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Shuttle Run I spent the rest of the season on the Mather running the same type of routes we had sailed on the other ships, loading at the northern ore docks and unloading at the southern industrial ports. Captain Maddigan was a good skipper, although the mates said he had one strange quirk. It seemed he always worried a week ahead of time. If we were docking in Duluth he would worry about our next dock in Cleveland. There was no need to worry about the current dock in Duluth; he had worried about it last week while we were docking in Toledo. How the mates determined what the skipper was worrying about I don’t know. One of my least favorite chores was doing my laundry. Our clothes would get very dirty when we worked with iron ore, coal, or ›y ash—it was all dirty. When it rained the ore dust would soak through your clothing and stain your skin. Throughout the shipping season when I took my shirt off it looked as though I had a sunburn. The ore permeated my skin, and for weeks after I got home for the winter the water would run red whenever I washed my hands. Some of the older guys in the crew taught me how to do my laundry and the importance of separating the whites from the colored garments to prevent running. I would use lots of bleach on my whites in a futile attempt to keep them looking decent. I seemed to be going through clothes awfully fast. Between the beating they took while I was working and the heavy bleach I wore them out pretty quick. After washing there would always be a bunch of iron ore in the bottom of the washing machine. This had to be rinsed out so the next guy wouldn’t have it in his wash. After running our wet clothes through a ringer we hung it on clotheslines in the chain locker, where the washing machine was located. We had to remember to go back and remove 59 it or run the risk of catching heck for taking up all the line when other guys needed it for their clothes. The ‹rst mate on the Mather was an old, crotchety, white-haired fellow. Actually he was downright ornery. The deckwatch who worked his watch was cut from a different cloth. The deckwatch was an experienced sailor, but he didn’t seem to have a lick of common sense. Perhaps that was why the ‹rst mate was so ornery. Whenever we were loading or unloading the ship the mates wore white coveralls and colored hard hats. The crew wore blue jeans, ›annel work shirts, and white hard hats, so it was easy to spot who and where the of‹cers were. It seems the ‹rst mate asked this deckwatch to do his laundry one day, and the deckwatch did all three pairs of the mate’s white coveralls along with his own red ›annel shirts. The coveralls came out of the wash a nice shade of pink. From that day on the ‹rst mate was known as the Pink Bunny. He would run around the deck with his white hair and pink coveralls looking like a big pink Easter bunny. But he did not go out and buy new coveralls, not this man. He wore those pink ones for the rest of the season to the delight of the crew. When the dog days of summer settled on the lakes it could get very uncomfortable on the boats. Windless, humid, and hot weather would most often affect us on the lower lakes while Lake Superior and northern Lakes Huron and Michigan were cooler and more comfortable . During the hottest days it seemed we would invariably take on a load of hot taconite pellets, which would heat the iron decks of the vessel like a pizza oven. Taconite was processed at Aurora, Minnesota, year-round and was stockpiled after the shipping season ended. When the ice melted and the shipping season reopened the pellets were transported to Taconite Harbor, 10,000 tons at a time, in long trains pulled by four powerful locomotives. As the season progressed and the stockpiles were depleted, pellets were shipped hot directly from the pellet plant and loaded into our hull at about 160 degrees Fahrenheit. In the fall, when the lake waters turned cold, we were required to take temperature readings of the taconite. This was...

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