The Cable Guy

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Thanks to proper maintenance, the J-Mack rarely breaks down. The steel is rusting and the plaster is peeling, but the vessel has stood the tests of weather and time to become a tourist attraction in the Delta. And locals love it because it runs around the clock. Kelly Hall, for instance, lives in Rio Vista but drives to Sacramento for salsa dancing four times a week. She rides the J-Mack in the middle of the night to get home.

"It gives me the freedom to go out and do what I want to do no matter what time it is," says Hall, 21. "Without that, I wouldn't really be able to leave the island."

Decades ago, Deusenberry, who grew up in Rio Vista, had been crawdad fishing with a friend when they came up with the idea to pilot ferries for a living. He got his Coast Guard operator's license and before he knew it he had a permanent job aboard the J-Mack.

From the cramped control room, Deusenberry has seen it all. In the past two decades, he has ushered people from all walks of life across the river. Tourists. Farmers. Fertilizer salesmen. Pear pickers. Kooks. Cowboys. Models ("a bunch of skinny girls in wispy clothes just looking cold"). Satellite site trackers. Staggering drunks -- from a time when three bars lined the banks of the river. He had to call the Highway Patrol when a man, who had been grieving over the loss of a friend, leaped off the edge of the ferry. He survived.

There have been music videos and photography shoots aboard the vessel. He has yet to witness a wedding, but 16 years ago, a woman almost gave birth.  

"She must've been in labor," he recalls. "The bridge had radioed me to tell me she was coming. I blasted across as fast as I could, and I was, like, 'Woo!' They made it to the hospital in Lodi."

The shifts are long and sometimes slow, but the perks are plenty, as operators receive numerous days off each month and a retirement plan. (At top scale, ferryboat operators receive $20.46 an hour and benefits worth an additional $12.54 an hour, as well as a night differential.) The dress is casual; Deusenberry wears burnt-orange shades with circle lenses and Skechers to work. And at night, when the world is quiet, he soaks in the wilderness.

"It's a whole magical world at nighttime, and I'm in the middle of it," says Deusenberry, who now lives near Ione with his wife, Ruth. "I've seen foxes mate right there on that ramp in the middle of the night. Nobody gets that in a regular job."

It's 11:30 a.m. when Bruce Kitchens, the newest relief operator, rolls aboard. He's early. Kitchens, 30, joined the crew four years ago, apparently bitten by the same bug. He predicts he will be here for 25 years, too.

"I'll see you tonight," Deusenberry calls out to Kitchens before stepping off the ferry. Then Kitchens raises the apron, and as the J-Mack continues to moan across the river, Deusenberry drives to his mother's house in Rio Vista to take a nap before his next shift begins.

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