Show LIVE ON CANAL BOATS colony of contented people which the march of improvement has forced from their homes interview with one of the women members for real contentment there la Is only one thing that beats living on a canal boat afloat and that is living in a canal boat that will never float again that has gone out of commission and become a houseboat on a mudflat says a writer in the new york sun there Is an abode that Is neither taxed at real estate nor levied on tor for tonnage dues it Is just a wreck but a wreck with lace curtains at the windows canary birds singing in the cabin and the old cook stove still blazing in the galley but there Is cause for worry on the part of the boatmen and their families fi 1 I ve been boatin sixty years already retired from going and corn com ing on the rivers and canals and for those still in commission who are looking forward to long years of rest with the boat bottoms hard and fast on the flats the available mud spots are gettin getting g scarce and one colony of wreck duellers du ellers after another Is being ousted to make room tor for improvement less than two years ago there was a happy settlement of fifty or more tarn fain hies illes living on rotting lakers scows and bull heads at the tout foot of fifteenth street hoboken but the improver came along with a dredge to convert part of their mud flat into good solid ground for ma warehouses and to dig out the rest of it for a ship basin and the colonists had to flee before the digging and the dredging and only the other day the erie man ed his way along the crum bling plank of an old wharf at the toot of seventeenth hoboken with nine dispossess notices in his pocket one tor for each family in the last colony of canal boat families on the west shore of the north river the last colony to fall under the the ban of improvement and be ordered out to make room for some more spur tracks and a new pier was established twenty years ago when capt wade retired from active boating he s now 79 capt wade has read his dispossess notice every hour or so since he got it hoping to discover that he was mis taken when he read it first and got the impression that he must move I 1 ye ve been a boatin sixty years he eald said and this Is the worst thing I 1 ve run afoul of it its s worst than the in aurance company s bustin and the wreck of my two lakers that all hap bened about the same time I 1 had two as good grain boats aa as ever went through the canal and they were both insured but a steamship cut into the tow one day and both my boats went down and when I 1 went ashore to get the insurance I 1 found that the company had busted just the lay day before I 1 got a little so methin out ot of the i steamship and bought an old boat with it but it got so leaky that I 1 coulon couldn t 0 we ain t sinful fol s get a cargo so I 1 gave a towboat man 5 to shove me in here on this mud flat and I 1 ive ve lived here ever since I 1 was the founder of this colony all hands came ei eier er on my boat three years ago to my wife s funeral from his cabin capt wade has a good view of the open river and the neighbors say that since his wife died he hasu t done anything but sit on deck with a spyglass looking at the long strings of canal boats and barges towing up and down stream funerals in the colony are frequent and they always mean a lot of work tor for the men folk they have to go out before the day of the service and make patches on the old wharf because four men can t carry a coffin on u A jeaa their shoulders and at the same time look down to avoid the holes the rotting ratting pier Is the board walk of the colony it Is also the common source of fuel supply there are spur plank walks leading from it to the deck of each wreck of course horses and a hearse could never get down there so when the end comes for any member of the colony the neighbors volunteer to board up enough holes to make a reasonably sate safe path and then a guide walks ahead of the bearers to the waiting hearse a quarter ot of a mile away on solid ground that rotten old wharf aint ain t so bad as you might think said one of the women members of the colony you see it its s so full of holes that thieves don t dare come down here at night and the missionaries and folks like that bo therin people with fool notions are too squeamish to come down her days the last missioner miss loner that came down here fell half wily through a hole and if she hadn haan t weighed nigh onto pounds she d gone way through into the mud there s some of her tracts now stuff stuffed ed in that crack over the window but you musto t think that we are lre sinful folks juet just because we don t like to have aroun around aboard the boats and as it if they thought we were heathen we ain aln t sinful in particular and we aint so all powerful ignorant as you might think an we ain t what you d call slums there s old cap n holly on the bull head boat over there with the green and blue cabin probably got more book kearnin than halt the folks on shore we call him the hermit cause hes he s lived alone over there tor for fifteen years and don dent t do bothin but do sums and read the bible and old sermons taint tain t all figgers that he does sums in either but he has letters he ile says let x equal so methin and y A r child of the colony equal so methin else and before yer know it be he can tell how long his old boat will hold together it if the tide ain aln t more n so high 8 times a winter and there aln t more n q rats a grawin of the hull the cap cains n a got a fiddle too and he plays for the parties we have vis itin round to one another s decks in the summer I 1 guess if none ot of the rest of us didn dian t know enough to write our own name which ain sin t so cap n holly s got enough kearnin for a big ger fleet of scows than this were we re honest too and don dont t steal coal if the erie does back their trains full of it right down here before oui our face and eyes on a cold night wa we uon don t touch it we just chop away at our own bows and get alt all the fuel we need then the mistress of the laker to point her speech in the morals of the colony dusted off one of those big family bibles which placed on top of a coll coil of tarred rope make a con and comfortable stool the family bible not only contained the family record but the more im dates of launching profitable voyages and final stranding on the flats of the houseboat but we ve got to get out groaned a caller from a boat beached along side as she unfolded her dispossess notice and compared it once more with that of her hostess that erie man ain t got any common sense han ha n t every one of us paid 1 a month for years for the privilege of being aground here and now he comes round and calls us fool things like the party of the second part he s the first part and he thinks the whole thing an as it if it wasn gasn t enough to turn us out of house and home he charges us all for court that we e ain t never been to and on top of that chucks 30 cents more for what he calls mileage to jersey city you can go to jersey city tor for a nickel but that ain aint t the worst of it we weve ve all got to turn to and live in to houses and pay rent and buy col coal cause you cant can t chop up a piece of our house for kindling ies jes interrupted the hostess with a sigh and there 8 them janitors I 1 called on a cousin of mine once that lived in a house and she was having such a ro row w with a man that I 1 thought he duct be her husband and I 1 up and told her that she ought to get got a dl voice she just laughed and says lor me that s the janitor |