Kriegesboot Steamsplosion!
Look at that title. What a great phrase. It just rolls off the tongue. It’s near perfection.
So you ask, “Where would such and odd concoction of words come from?” And, you would be justified in asking.
My friend Christian pointed out to me he was signing his comments on this here site with “Kriegesboot”. I had noticed, but it meant nothing to me. Then he reminded me of it’s origin; I remembered.
There are many beginnings to the story, but I will begin here. When Christian was a student on the stage crew I advised, the high school did a performance of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. At the time, Christian and I were amused by the line, “Asleep my love? But dead my dove?” We decided it would make the basis for a great death-metal song. Christian wrote the lyrics and I wrote the music. It has cult status to this day among those who have heard it. We recorded the song Asleep My love (But dead my dove) under the name Bubonica.
As Bubonica, we recorded a couple of other songs including Dead Rat to Canada and the popular Deathbus. We have often spoken of other titles, but have never gotten around to recording together again.
Jump ahead about ten (holy crap) years. Christian’s father is a man of many interests and talents. One of which is his hobby of steamboating. Not only does he pilot his boat, but he builds the engines from scratch. And from scratch I mean that he melts bronze and casts it into molds of his own design. He has a circle of friends and relations in the steamboating community. (I didn’t know one existed either.) Every year, there is a steamboat meet at the Hudson River Maritime Museum in Kingston, New York. For the second year in a row, I joined Christian and his father Carl for the event.
I always arrive after Christian and Carl and usually meet them when they are docking for lunch. After a tasty meal in town, we head out on the water for a few trips up and down the Rondout River which is a tributary to the Hudson River. While we were out, somehow the conversation got around to the boat being owned by Carl Kriegeskotte and that somehow turned into us referring to the boat as the Kriegesboot.
This year, back in Kingston, there was quite a crowd in town to see the steamboats. A change from the year before. The museum asked the steamboat owners to give some rides to the spectators, an action which was received with varying degrees of agreement. After all, steam engines run hot and spit oil, something that can be considered a liability. But, everyone was game to offer a few rides.
I knew the rides would be short lived during the second trip. Two things happened that told me Carl was not enjoying himself. The first was that Carl let the steam pressure build too high. Something I have never seen him let happen, he runs a tight ship. The result was that the pressure release valve let out a prolonged and quite loud burst of steam to release the pressure. A veritable “steamsplosion” as Christian and I referred to it shortly after it happened.
Looking back, it was clear that he let this happen to drown out the woman passenger who would not shut up. I can’t recall what she was talking about, but I remember she wouldn’t stop.
The second result of this woman was Carl doing something else I have never seen him do, take a short trip. That is to say, steamboats travel a a relatively leisurely pace. They aren’t in a hurry to get anywhere. If you have ever seen the African Queen then you know what I mean. Not this trip however. It was the shortest boat ride I had ever been on.
Anyhow, back to the point of the story. We now had our two root words: Kriegesboot and Steamsplosion. Somehow, yet inevitably, they were combined into the beautiful phrase, “Kriegesboot Steamsplosion.” When one sees those two words together one can’t help but think, “that’s a great title for a death metal song.” Well, Christian and I couldn’t. It was clear this would be the title of the next Bubonica smash hit. Of course, nothing ever came of it.
So earlier today, I had no recollection of where the word Kriegesboot came from. But back in August I remembered, and I didn’t want to forget it. Shortly before Christian returned to Carnegie Mellon to pursue his masters in music composition I had sent him an e-mail. It merely said, “reminder: Kriegesboot Steamsplosion.”
Karl on November 6th 2007 in Friends, Non-Fiction
