Autumn Blues

Autumn morning on the Muskingum River at Lowell, Ohio

There is sometimes a longing so deep that the morning sun, 

burning off the mist, serves only to reveal how 

much farther the heart has to travel. 

The clear sky, echoed in the mirrored surface of the river, 

and the jewel-toned tapestry of the trees

balance the pain of betrayal hidden in the mists just beyond.

The trees create a jewel-toned tapestry to serve as
backdrop for our Muskingum River cruise. 

Betrayal

Cricket prepares to enter the lock at Devola
on her way to the Ohio River Sternwheel Festival, 2001.
Picture taken from the deck of the Michael J.
   

My 9/11 memories actually began the week before. On Labor Day weekend Carl and I had joined some friends on their boat, the Michael J, to make the trip from our home port in Lowell, down the Muskingum River to Marietta, Ohio. Our boat, Dresden Belle, was still undergoing repairs so we couldn't take trips much farther than the immediate area of our dock and were happy to help out in return for a nice cruise. A couple other boats, the Nancy Ann and Cricket, also joined us, the owners all taking their boats to Marietta for the annual Ohio River Sternwheel Regatta. Once there, we would tie up at the levee for the week along with about thirty other boats to enjoy the week's festivities.    
    The pictures here were taken while we were in the canal lock at Devola, one of  the locks and dams that make up the Muskingum River Improvement Project. Opened in 1841, the low-rise dams and locks were built to maintain a consistent depth to the river, allowing steamboats to navigate the Muskingum from Marietta to Dresden, just above Zanesville, where it joined the Ohio and Erie Canal. In 2001, the Muskingum Improvement system was designated a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark and is maintained as one of the Ohio State Parks.
    As the pictures show, it was an idyllic time. With the last of the summer sun shining on the river, friends and family members enjoyed the ride. The gentle rhythm of the boats' paddle wheel splashing the water created a soothing sound. Carl and I helped get the Michael J. into and out of the locks, holding her against the lock wall to keep her from bobbing around in the lock while the water level dropped. Then the gates were opened and we went on our way.
   

Next stop, Marietta!

    When the boats reached Marietta later that afternoon, they were tied up on the levee in the spot where they would spend the week. Some people stayed on their boats all week, while others left because they had work obligations. We returned to our home and jobs in Indianapolis because Carl, who was chief pilot for a local company, was scheduled to fly his employers to New York City for meetings that would last over the following weekend. He expected to return early Tuesday morning from an airport in White Plains. I went to work that morning looking forward to Carl's return and seeing him that evening.
    Just about everyone's impression of that morning is how beautiful it was -- sunny, cloudless blue skies. Mine was no different. As I approached the front entrance to my office, a co-worker asked me if I'd heard that a plane had crashed into the side of the World Trade Center. I hadn't, but the beauty of the day suddenly became incongruous to the events unfolding in New York City and elsewhere. As my co-workers arrived, we all gravitated to the break room to watch as the horror played out on our TV screen. 
      It was a few minutes before nine, our start time. Nobody yet understood exactly what was happening. The first plane had already hit the WTC, the second one crashed into the North Tower a few minutes after nine. Somewhere in the confusion of people coming into the break room to watch the news coverage on TV, I looked up at the screen to see the pieces of a white jet strewn across the Pennsylvania countryside. I knew Carl had to fly over Pennsylvania to get home, that he'd been scheduled to leave sometime that morning. I didn't think it likely it was his Bombardier Challenger but my knees started shaking anyway.
      Shortly, I got an outside line to call Carl's dispatcher to ask if he knew when Carl was expected back. I guess he knew why I was calling, because Glen told me the jet had just landed, everyone was OK and he'd get Carl. He did and I was so glad to hear his voice. Apparently Carl's plane left just around the time the planes were being hijacked, and was probably in the area when Flight 93 ran into trouble over Pennsylvania. Not long after Carl had taken off, the FAA had ordered the air space over New York be vacated, then, while in the air, all civilian flights were grounded. In essence, he and his crew had flown through and on the edges of the tragedies, making it home just in time.

