Noodlings & Natterings from the Edge: Banner Days on the Ohio River

We left Lexington, KY, for Syracuse, OH, to visit some long-time RVg friends of Ken’s—John and Denise—who are staying put for a while in this area. Our drive took us through a tiny bit of western West Virginia, across the Ohio River, then along the river through places like Gallipolis (pronounced gal-ee-PO-leece, if you please), Pomeroy, and into Syracuse—each town about two minutes long.

John grew up in Pomeroy and was a fantastic tour guide for the entire area, spinning out memories everywhere we passed…the flooding of the Ohio River up to the courthouse steps in Pomeroy; football games at the high school; the homestead where he grew up and his mother still lives (in her nineties, bless her). He drove us through a maze of wooded, hilly backroads—still only gravel—that weave through the hollers (valleys) he used to walk and bicycle in the days when both sides opened to clear-cut farmland with views over hills that rolled for miles. Along the way, he pointed out his old swimming hole down a gully; stopped us for a walk in the small, uphill, side-of-the-road cemetery where an ancestor as far back as 1799 is buried; explained how people would use these backroads to bypass flooded streets each year; and enlightened us about the small-scale gas wells that many families installed in the 1920s, ’30s, and ’40s and that still pump a free source of natural gas for their respective homes.

Crossing the river into West Virginia, we took a break at the state’s locally famous Tudor’s Biscuit World chain for a buttered biscuit (me), sausage-biscuit split (John and Denise), and shudders from Ken about both orders. A drive north out of Pomeroy got us to Athens, OH, for a walk at the university of Ohio, 1804. It’s a huge campus tucked into the bend of the Hocking River, with its own golf course, lots of new dorm construction, two gyms (each seemingly big enough to house an Olympic event), and lecture hall and classroom buildings scattered over several city blocks. A stone arch leading into the oldest part of the school states in carved letters: “so enter that daily thou mayest grow in knowledge wisdom and love.” Athens itself seems to be an energetic college town, with frat and sorority houses, a police station across from them, old brick buildings converted to new uses, dive restaurants, funky shops, etc. The movie theater still sells tickets for $4.00.

We capped off our two-day visit with dinner at Pleasant Hill Vineyards, where Denise and I sampled all ten wines (or was it twelve? After six I’m already losing count) for a mere $2.00 per person. We chose their “gold” reserve for a dinner accompaniment at $5.00 a glass. Nothing like a meal of noshes—cheese, chicken artichoke dip with toast, pretzels, crackers, olives—taken with good friends on a tranquil hill overlooking grass and tree-covered hollers.

Crossing the Ohio River on one of the many bridges from West Virginia into Ohio. That’s a tug pushing a barge under the bridge.

Rural advertising for a West Virginia tobacco brand. In the days before digital billboards, advertisers would pay farmers a few bucks a year to rent their road-facing barnsides for ad space, then painted the rest of the barn to sweeten the deal. The whole was repainted every year, freshening the ad and preserving the barn—a win-win for both advertiser and farmer. Mail Pouch Tobacco used the tactic from 1880 to 1992, with some 20,000 barns in 22 states getting the eyeballs of a century’s worth of travelers passing by in buggies and Model Ts, coupes and sedans, SUVs and RVs.

A more typical contemporary farm, without advertising.

Making clouds at the Gavin Power Plant near Pomeroy. Its concrete towers looked like a nuclear plant, but it is fueled by coal.

Our landing in the RV park was a bit rough. It’s a newish place, and the owner’s son had gotten a bit gravel-happy on our pull-through site…turned out it was close to 6 inches deep and enough to stop a runaway semi. Our 350 Ford is a dually and has ample torque to pull the rig, but it’s not four-wheel drive. By the time the trailer tires reached the ungraveled dip at the back of the site, the truck was committed to plowing through deep, loose gravel with nine tons of trailer behind it. Rock skidded from spinning tread, and the tires spat out any boards that the park owner and I could scrounge. We got well and thoroughly stuck…the only time in Ken’s 15+ years of RVg that’s happened. The owner called a farmer to bring a tractor, and Ken called John to bring his truck. John got there first, and with a towline tethering John’s Ford to ours, the two trucks gunned their engines, the trailer lurched forward, and we were on solid ground. The owner juggled us into another spot right on the river, and graciously didn’t charge us for the two nights we stayed. I’m really sorry I didn’t take photos of the fiasco, but we all got a good laugh about it in the end, and it is now a running joke. John kept the recording of Ken’s atypical call for help, and set it as his ringtone for incoming calls from him.

View from our bonus riverside campsite. Barges travel the Ohio 24/7—most haul coal to feed the power stations up and down the river. It was unnerving to wake in the middle of the night and see only a headlight sweeping the narrow river. No horns, just the sound of a diesel tug chugging along—first a dull rumble from far away, then a steady throb as the linked barges and boat pass, then a dull rumble as the floating transport drifts out of sight. The crane on this barge was named “Big Al” and would have been used for offloading cargo. Along the opposite hillside, freight trains also snake regularly along the river, another key transport in this region.

The lovely Pomeroy-Mason Bridge across the Ohio, seen from the West Virginia side.

One of the reasons why our campground was limited in sites this week: a female plover on her nest had taken one of them over. Plovers lay their speckled eggs in rocks, unpadded with any grass. The eggs are nearly undetectable and easy to damage by accident.

The watchful squatter.

John’s 50th high school reunion was the upcoming weekend, and he and another alum had hung banners along the Ohio River. Two posts had broken brackets, so he returned with Ken and Denise to repair and install the last of the flags.