hercules & tilly

Ever since I was a kid, I've always had a thing for TugBoats.

Hercules

The first one I ever saw was in a painting my mother was doing of New York Harbor in the corner of our living room she called her studio on 61st St. in the Glendale section of Queens.

In whatever language my 5 year old brain was speaking, today's translation would be, "that is too cool!!"

I know TugBoats aren't sleek or fast and I never much cared that they're the "workhorses of the waterways".
I've just always thought they looked so cool and seeing them has, somehow, always felt like home.
(something from a previous life?)

The first time I saw a TugBoat up-close and underway, was 100 years later when my 2nd ex-wife and I were on the Staten Island Ferry heading back to the city. A Tug came up along the port side and it was so close I could see the whites of the deck-hand's eyes.

Tilly

I couldn't, in a million years, remember what she and I were talking about at the time but I can remember the rumble from the power of the Tug's diesels, how low she drove into the water and the wake she kicked up at her bow and stern rocked the ferry.
Again, my first thought; "that is too cool!!" and that was followed by, "I want one!"

Of course, at that time, I was knee deep in my corporate career, had the "house on the hill" (so to speak) and all the crap that went with it. So a TugBoat just wasn't in the cards.

But now, all these years later, calmed down and settled in my semi-retired stupor on the Keys, I have to admit, Hercules and Tilly have got me thinkin'. . .