River Findings

River Findings The Ohio winds around hills and streams down the hollows passes steel mills, brick yards and scrap yards. It carries tug boats, pushes barges, and hauls black coal stripped from the mountainsides. The Ohio’s littered banks are home to train yards filled with graffiti-covered box cars rusting relics of the Southern Pacific and the Norfolk and Southern railroads. Erector set bridges span the murky river and link Ohio to “Wild, Wonderful, West Virginia,” the Weirton Mill, and Homer Laughlin China Company. In towns called Powhaton Point, Shadyside, Bellaire, and East Liverpool, houses are stacked on hillsides with an array of slate, tin and asbestos shingled roofs. Ball fields and corn fields, concrete parking lots and shopping malls are full of busy people who fail to appreciate the river’s charity. There are roads with cryptic names like Goose Run, Pinch Run, Riddles Run, and Rush Run. There are towns named Brilliant, Costonia and Calcutta, each with their own secrets. North on Route 7 bars advertise Karaoke and all you can eat fish fries. A plethora of car lots and gift shops, bait stores and gun supplies dot the countryside with a never-ending display of marketing profanity, but the river rolls on never compromising her dignity never surrendering her boundaries. White-steepled churches stand like beacons of redemption, while billboards promote“Hell Fire Fireworks,” “Gentlemen’s” clubs, sleazy motels and the “Forbidden Zone Exit.” Still the river moves along around the hills and down the hollows proud and powerful chanting and rippling with satisfaction a stalwart testament to her tenacity…