45,000

No wonder it was so crowded aboard the LST-325 when the boys and I went to see it in Marietta, Ohio, last weekend.


This from the Evansville Courier & Press :


EVANSVILLE — LST 325 is enroute home following a monthlong trip up the Ohio River that drew 41,500 visitors in three cities.



That's slightly less than the population of the city that I live near, Huntington, W.Va., the sixth largest city along the Ohio.


That 45,000 doesn't count -- can't count -- the people who lined the river bank watching and watching for the boat on its voyage up and down the river.

Do I miss these folks? Not really.

A comment by a Facebook friend today got me thinking about nutty calls I used to field when I worked for the Huntington, W.Va., newspaper. There was the woman who claimed Hillary Clinton had cleaned out her bank account while Bill was in town campaigning, and there was the guy who demanded a correction to a cops brief because, he said, his brother hit that other guy with a tire iron, not a whiskey bottle.

Then there was the woman all agitated, wanting us to do a story about how the Army Corps of Engineers was about to dredge the island at the mouth of the Big Sandy River. She said the island had a lot of junk cars on it, but it needed to be saved because it was the home of the last remaining colony of North American penguins. At times like that you don't argue that there is no island at the mouth of the Big Sandy. You thank them and hang up.

And wonder who will come along next to top that one.