Bombardier Challenger, AKA "Miss Piggy" with her Captain,
Lake Tahoe, 2000

     Not long afterward, we were all sent home for the day. I got a ride home from a co-worker. At a time when the roads are usually full of traffic, there was none. Other than for one delivery truck, Diane and I had the entire, wide expanse of the expressway to ourselves as we drove from one side of the city to the other. Carl came in a few hours after I did and, together, we watched the news coverage as it unfolded, then became cruelly repetitive:  the TV news network used a video clip, reduced to red and black, of the planes driving into the towers, over and over again. It became unbearable and we retreated to the quiet of the boat as soon as we could.
    Civilian aircraft had been grounded. Nearly all my life, I'd watched the skies, looking upward as the jets' contrails wove a fabric across our country and around the world, connecting people and places I could only imagine; for the first time I could remember, the blue sky was devoid of those white threads. As I sat on the boat's deck with Carl, fishing while he worked on a project, I noticed a lone contrail, rising in the west at a very steep angle until it disappeared into the atmosphere. I asked about it and Carl told me it was probably a large military plane taking off from Wright-Patterson AFB at Dayton.
    Carl was particularly solemn over the weekend, thinking of the people who had lost their lives, men with whom he shared a proud and skilled profession. I watched him as he worked on the boat, the man I quietly adored beyond reason, whose skills and intelligence I respected and admired. The shaking knees I'd experienced earlier in the week were nothing compared to the wrenching grief being experienced now by so many others, who'd lost someone they loved.
    My man came home that day; so many others did not and never would.
    Since then, it seems that the deaths of so many people have been perverted into a religious war -- their extremists versus ours. Many of our people seem to be caught up in politics tainted by religious ideology masked as patriotism. And this frightens me just about as much as another bomb. What is that saying -- "you become the very thing you dread the most"? I am afraid we are becoming them. 
    


     

Postcard Worthy: Confluence

Taken in 2007 from the deck of the Dresden Belle, this photograph shows participants
in the annual sternwheel boat races gathering at the confluence of the Ohio and Muskingum Rivers
after the completion of their heats. The races are held each year as the culmination of the Ohio River Sternwheel Regatta at Marietta, Ohio

I took this picture in 2007 while standing on the deck of my boat, the Dresden Belle. We'd just finished taking part in our heat of the annual races, which are the climax of the annual Marietta Ohio River Sternwheel Regatta. It was our first year and we didn't win, but who knew that, like NASCAR, there were "side draft" issues in boat races! 


I loved standing on the deck of the boat, to feel the breeze in my hair. Every shift in steering Carl made I could feel beneath my feet; likewise, if she wasn't working right I could also feel that. When the races were over, the boats gathered on the Ohio River at the mouth of the Muskingum, creating this scene, reminiscent of a time when the packet boats were a common sight on America's rivers.

Always remember, however, that postcards are advertisements, pretty pictures meant to entice, perhaps to deceive. I loved my boat, I loved the way that scene unfolded before us. What I didn't know was that the people and things I loved had a long history of deceit. The above scene was the last of a happy ten years; the postcard and the reality were two different things.

Click here to view thumbnails for all participants in this month's City Daily Photo Theme Day.

The Best Fireworks Display Ever ...

Anticipating the Fourth of July, the first thing I think of is fireworks and a display we saw several years back at the 2003 Parkersburg (West Virginia) Homecoming Celebration. That August, we took our boat on its first excursion on the Ohio River. We'd worked on it since 1998, leaving the dock only for short cruises on our "pond" of the Muskingum River, located between the dams at Lowell and Beverly, Ohio. We wanted to test the boat's engine and steering to find whether all the work done on them had been correct before we attempted a longer trip. The Dresden Belle had worked fine on the comparative calm of the smaller river. It was time to let her swim in deeper water.

                                            

We left around mid-morning on a Friday, accompanying our friends, Wayne and Jean, and their boat, the Michael J. When we reached Marietta and made the right turn to enter the Ohio River to go to Parkersburg the difference between the two seemed so vast, I felt like we'd entered an ocean. The trip itself was pleasant and the four hours we spent on the river were uneventful. It was a calm August afternoon and nothing was hurried or frantic. The boat worked beautifully and Carl was so happy with his efforts, so happy to finally be on the river, that he sang with joy.

 

When we reached Parkersburg, we tied up alongside the Michael J. That was not without difficulty; usually boats will tie with their bows facing upriver, into the stream, while here we tied with our bow nosed up against the river wall facing the bank, as well as tied to our neighbor, the Michael J. Our boat is large and it took quite a bit of effort on the part of  several men, pulling against the current with long lines, to help bring her around to face the wall. Afterwards, we visited with our friends and joined them for dinner on another boat, where we planned a trip to nearby Blennerhassett Island the next morning.

The next day we walked down to the dock to board the ferry for the two-mile trip to the island which, for a time, was the idyllic home of Margaret and Harman Blennerhassett, who had immigrated to America from Ireland in the late 1700's. While Blennerhassett was an intelligent man, he didn't possess good sense. His family gave him his inheritance and "encouraged" him to leave for a couple reasons: 1) Margaret was his much younger niece and 2) Blennerhassett seemed to be a patsy for any nefarious scheme proposed to him by political malcontents wanting money.

