoes, constituted the fare of the crew below decks. One minute

after the cry of "Grub-pile"! one might witness the spectacle of

forty men sitting on the bare deck, clawing into the various pans

to get hold of the fragments of meat or cake which each man's taste

particularly fancied. It certainly wasn't an appetizing spectacle.

Only familiarity with it enabled an onlooker fully to appreciate its

grotesqueness without allowing the equilibrium of his stomach to be

disturbed. It usually had but one effect upon such lady passengers

as had the hardihood to follow the cry of "Grub-pile"! and ascertain

what the thing really was.

Altogether the duties of the steward were arduous and tormenting. The

passengers expected much; and after getting the best, if any slip

occurred they were sure to enter complaint--a complaint so worded

as to convey the impression that they never had anything fit to eat

while on the boat, nor any service that white men were justified

in tolerating. The fact was, that most of the passengers so served

had never in all their lives lived so well as they did on the trip

from Galena to St. Paul on one of the regular boats of the Minnesota

Packet Company. Certainly, after reaching their destination in the

Territory of Minnesota, the chances were that it would be many long

years, in that era of beginnings, before they would again be so well

fed and so assiduously cared for, even in the very best hotels of St.

Paul.

This chapter on Mississippi menus would be incomplete without some

reference to the drinkables served on the steamboat tables. These

were coffee, tea, and river water. Mark Twain has described the

ordinary beverage used on the river, as it is found on the Missouri,

or on the Mississippi below the mouth of the "Big Muddy":

"When I went up to my room, I found there the young man called

Rogers, crying. Rogers was not his name; neither was Jones,

Brown, Baxter, Ferguson, Bascom, nor Thompson; but he answered

to either of them that a body found handy in an emergency; or

to any other name, in fact, if he perceived that you meant him.

He said:

"'What is a person to do here when he wants a drink of water?

drink this slush?'

"'Can't you drink it?'

"'I would if I had some other water to wash it with.'

"Here was a thing which had not changed; a score of years had

not affected this water's mulatto complexion in the least; a

score of centuries would succeed no better, perhaps. It comes

out of the turbulent bank-caving Missouri, and every tumblerful

of it holds nearly an acre of land in solution. I got this fact

from the bishop of the diocese. If you will let your glass

stand half an hour, you can separate the land from the water

as easy as Genesis; and then you will find them both good; the

one good to eat, the other good to drink. The land is very

nourishing, the water is thoroughly wholesome. The one appeases

hunger, the other, thirst. But the natives do not take them

separately, but together, as nature mixed them. When they find

an inch of mud in the bottom of the glass, they stir it up, and

then take the draught as they would gruel. It is difficult for

a stranger to get used to this batter, but once used to it he

will prefer it to water. This is really the case. It is good

for steamboating, and good to drink; but it is worthless for

all other purposes, except baptizing."

The above sketch had not been written in 1860, as Mark Twain was

himself piloting on the lower river at that time. It could not,

therefore, have been this description which prejudiced many eastern

people against Mississippi River water as a beverage. But that

prejudice did exist, away back in the fifties, and the fame of the

yellow tipple had reached even to the fastnesses of the Vermont

hills at that early day. Many emigrants from the old New England

states provided themselves with kegs, jugs or "demijohns", and before

embarking at Rock Island or Dunleith for the river trip, would fill

these receptacles with water from the nearest well, or even cistern,

and drink such stuff, warm, and sometimes putrid, rather than drink

the life-giving elixir which had welled up from springs nestled in

the shadows of the everlasting hills, or had been distilled by the

sun from the snowbanks and ice fields of the unspoiled prairies and

azure lakes of the great northwest.

One old Yankee would pin his faith to nothing less than the water

from his own spring or well at home, away back in old Vermont, and

brought, at infinite pains and labor, a five-gallon demijohn all the

way from his native state, drinking it on the cars en route, and on

the boat after reaching the river.

It wasn't as bad as that. The river water was as pure and healthful

as any water on the footstool--_then_. It may not be so now--it

_isn't, now_. Then there were no great cities on the river banks,

pouring thousands of gallons of sewage and all manner of corruption

into the stream, daily. There was very little land under cultivation

even, and few farmyards, the drainage from which might contaminate

the feeders of the great river. It was good, clean, healthful, spring

and snow water. Above the mouth of the Missouri, in any ordinary

stage of water, especially with a falling river, the water was but

slightly discolored with the yellow sediment with which the river

itself is always tinged; and this sediment was so fine that there

was no suspicion of grit about it. When properly stirred up and

evenly mixed, as those to the manner born always took it, it was an

invigorating potion, and like good old Bohea, it would cheer but not

inebriate.

Since the advent of sewage in the river and with it the popular

superstition that everything, liquid or solid, is permeated with

pernicious microbes, it is possible that it has lost something of

its pristine purity, and it is certain that it has lost something of

its reputation; but river men still drink it from preference, and

passengers, unless they revert to the Yankee method, must drink it

perforce, or go dry.