Friday, May 6, 2011

Temple Huckabee nee Tri-State

About a year ago, I heard that Marathon Petroleum had sold one of my favorite towboats ever, the Tri-State. It was one of my favorites because I had gotten to ride it in May 1980 from Neale Island near Parkersburg, W.Va., down to Kenova. It was interesting being on it when we went through the old locks at Gallipolis between midnight and dawn.

Dick's Towboat Gallery has a picture of the Tri-State with its new name and new paint scheme. It's odd seeing it with so much blue instead of red. That would be the reverse, I guess, of how Tom Seaver felt in 1977 when he was traded from the Mets to the Reds.

I'd like to see the Tri-State again some day, just like I'd like to see the Omega (now the Erna E. Honeycutt) and some other boats that used to spend a lot of time on my part of the Ohio but now are elsewhere.

Light posting

Sorry for the light posting of late. I've been busy with a couple of things like, you know, making a living and paying bills.

I'll try to get back in the swing of things tomorrow.

I did go by the river yesterday and today. It's still high here at Huntington, but it's dropping. In a few days we'll be able to see the beaches again. Other than the community of Glenwood at Mile 286, we avoided a lot of the troubles that have plagued the lower river. Our worst hit in mid-March, and the rest has been mainly nuisance flooding. The local TV weather guys say April was the second wettest  month on record in Huntington. Not just for April, but for any month in any year. The only wetter month, they say, was January 1937, when the big flood hit us.

I'll leave for now with this photo that I took yesterday evening. It was the best angle I could get given the river level. I'll be back up there in a couple of weeks to try again.