Old: Man, River
A Nearly Hysterical Reminiscence on Rust, Ruin, and Regret
ROLLING ALONG
Remember me and my dog, Mr. Bones? We’re tough. We never, ever do anything nice and easy. We do things the hard way. If you really want to live, tackle the tough stuff.
That’s why we spent the last three-and-a-half years traveling full-time in a mini-campervan. We could get a big one and be comfortable, but where’s the fun in that?
To visit family for Thanksgiving, my dog and I traveled hundreds of miles west along the Ohio River. I thought it would be fun and inspiring, but I must confess, I was wrong. Dead wrong.
Never do that. A remote river road late in the fall is a sad and lonely place.
We started downriver at Wheeling, West Virginia, then headed southwest through Ohio and West Virginia, shuttling back and forth across the river, seeking a miracle, trying to unlock hidden mysteries.
What was I expecting?
Possibly, cheering crowds lining the roads as we passed, waving signs that read, “Thanks for stopping by.” Perhaps a small parade in each of the little towns.
My expectations might have been inflated.
We made stops along the way to visit a shuttered Gothic prison in Moundsville, West Virginia, complete with grisly stories of gruesome prison murders. Then, we camped overnight at a frigid Baptist conference center in tiny, remote Ripley, West Virginia, well south of the Ohio River.
I don’t mean to imply that Baptists are frigid, but the weather down there sure was. (The Baptists may be hot and bothered, but you’d have to ask them about that.)
Our other overnight stops included a rather terrifying place called “Happy Farm,” near rural Minton, Ohio, then a stay at a distillery on the outskirts of Cincinnati. I had to sandwich our little mini-campervan between two large motor homes.
My van has a complex about its size. We’re always the little runt who gets ignored. The big RV owners never talk to us.
Why do I do these things?
I’ve always loved road trips. Once, when we were kids, our parents piled us into the old station wagon to visit a boring local historical site. I was dying of boredom. The car whipped around curves and bottomed out on dips, until one of my sisters got road sick. She vomited out the window. The other sisters—there are eight—screamed in disgust. At last! It was awesome.
So much to be thankful for.
***
Driving along the river in late November was as cheerful as Leonard Cohen singing “Suzanne.”
Instead of offering me a peaceful, bucolic drive, the river got me on its wavelength. No tea and oranges. The sky pelted the van with endless rain. The grey clouds hounded me. I asked a question, then let the river answer.
A damp, icy wind shivered through my soul. Expecting happy reminders of the past along the river, I got the ghosts of Christmas instead.
The river doesn’t remember the once-bustling old factories that lined its banks any more than the modern world remembers the nameless, faceless careers we worked our whole lives to build.
***
Snowflake alert: the tone of this blog is often as dark and mucky as the Ohio River in late November. But don’t worry, it’s not all gloom and doom. Read on.
Astute readers will find amusing, if dated, musical metaphors for trips down the river.
The Ohio River is a taker as well as a giver. It took my time, then gave me the blues. I asked it why. Like sad old Suzanne, that rotten river told me, “You’ve always been my lover.”
Get a box of tissues and read on.
***
It’s not that I didn’t find humor in the situation. I tried telling the river jokes, but it didn’t laugh, even at my joke about how the river got its name. You want to hear it?
How did the confluence of two rivers, the Monongahela and the Alleghany, with 20 letters, merge to become the Ohio, with just four letters?
The river grimaced. It’s heard every river joke ever told. It has been around for over 2.5 million years. The river told me a few jokes. It said it’s been stuck in a rut, that life has all been downhill, and that it has always tried to go with the flow.
A river that is always lying down is not very good at stand-up.
At this point in our van life epic, we had to follow a river for a change. After all this time, “we’ve been everywhere, man.” We’ve driven the interstates, visited the cities, crossed mountains and deserts, and driven the coastlines. We’re sick of them.
Time for a change.
The newest thing since fast food is slow travel. Taking your time. We were in no hurry, starting in the middle of nowhere, reaching the outer edge of nowhere fast.
Prepare for deep thoughts from a shallow man.
The winding roads that follow the Ohio section of the river, Ohio 7 and West Virginia 2, are empty, narrow two-lane affairs. With no cars behind us, none ahead, the posted speed limit had little meaning. The tight curves with their menacing yellow hazard signs slowed our pace.
Why was the trip so empty, so devoid of life?
Maybe I expected a languid, picturesque scene from a dated 1937 Broadway musical, Showboat, with legendary baritone Paul Robeson singing Old Man River for me?
Show Boat poster from the 1930s with baritone Paul Robeson in a starring role
***
A fast trip along a slow river is an oxymoron.
A river winds and wends its way, snaking along a crazy, curving course, like a line made by a drunken sailor trying to walk the deck in a heavy storm at sea.
This is America, where great fortunes are made, and great, gleaming cities arise. Then, suddenly, fortunes are lost; cities crumble.
Left behind are the people who can’t get out or don’t want to leave.
The Ohio River had its day. Great industries of oil and steel had risen and fallen along the river. When they collapsed, the jobs fled in search of the shiny new thing where the money was good.
