Word: kaldefoss
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...American folk song Captain Olaf Kaldefoss does not have a mule to pull his boat through the Erie Canal. He has a pair of 25-year-old diesel engines, one of which has just been overhauled. But he is confident that they can move his craft, the 256-ft. M.V. Day Peckinpaugh, through the canal at a stately, steady speed of 8 m.p.h., and so is the ship's engineer, a compact, muscular fellow named Dan Sauvey. So, with the sun just clearing the horizon and beginning to burn off the mist shrouding the upstate New York city...
...Kaldefoss's statement is one of fact, not resignation. The only commercial ship still plying that route, the Peckinpaugh has made more than 30 trips so far this year between the industrial city of Rome, located near the center of the state, and the Lake Ontario port of Oswego. It makes the trip west and north empty, completing the run in about 16 hours. It makes the trip back loaded with some 1,600 tons of cement. And the ship does it cheaply, carrying its high-bulk, low-cost cargo for less than the cost of sending...
...dropping the boat a full 26 ft. He and the Peckinpaugh's crewmen talk like neighbors who have not seen one another for a while. Walker reports that the man who used to be in charge of the next lock, No. 22, died within the past month. Kaldefoss reports that he hopes to make a few more trips before ice closes the canal system around the end of November. Both men wonder how long it will be before the state of New York, which is spending in excess of $25 million a year to maintain the barge canal system...
...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...
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