Three River Landings, First Landing, Summer 1952
Me and Yolanda go way back. When we were 12 we ran away from home.
Down Rt. 52 from Aberdeen to the Augusta ferry on skinny little legs with a suitcase.
A sweet moon filled bug songed night heading to cross the river and get out of Ohio.
We got good rides, others were on the road that night, sometimes two or three across the back seat of a sedan or in the bed of a pickup truck.
At the landing, local people started to gather in the pre dawn light waiting for the ferry.
A man with a crooked grin grabbed me by the arm, asked why a pretty little stoat like me was all alone with a cardboard suitcase.
I shook him off. I knew how to take care of myself without a fuss.
A hay wagon and mules rumbled to a stop.
A family got down; a man, a woman and kids. A driver stood and held the mules.
Down the ramp they came. I walked up and took the woman’s hand.
“What is it deerie?”
“Help me get acrosst, I’m a-runnin’.”
“Wheer’s your Ma and Pa?”
“Dee-ad, my Ma’s brother in law, my uncle I suppose, was keepin’ me but I had to git gone.
“I’ll go to my Gramma’s when I get over, please just hold my hand like I’m one of your’n”.
“Billy Bob, pick up this here little girl’s grip for her, yonder comes the ferry.”
The Augusta ferry was a long heavy flatboat with a litle wooden shack, had a smoke stack belching coal soot and sparks. The donkey engine, vibrating, shaking, chugging.
Shoved its nose powerfully into the muddy bank. The sound of the motor changed and a man rushed out of the shack, leaped to the bank and wrapped a chain round and round an iron spike. The stern swung round with the current and the man jumped to the prow.
“A dime for the crossing, a nickel for children, them animals if they can be held quiet is a penny apiece. Tobacco bales, grain sacks and the like is by the hundred waight. depending. Now come aboard.”
My new found friend held my hand. Yolanda followed along.
The current took us down and out into the river, spun us around and then with a loud clunk, the motor engaged and we surged, straight at Augusta but it wouldn’t get closer. We headed mostly down stream. When we got out in the middle where the water was brown and choppy we turned up river and seemed to stand still with the noise and the smoke and the water lapping over us. I looked to our pilot. He stood on top of his shack smiling down river at a freightening sight. As tall as a gingerbread house here come the paddlewheeler Avalon hooting and tooting, bearing down on us, steam blowing out her scape pipes. Our inrtepid pilot pulled on his sweep and turned the flat boat down current and toward the Kentucky shore. We were sucked toward the Avalon and she swept right behind us, gave us a push with her wake. The deckhands, leaning over the rail, waved and we entered the quiet green water and made our way back up to Augusta in the cottonwood shade. We came long side the stone wall that was the landing, bumped hard and every body fell down.
Our pilot jumped with his chain and I was right behind him. We hoofed it up the hill and into the woods. Sat down. Now what? Yolanda didn’t know either.