Later on, a few new industries have sprung up along the river. I counted about a dozen power plants, mostly coal, as well as chemical plants, including one that makes PFAS, the “forever chemical.”
Among the constants are the impermanence of human creations, except for PFAS chemicals. Like diamonds, they are forever, but don’t look good on your ring finger.
My mood continued to darken; endless rain and relentless grey skies do that to me.
My time had also come and gone. With handshakes, smiles, and a slice of iced cake, at retirement, we all walk out of our jobs cheerfully. Then, we wake up one morning to discover our own obsolescence.
This road had best take us through this bad weather and sad sights to a better place.
DON’T SAY NOTHIN’
This broad, ancient river knows all, but it’s not saying a damn thing. Mankind, by comparison, is still in its infancy. Not naming any names, but some of us look pretty old for a baby.
What have we learned?
Mankind has been here for thousands of years. The cast of characters changes every century or so. We think we’re getting smarter, but often, we still behave like apes, hanging around, striving to become the top banana, trying to intimidate each other.
I’m a cynic. Invite me to your next party. I’m more fun than a barrelful of belligerent baboons.
***
One of my mottos in old age is, Be like the river! “Don’t Say Nothing.” This applies if:
· You feel lousy in the morning, or your back always aches. Nobody wants to hear it.
· You miss your kids and wish they’d call. Just like you were at that age, they are busy.
· You’re old and lonely. Hug your dog.
The less you say, the smarter people think you are. The less you say, the happier you appear. Old people are meant to have learned life’s lessons and to be content. Smile for the camera.
Fake it till you make it.
Maybe that’s why the river seems so wise, so placid: It’s silent and mysterious. It should be. At over 2 million years old, it’s even older than me.
The silence of the river may be a mystical metaphor for my male emotional silence.
Day Two: The water looks brown at its banks, but the surface is smooth, almost glassy, concealing any turmoil underneath. In truth, it’s dark and murky from decaying organic debris, the runoff of pollutants and tributaries, plus constant dredging of mud from the narrow channels.
Dig it. At least the river has an excuse to be a mess. What kind of gunk flows around inside me at this point in my life? Let’s not dredge up my inner dirt.
***
Deep thoughts drift by as we drive along the river, feeling apprehensive, ill at ease. How did I find myself on this long and winding road? Why are we still out here after all this time?
Like a quiet river, I had abandoned my former settled life eagerly, quietly, humbly, heading into the third act of life alone, a solo sojourn, on stage late in life for an extended soliloquy.
“Like a dog without a bone, like an actor out on loan.”
This stage of life is silent; the theater is empty. A Shakespearean comedy: To be old, or not? There is one alternative—being dead. Most of us take our chances getting old.
Flooded with thoughts, but no one here to share them with, except my loyal dog. He cocks his head quizzically to one side in that cute way of his. Does he understand somehow?
***
Day Three: The roads are still empty. Where the hell is everybody? This is a forgotten place. The houses are dark; the front porches are empty. No sign of children: no toys or bikes. Bars and burger joints are open; the gas stations keep on pumping, but most everything else is dark.
Closed signs are everywhere.
As I drive through a small town, Aberdeen, the only people in sight stand in front of a local shelter, huddling under the overhang to avoid the drizzle, smoking cigarettes, chatting.
I tried to imagine why. Maybe, as the news media often allege, these small-town folks had become addicted to opioids or meth. Or maybe they stand there to confuse tourists like me.
***
We have few pictures to share. There is no safe place to stop for photos. The narrow, curving roads have no shoulder. I’m wary of stopping in front of private homes that post warnings: Private property! No Trespassing. Or, “You just go on and git, now!”
We passed through small towns with crumbling houses and boarded-up buildings. Old wooden barns sagged or collapsed. Like me, past my prime, with my crumbling bones and frail body.
Sights like these took such a toll on us that we had to stop for a late breakfast.
Fried food for breakfast is a remedy for what ails you. At the sign for Biscuit World in West Tudor, I veered off the road. There, we saw old folks hobbling in, leaning on their canes, to sit down and enjoy the big, fluffy biscuits smothered in light brown homemade sausage milk gravy. Served in fine restaurants everywhere.
Try to resist a hot, fluffy southern biscuit, I dare you. The aroma invades your nostrils and takes your appetite hostage!
Eschewing the popular “Breakfast platter of death,“(Motto: It will kill you!), I asked the lady for a big biscuit sandwich. “No tater tots.“ “Is that all, honey child? she asked. “You shore?”
I nodded. It’s Liberty or Death. Liberty from blocked arteries, or Death due to them.
SOON FORGOTTEN
“People are strange, when you’re a stranger.”
The names of local people are a mystery to outsiders, I thought, staring at gravestones in a small, roadside cemetery near where we had pulled off. How does a guy make his mark around here?
The few people whose names have lived on here did so because of the great fortunes they amassed, legally or otherwise. (Andrew Carnegie, in steel; John D. Rockefeller, in oil.)
