"Growing Up on Long Dock" by June Palmatier Hamory
Long Dock as it looked about 1913.
[Editor's Note:] BHS member Joan Palmatier Hamory of Florida has written a memoir about her childhood growing up on the riverfront in Beacon during the Depression. Joan's "Growing Up on Long Dock" is the true story of what life was like to be the daughter of a ferryboat man, and of living with her parents at the river's edge in company houses on Long Dock. Joan's father, "Big Jim" Palmatier, worked on the Newburgh-Beacon Ferry for 44 years--at first as a deckhand and in later years as a wheelman. The following excerpt is from Joan's memories of the ferry and her father.]
"Dad stayed with the Newburgh-Beacon Ferry for 44 years. The trip across the Hudson took only seven minutes, but he always considered himself a seafaring man. His light blue eyes had the narrow, lined look of a man long searching the water with the reflection of the sun on it. Quiet and soft-spoken, he seldom had much to say, but when he did it was likely to be in nautical terms. he dressed only in navy blue and wore a seaman's knit cap until he was promoted to wheelman, when he switched to a blue officer's cap. I always thought he was very handsome as I walked him to work, holding his hand and looking up into his smiling face so far above mine as I chattered on about everything and nothing. Just before we got to the turn in the road where we would be out of sight of the house he would bend down so I could kiss him goodbye on the cheek, take his lunch from me and send me on back home. I would turn and run all the way through the dust that rose from the old dirt road and swirled about my ankles, skipping back and forth with happiness. I felt loved and and very safe and secure ...
If Dad was working we always went straight to the wheelhouse. A few small stairs led up into it off the top deck. Once inside we were above everything on the river and had a different view of the Hudson Valley, from Storm King Mountain on the south to the bend near Poughkeepsie on the north.
The lustrous mahogany wheelhouse smelled of soft leather and sparkled with polished brass. The half-circle of windows forming the front were kept open in all but the bitterest weather. The captain and the wheelman stood side by side at the wheel, watching the large ships going north and south, the oil tankers, the coal barges, the passenger liners. And they kept a close eye on the small pleasure boats whose owners often loved (and tested) the danger of getting too close to the wake of the ferry.
The fresh air smell of the river, the polish and leather, and the sound of the seagulls as they swooped low over the ferry, hypnotized me to silence. Also I knew if I spoke Mom's dark eyes would dart to me. I well knew that meant to be quiet. I learned early that except for an occasional 'barge to port' or 'west wind coming up' real river men talked little. I knew it was necessary to respect the responsibility, the concentration, and the silence of the wheelhouse."
Newburgh-Beacon Ferry after 1956