At age 85, Catherine Portman-Laux decided to write a song. But not just any song. As a self-proclaimed “river rat” and lifelong lover of the waterways, she opted two years ago to make her first composition a theme song for her beloved Hudson River.
“Pete Seeger had written a song about ‘My Dirty River,’” she said. “Now he is deceased, so I shouldn’t be speaking ill of the dead, but with all the beautiful things about that river I wanted to say something nice. That was why I wrote it. Because we had ‘Swanee [River],’ ‘[On the] Banks of the Wabash,’ ‘Ol’ Man River.’ Where was the tribute to the Hudson?”
For a collaborator, she didn’t have to look far. Her husband, Burton Laux, had already written a river song, so she just looted the words she liked from his tune. “He wrote the chorus,” she said. “It’s very, very happy. My part is more haunting.”
The lyrics trace the river from its origin at Lake Tear in the Clouds down to the Statue of Liberty and beyond. Portman-Laux gave the words to a friend, Jimmy Conlin, who set them to music. The resulting collaboration, “The River’s Journey,” was recorded by a group of local musicians in Garrison, N.Y., where the couple now live. The musicians dubbed themselves The River Rovers and donated their time.
Hudson River childhood
Originally from Guttenberg, where he lived till he was 16, Burton Laux grew up in a house on Boulevard East that overlooked the river. And he loved that river dearly.
“On Bull’s Ferry Road going down to the river there were caves… It was a well known mushroom farm. During prohibition I think they would store beer there too.” – Burton Laux
____________
“I had a bedroom that I could look up and down the river. I could see Manhattan, Riverside Drive, the boats on the river,” he recalled. “When the [SS] Normandie [ocean liner] came in, all the tugs would be out blowing their horns. I could sit in my window and watch all this. And I had a National Geographic magazine that had a feature of smokestack symbols so I could keep track of what company it was.”
A dirt road led down to the waterfront and ended at the docks of the former Bull’s Ferry, operated by the Bull family back when Laux’s grandma used to own a restaurant in New York and commute by boat into the city.
“On Bull’s Ferry Road going down to the river there were caves,” Laux remembered. “In the cave were mushrooms. It was a well-known mushroom farm. During prohibition I think they would store beer there, too.”
Enchanted with the Hudson, Laux used to hike down that dirt road to the river front. “Right below Guttenberg at that time was a company that repaired ships,” he said. “There was another group that rebuilt barges, and next to them was a little group that made fishing nets, they would weave them. Next to that was the Niger African Company, which imported palm oil from Africa.”
As an enterprising youth, Laux made a deal with the Niger African Company to haul away their soiled rags for free. He paid another kid 15 cents to haul them up the hill in a wagon made from reconditioned baby carriages, and Laux sold the rags every Saturday. “I made about $2,” he recalled. “This was back in the 1930s.”
And don’t think he didn’t have a plan for those hard-earned dollars. “They were starting to scrap freighters and ships up the river to sell to Japan to make battleships,” he said. “I bought a lifeboat off a freighter for $8, had to be around ‘38 or ‘9. We got it down to Guttenberg, where there was a barge in the river donated to the Sea Scouts. I belonged to the Sea Scouts, so we kept my boat there for 50 cents a month.”
The barge was located in the area now occupied by Palisade Medical Center. “When we kids got up, we got the newspaper because it would have the tide for the day,” he said. “We would go up the river on the tide. If you went up the east side the current was going up and on the west side it was going down. We would ride the tide up and bring food and eat. Sometimes we’d go crabbing or fishing from our boat.”
Words and music
“I was raised on the Connecticut River in Massachusetts,” said Portman-Laux, who developed her own love affair with rivers early in life.
During World War II, her father, a “kind of a grouchy newspaper editor,” according to her husband, took a job in Washington, D.C. “We moved when I was in high school,” said Portman-Laux, “and the Potomac was my high school sweetheart.”
Later she moved north and followed in her father’s footsteps, landing a job at a newspaper, working as a reporter for what is now Gannett. “I covered the river counties and I was assigned to Hoboken and the six North Hudson communities,” she said. Soon the Hudson River had won her heart.
Although songwriting is new to her, Portman-Laux has written poetry and prose since she was young. “I got in trouble in high school for writing an anti-Roosevelt poem that was intercepted by my high school French teacher,” she recalled. “And I had to translate all 26 verses into French.”
Currently she has a line of cat cards called Kitty Kables that she and an artist partner are shopping to greeting card companies. And for the past six years she has written a biweekly “Challenging Careers” column for the Westchester Business Journal.
As for music, she has been involved in one form or another since she was young. “My mother couldn’t stand pounding, so she hated when I started pounding on my father’s typewriter,” she recalled. “And when I started pounding on the piano she shelled out 35 cents to a student to teach me how to play. I became a church organist at age 15 and a choir director at age 16 at St. Ann’s in Washington, D.C.”
She also sang with a chorus that performed at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center. And now, with all that experience behind her, she has become a songwriter.
Making anything sing
“I’m trying to be retired,” said Burton Laux, now 90 years old. But he’s not idle. Right now he is almost finished writing his first book. An enthusiastic storyteller, he is sharing tales from his time in the army during World War II – tales of the barracks, not the battlefield. Like the time he hitchhiked from his tent city down to Normandy beach to convince a steward to sneak him a ham for his birthday party. The ham was destroyed by a kosher butcher who had never seen a ham before and shredded it with his bayonet.
Laux has been writing humorous short stories since he was in grade school, mostly for his own amusement, although he sent one out to friends at Christmas.
He, too, has been singing since he was a youngster, including a stint with the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick. “When I was a kid I would spend time with relatives and if it was raining my three cousins and my brother and I would take a newspaper and try to make it rhyme and sing it,” he said. “The five of us would compete. You hand it to somebody and say, ‘sing this.’ And you develop a talent. I can take most anything and make it sing.”
From this he began to write songs, doodling lyrics during dull meetings in his day job as a soil scientist for the federal government. “Catherine was a newspaper person, so I used to say we both got all the dirt,” he joked.
Curiously, neither Burton nor Catherine sang on their first collaborative composition. Instead Ed Packer serves as “primary vocalist” and Patrick Cummings as “secondary vocalist,” playing guitar and mandolin respectively. Joining them are Ann Dillon on concertina and Dario Saraceno on second guitar.
“The River’s Journey” can be purchased from Amazon or CD Baby.
Art Schwartz may be reached at arts@hudsonreporter.com.