Word: canalization
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...mumbles into the aggregate human mass that riding the Long Island Rail Road is, on the whole, one of the 14 most uncomfortable things a human being can do, vying for pride of place with one of its associated enterprises, the New York City subway system, and root-canal surgery. To her surprise, all the inadvertent intimates within earshot protest vehemently. "It's not as bad as you make it sound," argues a gentleman who is traveling with a box containing a large chiming clock. "So you're stuck belly to belly with a stranger. At least you're with...
Their concern is understandable. When it was first opened in 1825 by Governor DeWitt Clinton, the canal provided the only practical way of hauling cargo across New York. For decades it prospered. But the coming of, first, the railroads, then oil and gas pipelines, eventually turned "Clinton's ditch" into something of an anachronism, and now, traffic on the system is down to a trickle. As recently as 1973, commercial shippers moved a total of 2,548,113 tons of freight on the New York State barge canal system. Last year they moved only 579,777 tons. Shippers have...
Kaldefoss, who has been sailing the Great Lakes and the canals for 30 years, speaks of the decline with sadness, for it is obvious that he loves the canal and the people who live along its banks. He shows his love by a flow of stories, like the one about the old man who used to blow a bugle whenever the Peckinpaugh passed, or the one about the elderly woman who still stands at her kitchen window and waves. His first mate, Stewart Gunnlaugsson, chimes in with stories of fogs that can blot out the canal's marker buoys...
...appreciate the canal too," says Kaldefoss as the Peckinpaugh eases into the first of seven locks that descend, like a giant flight of steps, from the Erie to Lake Ontario. "This is one of the last of the great bargains, and most people don't even know it exists...
This lack of knowledge is unfortunate. The Erie Canal and its tributaries do, in fact, offer something for everyone. The canal system provides shippers with an inexpensive way to move high-bulk goods like sand, cement and asphalt. It gives pleasure boaters a safe way of getting from the Great Lakes to the Atlantic. It even offers the salmon who migrate through Lake Ontario an easy way to reach their spawning grounds. "Some salmon still fight the falls," explains Gunnlaugsson. "But the smart ones wait below the locks and go upstream with the boats." -By Peter Staler