Other locals, like James Audubon, a renowned local naturalist, were ignored in their own lifetimes but venerated by later generations. I stop to wonder, who might remember me?
The river flows quietly for a spell, but every few years, it swells up with pride or anger, overflowing its banks, swamping the riverside towns, and forcing the floodgates to close. Meanwhile, humans open the figurative floodgates, letting our pent-up emotions spill out.
We spend our lives swelling up with pride in our work, in our children, in being good neighbors and friends. We want to be remembered—by family, friends, colleagues, and by our own children.
For most of my adult life, I worked in Africa on health programs, hoping to save lives. No one there knows my name; that suits me fine. But this year, they abruptly dismantled USAID.
Everything we worked so hard for has been discarded at the needless cost of untold human lives.
And the band plays on.
BODY ALL ACHING
As in the song, in my case, “the body all achin.” In this foul weather, everything hurts, body-wise, mind-wise. The rain won’t stop pelting my windshield; the wipers keep on slapping time.
I want to slap someone myself for not inviting me here when times were good on the river.
The golden era of the Ohio River in the 1800s-early 1900s is long gone. Oh, to have seen the riverboats steaming up and down the river, alive with music, dancing, and gambling. I would even have settled for a glimpse of the keelboats poling or paddling along in the shallows.
Year after year, we drive further and deeper into van life, despite the bad back, the aching ankles, the bad wrist, the worsening eyesight, the growing night blindness. So on and so forth. Family and friends ask me, “Why don’t you quit?” “When do you plan to get off the road?”
I have no answer.
VanGo, my van, is also aging and hurting. It is a museum piece of “every blow that cut it till it cried out in its anger and its shame.” Meth-heads in Montana smashed the right rear taillight. A heavy iron bar fell off a truck, then bounced up underneath us, gouging a hole in the right-rear tire well.
Somehow, the van engine is still sound, and my heart is still beating, so we keep going.
***
If the analogy holds, there must still be a beating heart somewhere in these broken towns, these fallow farms. Visitors see the surface damage, but can’t appreciate the deep love that local people must have for their ailing hometowns, their sputtering stores, their ramshackle barns.
The rural front yards littered with broken-down vehicles and discarded appliances fascinate me. It’s none of my business, I tell myself: Just keep driving, mister. No stopping for pictures. (in case someone comes outside with a shotgun and demands to know what I’m staring at.)
(Or, in an alternate scenario, they come outside to ask me if I have any Grey Poupon.)
City folks gawk at such sights. Maybe country folks can fix things that most city folks can’t.
As we drove on, an idea popped up: this might be the rural equivalent of having a junk drawer in town, or a basement full of useless stuff that you never wanted anyone to know you had hoarded.
Either way, the conversation about junk, inside or outside the house, may go like this:
Husband: It’s not junk. I’m going to fix it. You’ll see.
Wife: Fix it? You don’t even know what half of that stuff is. It’s been there for years.
Husband: Well, if you’d stop harassing me about it, I could get it fixed a lot quicker. By the way, some of it has sentimental value. That thing there belonged to my dad.
Wife: Nice try. He couldn’t fix it either. Your Mom told me.
***
Day Four: We pull into Cincinnati, the last leg of our journey along the Ohio section of the river. The highway is flooded with a crush of cars speeding along. I wanted to see people; here they are. Now, it would be just a couple of hours to Indianapolis.
We stopped for another cup of gas station coffee. Did I add the yellow sweetener or the blue? Did they have the tiny cups of Half and Half, or was it powdered creamer?
So many cups of coffee from so many gas stations.
I strove for a sense of acceptance of what we had witnessed. Of course, we had only spent a few days driving through the area, not a lifetime living with its inescapable hardships. But still.
The way people grapple with the harsh reality of life deep in the Ohio River Valley is not unlike the resilience with which people accepted the extreme poverty I saw in Africa many years ago.
The broad smiles and proud bearing of even the poorest of the poor taught me a profound truth: that people somehow learn to live with dignity and pride, no matter what their conditions are.
I realized I made a rookie mistake, feeling sorry for the people in the old river valley.
We owe our fellow men the respect they earned, not the self-indulgent pity we feel. My sadness about the hardship of their lives was genuine, but I never heard anyone along the Ohio beg me for help. Instead, I sensed a stubborn pride reminiscent of an old Charlie Daniels song lyric.
“I ain’t asking nobody for nothin, if I can’t get it on my own.”
Down there, they’ve got something money can’t buy.
I loved reading this. I used to live in Cincinnati, and also in Athens OH a small Appalachian town where we used to drive to the big city of Parkersburg to see a movie. I would have loved to drive the river as long as you did. To me, rust and decay is not sad, but a reminder that everything changes. To that end, rust and decay are a natural progression. BTW, the line is" An actor out on loan," like in the old studio system days when a studio would loan out actors under contract to other studios for a picture.
Thank you for sharing this, it captured so much of the experiences I felt in the Midwest.
Growing up in a small town that saw both boom and bust, I will always be drawn to the deterioration that comes with change.