Tugboats. Up in the Columbia River Gorge, remember it's a Mighty River, and that it has More Water in it than any other American River ~ up The River they have a bunch of railroads and highway trucks and barges. It's a River of Commerce. The barges can hold a lot, and they go clear from the Pacific up into Idaho, on the river. (But they never come back.) (Just kidding. We wouldn't send them if that happened.)
(Remind me to tell you about Memaloose Island.)
These are BIG barges. I like that word. Barge. You can, it's so big, you can use "barge" as a verb. Wow, huh. Flatten whatever you want, with that.
"I didn't mean to barge into you."
(Sounds like a pizza and beer burp.)
Of all the things you can be "hit" with, a barge might be the biggest.
Even bridges have to look out.
Most of the barges have grain, but some of them have things like wheat. You can fit a lot, a lot, of truckloads of stuff onto a barge. (It would be REALLY nice to have enough of something, anything, to "barge.") I am guessing, actually I'm betting, that nobody here can guess how many semi truck loads of stuff will fit on a barge. It's more than you think. Way more.
An unusual thing about barging is that oftentimes whatever's in the barge is just there, uncovered, out in open space, in the wind, in the air. For instance, wheat. You'll see these giant piles of wheat, poking out of the top of the barge, when the weather is good. To me, there is something very incongruous about this. It's the FOOD aspect. Doesn't it get dirty? Don't birds and things land in there? This isn't cattle food, it's people food. Sandwich bread. Pastries. Future Albers Flour. It's not ground up yet, not milled, but all that's going to do is spread out and disguise anything that got in there. People just want to shut their eyes to this.
Farther down the Columbia, right by the side of the very same river, in Portland, they have these HUGE grain elevators. As I recall , most of the grain grown in the West goes out through these elevators. To the far corners of The World. Boats to cross the oceans line up beside these elevators and big booms load them up with giant piles of wheat. I think that would be a neat job. Boat filler. Get it all even. Drawbrige Guy is another nice job, but it's boring. The Oregonian interviewed a bunch of them, and that dashed my illusions about that job. I think I would start drinking.
Trains pull up in front of the grain elevators, with box-cars full of wheat. Then the bottoms open up, and the grain falls through the railroad tracks into tubes that go up to the top of the silos. (I don't know how they get it to go uphill, but I can find out.) But, it falls through the tracks. There are always big piles, enough for a thousand loaves of bread, scattered around the tracks and ties there, where the bottoms of the cars open. Really. Falls right through the tracks. Doesn't it get dirty? Eeek.
It's right in the heart of the industrial heartland of the Portland Industrial Area. Greasy, slimy, guck all over the place. Rainy mud. The engine runs right over there. Who scoops that stuff up, and what do they do with it? Toss it down the chute? If they don't have a big compost pile of contaminated grain behind the elevators, I'm never eating bread again.
Every once in a while they have "a spillage" and there's a pile of grain bigger than city hall all over the place, and you see the picture in the paper.
So how many big truckloads fit on the barge? A big railroad car can hold about four truckloads. Got a guess?
Go ahead. I'll wait.
About five hundred truckloads of grain will fit on a grain barge. No kidding. Five hundred. One very long train, filled completely with wheat. How many acres is that, of harvest? I don't know.
Either a small or a big County.
(If people will send me the dimensions of their lots, I will figure out how deep in wheat they would be.)
These barges are pushed up the river. Pushed. Since the part of the barge above water, the boxy part, is about three or four stories high, the boat that pushes them has to be taller. I think they figured this out the very first time they did it.
Not only that, they strap four of the barges together, and then push them all. Sometimes even six. Steering obviously comes into play here. Seeing, too. So the guys running the boats that are pushing the barges are about seven stories up. The tugboat is seven stories tall; a high chair mounted on some of the biggest engines in the world. Like a pool-side lifeguard chair, seventy feet up.
Do these guys ever crash? Yes.
It's very embarrassing. Trust me.
But what I was wondering about, is why are they called tugboats? If you've got a Giant Barge or the Queen Mary to move, to drag over there, or to push upstream, do you want a tugboat?
"Here. Tug on this."
There's some doubt in there. I want a pullboat, or a yankboat.
Or even a jerkboat.
How did they ever get established?
"We'll build this giant stuff; the biggest in the world because it's on the water, and then we'll tug it."
Why not just threaten it?
Cajole?
Teaser boats.
Like "Hercules Tugboat." It's an oxymoron.
You know what the ropes are, the big big ropes you always see on tugboats and ships? They're hawsers Hawsers. HAWSERS.
Now, say THAT. HAWSER.
HAWSERS.
That is a big boy word.
That's appropriate.
HAW HAW HAW.
ZER.
In logging, the tugboats are "donkeys." Steam donkeys. That's respectable. Not much doubt about what they do. And don't mess with one. Or have one tug on you. They don't tug, they tear.
Now suppose tugboats were Spartans. Or Ironbuoys. Or Dragboats. Or Water Moccasins. Or Whistles. I like Whistles.
Can-do's.
Pieranha.
Pieranha's good.
I'm going to write those guys at the Tugboat Association. |
