It began with a trickle of spectators braving the frosty early morning Tuesday to watch as the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-based River Salvage Co. arrived at the John C. Stennis Lock & Dam to start work on removing two barges that had lodged against the dam, one half-submerged, the other resting tranquilly atop it.
Bruce and Dianne Naylor were among those earliest visitors Tuesday, watching from the cab of their running pick-up truck as the towboat “James Garrett” moved a deck barge into position. That’s fitting. The Naylors were eye-witnesses on the morning of Dec. 26 when the two run-away barges lodged against the dam.
“I guess we’ll see it from start to finish,” Diane said.
By mid-morning, as the sun chased away the chill, a group of 20 or so were there to watch as the James Garrett artfully moved the floating barge, turning in 90 degrees, then moving behind it to push it north and away from the dam.
By lunchtime the crowd had swelled to maybe 60 folks as work began on the more difficult task of removing the half-submerged barge. They watched as the crane of the deck barge — one of two crane barges brought south for the job — used a 20-yard grapple to remove debris, sediment and — this is conjecture — some of the remaining soybeans that had been on the barge and had shifted to the submerged end of the barge.
Kathy Ray, 66, of Columbus, who had visited the site in the days since the accident, was on hand to watch the salvage operations. Like most, she was drawn by curiosity.
“I’ve never seen anything like this and hope I don’t see anything like this again,” she said. “But I was curious, so I came out to see how they were going to move it.”
Friends Ollie Harris and Charlie Jones, both 79, came out, too, and lingered a few hours.
Both have been long-time frequenters to the Lock & Dam.
“There’s just something about being around the water,” Jones said. “Hey, I probably spend more time out here than I do at home. I used to fish here, but now I just come out to see the water. There’s just something about it. It’s peaceful.”
Harris and Jones watched with fascination as the salvage crew did their work. Soon, Harris steered the conversation to fishing. Sooner or later, you figure, the conversation always turns in that direction if Harris has anything to say about it. Harris recalls catching a catfish he fought from one side of the river to the other for 20 minutes. “When I got it out, his head was this big,” he says, holding his hands about two feet apart.
Soon, he left to go to his truck, returning on photos of the big catfish and other whoppers he has landed not far from the spot where the two barges came to rest.
“See?” he says, pointing at one photo. “I’m wearing the same jacket I’m wearing today.”
Glennie Kirby and her husband, Paul, came down from Fulton and were making a day of it.
Then there the Naylors, both 60, who sold their home in North Carolina about a year ago, bought a fifth-wheel and plan to spend their remaining days roaming the country, staying at parks.
They arrived in Columbus the day after Thanksgiving, heard the Lock and Dam needed a host to answer questions from visitors and someone to keep the Corp of Engineers apprised of any unusual activity, and landed the job. They’ve been camping just outside the gates and plan to stay here until spring. Before coming to Columbus, they spent a month in Arkansas. Before that, they spent the summer in Sturgis, South Dakota, watching in amazement as thousands of motorcycle enthusiasts descended on the small town for the famous Sturgis Motorcycle Rally.
The Naylors were at the Lock & Dam the morning of Dec. 26 and watched the second of the two barges, the one loaded with soybeans that partially sank, arrived at its current resting place at roughly 8:30 that morning.
The Naylors said the accident was something of a local sensation ever since, especially during the days that immediate followed the accident.
“We used to walk out dogs down the road, but for that first week, we were afraid to do that,” Bruce said. “It was a steady procession of cars coming and out all day long.”
“It’s probably good for the park,” Diane said. “I bet a lot of folks who came to see the barges didn’t know this place was even here or hadn’t every really looked around. It’s a wonderful park. Maybe this will bring more people.”
Of all the visitors Tuesday, no one was likely to have had a closer connection to the site than Linda Spearing, 63, of Columbus, who helped make the concrete at the Lock and Dam back in the 1970s in an era when few women held such jobs.
As an employee of Arundel, Atkinson and Ball, Spearing helped with the construction at the Glover Wilkins Lock near Smithville, too. Before that, she was drove a road grader.
“When I first started, I was working in the office,” she said. “One day I told my boss, ‘All these men are out there and they do one job and make twice the money I make. I grew up on a farm. I can do what they’re doing.’ The next day, he put me on a road grader. I haven’t worked in an office since.”
Spectators gathered through the day, some staying for just a few minutes, others for hours, most of them chatting in small groups of two or three as the work continued.
As the grapple plunged into the river and pulled out another heaping mass of debris, one spectator said he saw a fish wriggle out of the iron jaws of the grapple and splash back into the river.
“All those soybeans,” a man said for probably the 100th time since news of the crash became widely known. “There’s going to be some big ole fat catfish sitting down there on the bottom, so fat they can’t even move, I bet.”
Ollie Harris’ ears perked up at the mention of it.
“That’s what I’m talking about,” he said.
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
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