Two news items

A construction worker at the Olmstead Locks and Dam project on the Ohio River below Paducah was killed in an on-the-job accident Friday.

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And an inflatable dome used for sports activities collapsed at Robert Morris University on Friday. The Golf and Sports Dome is on the western end of Neville Island near Pittsburgh.

Escatawpa on the Kanawha

As I left work this evening, I saw the Escatawpa downbound on the Kanawha pushing nine loads of coal, so I thought I would ... you know.

I shot this from the Patrick Street bridge. The wind was hard enough at times to move me a half step or so,   and the way the bridge is built I got an odd feeling of being up too high with too few rails to protect me. But I stuck around long enough to get this picture.

Three years

We had an anniversary this week, and I missed it. May 28 was the third anniversary of the Ohio River Blog.

Will it be around another three years? Not if some Internet genius calls me up and pays me a scandalous amount of money for it. Until then, I'll be here, I guess.

Osage at Huntington

The Coast Guard buoy tender is overnighting here at Huntington WV tonight. I noticed it on a quick visit to the riverfront park and grabbed a few photos of the boat and the buoys.

Bridges

Some things I hear about for so long that when they actually happen, I'm amazed. Like the new Louisville bridges.

Construction on one bridge will occur this summer. It may be only an access road and not the bridge itself, but it's a start. Now, I remember here in Huntington WV when approaches and piers for an Ohio River bridge (my favorite bridge, by the way) were built, the money ran out and several  years passed before the bridge was finished. And in Louisiana, I remember a bridge over the Mississippi River being built and then there was no money for a while to build the approaches.

Here's hoping the people of Louisville and southern Indiana don't have to deal with that.

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This next story is about the possibility of using private money to help build a new bridge in Cleveland, but down in the story is a mention that the Ohio Department of Transportation is considering a similar plan to build a new $2.4 billion bridge next to the Brent Spence Bridge at Cincinnati.

Cemetery talk

I spent part of Sunday visiting cemeteries in southern Gallia County, Ohio, where my ancestors and some of the people I went to high school with are buried.

At the Swan Creek cemetery I ran into a man who asked me about the headstones from the early and middle 1900s that I was interested in. I told him about how some of my river-working ancestors are buried there, and he began talking about how the Pinchen and Taylor families from England were the first to settle the area. He pointed to the river bank, just beyond the farm fields and the line of trees in the distance (the hills in the background are West Virginia).

He said until a flood of about 1885 (I said it might have been in 1884), most houses in the area were built along the top of the bank. After the flood destroyed those houses, people rebuilt on slightly higher ground back away from the river, he said.

He also asked if I knew that at one time people could walk across the river. I said. yes, people used to say the Ohio River was a mile wide in flood season and a foot deep in summer.

We discussed a little more local history before we parted. It was an afternoon when two people with differing interests in local river history swapped a little information.

M/V Dennis T. Delaney

The Ingram boat Dennis T. Delaney passed Huntington today. Here are a few photos.

Wake's up

The M/V Stephen T passed by Huntington lightboat at a pretty good speed, kicking up wake that was irresistible to this guy.

I didn't get to see him fall off his craft, as the splash was high enough to hide his fall.

Two down

The second of my three children graduated from high school yesterday. Here Joey, the one who gets so frustrated with me when I have to stop and get a river photo, receives his congratulatory handshake from Suzanne McGinnis Oxley, the president of the Cabell County Board of Education, while Superintendent Bill Smith, to Joey's right, looks on.

As I've said before, Joey might not have worn all sorts of ribbons and sashes and ropes, but he's an intelligent kid young man who works hard and has a strong sense of doing what needs to be done. He reports to Marine Corps boot camp in August. I'm going to miss him.

This afternoon, it's back to the river.

No river chasing today

Adam and I won't be down at the Ohio River today looking for towboats to chase, for herons, for good angles to shoot oft-shot bridges. No, his older brother -- my older son, Joey -- the one who hates towboats, who gripes when we're driving along and have to stop by the locks to see if there's a good boat passing through, who can't understand why Adam memorizes where various boats were built -- graduates from high school today.

Maybe tomorrow.

Meanwhile, here's one Adam and I got earlier this week. It's the AEP Leader exiting the Robert C. Byrd Locks and Dam southbound with nine empties and six loads.