This latter failing caused them to lose their lovely home when, in 1806, Aaron Burr convinced Blennerhassett to finance his plot to establish a separate nation with himself as ruler in the Spanish-held southwest territory. The plan was discovered and the two men were arrested. While the treason was never proved and they were eventually released, the damage was done; the Virginia Militia raided the island to search for munitions and evidence. Finding none, they vandalized and burned the home (the present structure is a re-creation based, in part, on the remaining foundations). Their money gone and home destroyed, the Blennerhassetts left the area and spent the remainder of their lives in poverty.

After looking over the beautiful property and learning its unfortunate story, we boarded the ferry, returning to Parkersburg in time for dinner and the fireworks. People came down to the riverfront in a steady stream carrying chairs and blankets to sit on while they visited, ate corn dogs, cotton candy, and elephant ears (a concoction of deep-fried batter covered with powdered sugar). They wandered by to gaze at our boats, then watched as a parade of decoratively-lighted pleasure boats slowly cruised the area. A barge tied next to us had been decorated for a party hosted by its owner, the sponsor of the fireworks. Everyone was relaxed and happy.

As darkness fell, the Coast Guard temporarily shut down the channel to river traffic, allowing rafts of family boats to quickly fill in the area, their running lights the only illumination. The towboat pushing the fireworks-laden barge was in place mid-river, awaiting the start time. Carl and I had joined Wayne and Jean on their boat.  The first salvos were fired just after the "Star-Spangled Banner" was played. In company to the music the first shells were launched from the front of the barge, going up as planned, straight and true.

All but one. Within fifteen seconds of the start, that shell had been launched, hit one of the supports of the suspension bridge over the river, then ricocheted down onto the barge, progressively setting off the mortars and displays along its length. Chrysanthemums, pinwheels, whistling things and flares meant to enthrall, in their turn, hundreds of feet above us instead went off at what essentially was ground level. 

The little world in front of me turned a weird shade of green rather than the colors one would expect. At one end of the barge I thought I saw one man, maybe two, leap into the water. I stood just behind Carl, my eyes wide with awe at beauty gone awry. That is, I did until one of the missles, streaming eerily white out of the green, seemed to come straight at me. I looked over at my boat,wood, unmanned and unprotected, and left to get our fire extinguisher -- "just in case, 'cause you never know."

As I scrambled awkwardly down the Michael J's spiral stairs, Jean asked me what was going on. "Barge exploded ... rocket came at the boat. I'm scared it might catch fire," is all I remember. Just as I got to our boat and grabbed the extinguisher to take upstairs, the explosions sputtered to a halt. For a short while, the specially selected music still played until it, too, was cut off mid-phrase. It was suddenly black and silent.

The Coast Guard, police and sheriff boats responded quickly but carefully, slowly trolling the water around the barge for unexploded charges, at one point shining their search lights onto each of the sternwheelers looking for live mortars. Another set of lights was turned on the barge, revealing big chunks taken out of the top corner of its one-inch thick steel hull. It looked like a giant mouse had been snacking on it. Eventually the river was cleared, the towboat took the barge somewhere, and the Coast Guard allowed the spectators who lived upriver to take their boats home.

The party was definitely over on the barge next to us. All the guests had gone, the decorations were suddenly inappropriate and workers were solemnly stacking the folding chairs and tables. We parted company, headed for bed in order to get up for an early departure for home. The river was opened to barge traffic and returned to its gentle rhythm, rocking the boats as we slept.

Before we left the next morning to return home, we learned that no one had been killed or injured in the explosion and the one guy who'd leaped off the barge was quickly picked up by one of the police boats. On our way upriver, not long after we passed under the bridge, Carl and I saw the stricken barge on the river bank. The concussion from the blast had ripped open its hull, and, when it began taking on water, the towboat pilot pushed it onto the bank to prevent it sinking in the river. I saw a small figure walking amid the debris, dressed in a bright white shirt and navy pants, who I assumed to be the fire investigator.

                                             

Later that afternoon, as we entered the mouth of the Muskingum River, I felt like the trees closed in on us, welcoming us home. We continued upstream, passing through the locks at Devola and Lowell. Going through those historic locks was a special occasion for me because it was the first time it was necessary for me to help keep the boat off the walls, at the same time securing her to keep from bobbing around in the lock chamber. It went well both leaving and returning. Later when a friend asked Carl how I'd done, he responded with a smile that began in his eyes and reflected his pride, "She did great!" I cherished those three words of praise, but valued the smile even more. Not only did I get to see the "best fireworks show ever!" but that smile lit up my world.