Saturday, November 14, 2009

Jefferson fire


Funny, isn't it, how if you spend the summer and fall taking pictures of boats, bridges, herons, ducks, geese, sunrises, sunsets, fog, dams, kids. leaves, buzzards and barns, that you look at your computer one day and notice that your hard drive has 3 GB  of free space left. So, you set about to delete the few photos you can live without.

Postings of new photos may be slower while I clear off some space. So allow me to dig way back to late December of 1977 for this photo. I was sitting at home, unemployed and looking for work (sounds familiar) when a newspaper called and asked if I could run over to Winfield WV on the Kanawha River to get a photo of a boat on fire. I did. It was the Jefferson.


The fire charred about everything forward of the smokestacks.

From all appearances, the Jefferson was an old towboat. I think I saw its remains on the bank of the Ohio River a few miles below Point Pleasant WV in 1980. I don't know what happened to it after that.