Penny Eckstein

This morning, before I got Adam up for school, I clicked on Dick's Towboat Gallery, and what was on the home page but a photo of the towboat Penny Eckstein.

I enjoyed looking at the pictures on the site for a couple of reasons. One was that I found some slides of this boat that I had gotten in the late 1980s when it was the Angel Brooke. I didn't scan any of them, though. The photos weren't that great, but I do have a bit of a photographic record of it being on the Ohio River back then.

The main reason I liked finding a picture of the Eckstein is that it reminded me that in my young days, this style of boat was what I thought of when the word "towboat" came up. The lines of the design, the sound of the engines ... back in the late 1960s, this is what a "towboat" was to me.

Now most of them are in South America. But I do like seeing the Pennsylvania and the Ronald E. Wagenblast when they're in my area and I can get down to the river.