Word: peckinpaugh
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Ahead, a huge gray crane, disturbed by the Peckinpaugh's passing, rises from the surface and flies majestically away, its wings beating as if in slow motion. Ducks, more used to the Peckinpaugh's passage, edge toward the banks, quacking...
There are other craft on the canal as well. A transportation department tug, painted a bright blue and yellow and looking more like a child's bathtub toy than a working boat, passes the Peckinpaugh toward midmorning, heading east for Utica. Otherwise, the only other boats are recreational, mostly Canadian boats using the canal to get to the Hudson and the Atlantic Ocean. A large trimaran, the Tournamente of Toronto, its mast removed and lashed to the deck, chugs by under power, its crew bundled against the autumn chill and waving as much to keep warm as to greet...
...wish I were going with them," says Lock Keeper Bob Walker as he welcomes the Peckinpaugh to Lock 21. "It gets kind of lonely here in the fall." Glad for the company, Walker seems in no hurry to lock the Peckinpaugh through. A barrel-shaped man, he stands at the side of the lock chatting as the water pours out, 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...
...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 and make navigation impossible and lock keepers who bring the Peckinpaugh...
...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...