By Betsy Gilbert
Too bad Mark Twain isn’t around today. If he were, chances are he would have added Margaret Brooks to Huck, Tom, Jim and Becky’s gang and moved them off the Mighty Mississippi. Her life along the Missouri River certainly qualifies her for honorary membership in their adventurous club.
How many retired school teachers have spent a decade as a cook and the only woman on a towboat? Not alot, one wagers. But Brooks did, and counts those ten years among the most interesting and rewarding in her rich life.
When I retired in 1984 after teaching first grade and art in the Kansas City, MO area for 27 years, I bought a motor home and planned to travel around the country, the Kansas City, MO, native remembers. The problem was in my Social Security. I lacked eight quarters to qualify for full benefits and decided that I needed to work full time for two more years to meet the requirements, but I wanted something different from teaching.
She found it. Her daughter was dating a fellow who owned a small transportation company with two towboats that ran alongside barges from St. Louis, Missouri to Sioux City, Iowa. The crews were in place, but a cook was desperately needed. Brooks jumped at the opportunity.
It was the perfect job for me and the perfect solution to my Social Security problem, she says. The trips took two weeks round trip, then I had two weeks off to travel. I only had to cook three meals a day for eight crew members and I cooked for that many at home when I was teaching full time, but nobody paid me for it then! Towboat Margaret took to life on the river like a duck to water, despite the fact that she’d never been on a boat before. Fears about seasickness were soon put to rest, as she got her sea legs and discovered that the boat only went five miles an hour.
Binoculars slung around her neck, Margaret Brooks started on what turned out to be a 10-year journey, two of them full time and the subsequent eight on a part-time basis.
The galley and dining room were on the lower level and my quarters were right across the hall from the galley, she describes. The boys quarters were on the second level, so I had all the privacy I wanted. I got up every day at 4:30 to make breakfast, then I had plenty of time before starting lunch. Same with dinner. I had my sewing machine with me, but spent a lot of time on the second deck quilting, crocheting and watching everything that went by.
Brooks two weeks on, two weeks off schedule gave her the opportunity to see a lot more than the banks of the Missouri. As soon as the boat docked back in St. Louis, she was off in her motor home, discovering the nooks and crannies of America. She says she visited every part of the country except New England and New York City, two places that held no appeal for her. Those were great days, she says with a smile. I loved teaching and loved raising five kids, but I’ll always treasure those ten years.
Today finds Brooks off the water, but enjoying life just as much and keeping busier than any two people half her age. Having moved to Westminster Village of the Mid-South, a retirement community in Blytheville, Arkansas four and a half years ago, she is now just trying to find enough hours in each day to satisfy all her interests.
One of three women in the village who make up a quilting club that meets three times a week, she helps create art that sells for $250 a pop. The money is used to help out other groups in the village when they find themselves short on cash.
But Brooks quilting is just the tip of the iceberg. She also set up a paperback reading room as part of Westminster Villages resident-run library. She’s an active member of the Village chapter of the Red Hat Society, a national organization for women of a certain age which has fun and laughter as its primary objective. As president of WMV’s Resident Council, she throws herself into the retirement community's huge spring and fall sales and is involved in dispersing the profits to pay for various needs that arise throughout the year, including the addition of a wheel chair ramp. Then, of course, there’s the bridge club, which neither rain nor snow nor dark of night can keep her from.
We really have a little town within a town here, Brooks says of her home. The young activities director here asks us to come with our own ideas and she facilitates them. Residents can basically do as much or as little as they like and I’m one of those who does as much as the hours in the day allow. I’ve made a lot of new friends and feel more a part of the community than I ever have anyplace else.
Some folks just retire. Others, like Margaret Brooks, retire well.
Published U. S. Legacies July 2005
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