By Jon Kerr
Jan Halter still giggles and blushes slightly while remembering how her future husband used to impress her almost two decades ago with his acrobatic feats of riverboat piloting, while she looked out from her post operating the railroad swing bridge in Lilydale.
“Sometimes he’d do headstands and all I could see was his feet up on the wheel like he was steering. ...It was a good thing all the passengers down below couldn’t see up to the pilothouse,” she said, referring to John Halter’s role in 1980 as a pilot on the Jonathan Padelford excursion boat.
“I was usually a lot more cautious,” he quickly jumps in, mindful of his current image and responsibilities as Yards and Towing Manager for CAMAS-Shiely barge operations out of North Minneapolis. “I was through there seven or eight times a day. I’d just call her on the radio and we’d just talk a little, maybe tell a joke, make plans for later. Normal courtship stuff mostly.”
There is little normalcy however about a lifetime being built between two self-confessed river rats who continue to not only work but live near the Mississippi. Now their home, with two sons is in the Highwood area of Saint Paul overlooking Pig’s Eye Lake. In 1980, Jan’s houseboat in the old Lilydale marina was anchored but a short, moonlit night canoe paddle away from John’s home at the St. Paul Yacht Club.
“We spent all of our time on the river in those days,” recalls John. “We got to know everybody who was around. It was a pretty lively community. ...In those periods we were courting it was just a fun place to live.”
A woman operating a railroad bridge particularly stood out in the male-dominated world of the Mississippi.
>“There were a lot of invitations. The railroad was kind of a male environment too,” recalls Jan, with a laugh.
Jan’s good fortune to be one of the first women hired in 1977 under affirmative action by the old Chicago Northwestern railway (now Union Pacific) entitled her to long, sometimes boring hours waiting to lift or swing any one of five bridges across the river whenever needed. But the pay and time off during winter months also entitled her to exotic travel trips to places like Antarctica.
Yet Jan always came back to the Mississippi’s attractions, now including the tall, then thinner young man for whose boat she paid more attention when it passed by her post.
“He was very different than other guys. He had a good sense of humor and he liked to read and was interested in culture,” she recalls of John. “And then he was always doing things like getting on the loud speaker and telling everybody to look up at that gypsy on the bridge. He’d even have all the kids (school groups on the Padelford) shout hello to me!”
“How could she resist a guy in a uniform in a big white boat like that?” says John with a laugh. “There’s something that was almost symbolic when she’d open the bridge for her suitor like that.”
The romance continued throughout the summer of 1980, with a proposal on Jan’s September 5 birthday. They were married on Sept. 12, 1981, with their reception naturally held on the Padelford, floating along on the Mississippi.
“Our friends made an arch of oars we walked through to the boat and then they hung banners and signs from the bridges we went under,” Jan remembers. “It was a great party, although the Captain (Bowell) got a little worried that the ceiling was going to fall in from all the people dancing on the deck, doing the limbo.”
There’s been significant change on the river and in their busy lives since then, including John’s succession of jobs with different barging industries. But Jan has continued with the railroad and the couple’s relationship remains remarkably similar, with a routine that still revolves around the Mississippi.
“As recently as a couple of years ago, I’d be working a night shift and I’d see her about dawn when I pushed a tow (of barges) under the Omaha (near Southport, Saint Paul) Bridge,” remembers John. “Sometimes it was about the only time we’d see each other til weekends. So it was a nice way to start the mornings.”
Now John mostly supervises other pilots and admits he sometimes gets a little angered (jealous?) at hearing their sometimes profanity-laden radio descriptions of delays while waiting for railroad bridges that Jan operates to open.
“That bothers me a little because that’s just her job,” he says. “But most people on the river know we’re married or are our friends so it’s not too bad.”
In their spare time the Halter family still spends its much of its time together boating on the Mississippi.
“We’ve got a little runabout (motor boat) and I don’t think we’ve ever taken it anywhere but the river,” says John. “The Mississippi is so cool because there’s so many back areas and there’s always something to find.”
Jan points to the increasing number of walleye fishermen on the river as indication of a gradual, positive environmental cleanup.
“Of course it’s still catch and release,” she says, without realizing the irony. “At least for most.”