Rataj Berard
Greg Anderson, one of four people who operate the Tenney Park Locks, notes that people who boat through are “always happy.”
The small control room beneath the red-and-white lighthouse at the Tenney Park Locks may be the happiest spot on the isthmus. Just ask Greg Anderson. “I just really lucked out getting this job in the first place,” he says.
Anderson, 61, is Madison’s maritime maitre’d. From May through October he and three other tenders, all retirees, help about 6,500 boats pass through the locks, lifting and lowering vessels between the higher lake, Mendota, and the lower Lake Monona. The service costs $10 a pop or $30 for a season pass.
“The people who come through here are always happy,” Anderson says. “They appreciate the service, and they want to be here.”
As he speaks the deep lock channel — first built in 1896, when it was powered by horses — is empty. Across the bay, late August sunshine bronzes the shoreline maple trees.
As cheerful as the scene is, the “lucked-out” part of Anderson getting the job in 2007 is decidedly unhappy, both for one boater and the lock tender whom Anderson replaced.
What happened was the lock tender approached a woman whose dog had taken a dump on a public walkway outside the lock house.
“So he asked her to clean it up. And she said, ‘No, I’m not going to clean it up. You clean it up.’”
Anderson’s laugh emerges and creates a wheezing/clanging sound, a little like the noise the giant gates make when they open and close to the lakes.
“So she went back, got in her boat, and went into the lock. He locked her in and then he took the dog shit and he threw it into her boat.”
“You can’t do that, you know? So he got fired, and I got the job.”
How does Anderson handle drunks? He concedes that policing the tipsy isn’t part of the gig. County officials “don’t encourage us to do anything about drunks. Just kind of let them go. Every once in a while if someone’s really shitfaced I’ll call the sheriff if he’s out on the lake and say, ‘There’s a Four Winns. It’s blue. You might want to have a look.’”
“You know the guys who give me the most grief?” Anderson asks. “Kayakers. Of all people. It’s kayakers. It’s like they’re paddling and shouldn’t have to pay. ‘We’re kayakers. We can’t come through?’
“Oh yeah you can. It’s 10 bucks,” he says with that sudsy laugh. Pointing towards Sherman Avenue, he adds: “It’s free to go around.”
About six mid-sized boats can fit into the lock in one load. Anderson’s control box up in the lock house is surprisingly Fisher-Price looking: a simple stainless steel cube with a main lever sandwiched between oversized red and green buttons.
As we talk, a motorboat eases in on the Mendota side. “Better let him through,” he says and punches the north lock switch that closes the ginormous rusty gate behind the boater.
So begins a 56,000 gallon cycle. As the locks’ motor sluices water south beneath the Monona-side gate, the boater descends out of view down, down, over the course of about nine minutes. Monona is only 5 feet lower than Mendota but you’d never know it looking way down at the boat in the bottom of the lock. The Monona-side gate powers open, pulling forth a huge swoosh of water.
On a hot weekend day he’ll have as many as 20 boats waiting. He says that funneling the boats in turns the lock into a “jigsaw puzzle.”
During slow days it gets lonely. “But I never leave early,” he says. “Even if there’s not been a boat here for three hours I never leave early. Just about the time you do that, someone would come.”
Boats that passed through Tenney Park Locks in 2014: 7,428
Year the locks were dug: 1896
Last time locks were refurbished: 2006
Number of times boaters have begged Anderson to keep the locks open for them after closing: countless
Number of times lock tenders have called in sick in the past nine years: 0
