Tree Falling

Sometimes they just give up the ghost and fall over. A dead tree, time passes, it falls over. Usually, no one is around and it's kind of a non-event. But, as it happened, I was awake, considering river traffic. The power had been out, woke me, when it came back on, and I'd gotten up to send last night's posting, hoping I'd saved it, which I had, and did. Then got a shot of Irish and rolled a smoke, because I was still alive, after all, and opened "Way's Packet Directory" to read a few more entries. Minding my own business. I try to not be a burden on anyone, read and write as quietly as possible, mumble to myself; curse, occasionally, if I stub a toe or finger. Three in the morning, I'm sitting, quietly, reading. It's dead calm, not a bug or bird sounding off, and suddenly there's a swishing noise, followed by a loud thump that actually shakes the house. I look up, you know, expecting the end of the world, and need to collect my thoughts. After a few seconds of confusion, I realize a tree has fallen over. I even know which tree, that dead chestnut oak NW of the house. It's been teetering on the brink for months. Firewood and a tree-tip pit, a gift-horse in hand. After the concussive shock, without ever going outside to verify what I assumed had happened, I go back to reading. It's either what I think it is, or something equally innocuous, because I'm still alive. It could have been an earthquake at New Madrid, or California falling into the sea, but I still have electricity, and I think it's just a tree. A particular tree that I knew was on the brink of failure. Assumptions we make in the dark. Pick up your book, go back to your reading. Sometimes things are exactly what they seem. A tree falling over is just a tree falling over, not the end of the world. Mid-morning I lose power, again, and it was already hot, so I headed to town, to read in the AC at the museum, and watch a little Hulu out of the corner of my eye. I finish going through the Packet Directory, right at 6,000 entries, and I count 28 packets and three ferries built at Portsmouth. More than I thought. Several others had hulls built elsewhere and the superstructure finished here. Most of these were smaller boats, for use up the tributaries, what were called 'low-water boats', drafting between 18 inches and two feet. These smaller boats also went up the Missouri as far as Fort Benton, Montana, and even on the Yellowstone. The last couple of days, I keep running into some of the same characters. The favored pilot on the Ohio, for decades, was Captain Pink Varble. There were boats built at Piketon, on the canal, at Maysville, at Manchester, at Ironton and Higginsport. Most of the low-water boats were 'bat-wings', side-wheelers with the wheels uncovered, to reduce weight. Telegraphing the stacks was the phrase used for hinging the smokestacks down, to get under bridges. Sparring was a very common method of setting rigged poles ahead of a boat, to drag it off the shifting sand bars. The famed Howard Shipyard, in Jeffersonville, Indiana, built over 500 packets between 1850 and 1910. I'm crazy with information right now. When the Sultana blew up and burned, just north of Memphis, taking Union soldiers home, just at the end of that war, there were 2,400 people aboard, 1,547 died, our worst nautical disaster, she was rated to carry 376 people, including crew. Silver Wave, stern-wheeler, packet, wooden-hulled, 1888, 115 feet by 21,6 feet by 4.7 feet, burned at Portsmouth, July 21, 1897, reborn as the Wm. Duffy. The Richmond was a monster boat, 340 feet by 50, drafting nine feet of water, 1867, built in Madison Indiana, costing $240,000. At times if the Mississippi was rising very fast, it would back-flow the Ohio, literally, and boats would be going the wrong way, downstream instead of upstream. Just put your life in the pilot's hands. The wheel, for one of these boats, was 10 or 12 feet, and half of it was below decks, you stood at one side, depending on your handedness, and steered from there. An odd contraption, the 'nighthawk', a globe mounted on the jackstaff (?), that, at night allowed view of a horizon line. Everything has a name. Every single thing on a boat, that is touched, or used for any purpose, has a name, and that name is not necessarily based on function. The parlance, the patois of the river. There was always an axe in the pilot house, to clear away debris, from whatever disaster, to get to the wheel, or to chop the tentacles from whatever Kraken has grabbed you from below. They ate well, on the steamboats, green and local; oysters in New Orleans, ham in Kentucky, and whatever vegetables were in season. There was usually a chicken coop, aft of the pilot house, to provide eggs and white meat. Consider the logistics of feeding 1,00 people three meals a day, for four days New Orleans to Cincy. Fucking nightmare is what it was. By my calculation, the last night, you'd be eating grits and beans. Your boots, sir, seem to be lodged in the mud, and the river is rising.