Shari Stiver Archives

December 16, 2015

MV Donna Griffin

Road Warriorette Shari came down from St. Louis the other week with a list of places she wanted to go: Old Appleton (where we saw the old Silver Dollar Tavern just hours before it was torn down), the Mississippi Mud Tavern for Liver and Onions Night, the Lutheran Heritage Center’s Christmas tree exhibit, and Trail of Tears State Park.

From the Mississippi River overlook, we were lucky enough to catch the MV Donna Griffin coming upstream. We could hear her talking to another boat to arrange a passing, but I think it was well north of us, so we didn’t get to see that. We could hear a train whistle in the distance, but it must have been on the Illinois side, so we missed seeing two major transportation systems at the same time.

Rigging amazes me

It always amazes me how the pilots and captains can maneuver long strings of barges around sharp bends and between bridge piers. I know those straps have to be bigger than they look in this photo, but still, I can’t imagine how much strain is placed on them when the captain needs to move something that’s a thousand-plus feet in front of him.

Here’s a website with some interesting factoids. It says that a standard barge is 195 feet long and 35 feet wide, although some of the newer ones are 290 by 50 feet.

Let’s assume that the ones in the photo are standard length. The string appears to be two wide and six long. That would mean that you have to figure out where to make your turn from nearly 1,200 feet back. Think about THAT the next time you complain about a parallel parking space being a little tight.

You can click on the photo to make it larger, but I didn’t spot anyone on deck checking us out.

Bald Knob Cross

That little white dot on the top of the hill in the distance is the Bald Knob Cross.

Has had three names

The Donna Griffin was built by Nashville Bridge Shipbuilding in 1965. A website, reports that she was named the Julia Woods until May 2006, when she became the Michelle O’Neil. In May 2009, she was renamed the Donna Griffin. I didn’t find anything that explained who the boat was named for nor the significance of changing the names in May.

A shipbuilding site said Nashville Bridge Company was originally a bridge builder, founded in the 1890s. It was converted to shipbuilding in 1915 and, by the 1960s, it was said to be the world’s largest builder of inland barges. George Steinbrenner bought it in 1969 and added a second yard in Ashland City in 1977; he sold the company to Trinity Marine Group in 1995. Trinity closed the Nashville yard in 1996, when the City of Nashville decided that the downtown shipyard property would be more valuable to the community as a stadium.

She is 180.1 feet long, 50.5 feet wide, and the hull depth is 11.5 feet.

The towboat is owned by Ingram Barge of Nashville, the largest carrier on the inland waterway system.

December 6, 2015

Road Warriorette Reactions

All of my road warriorettes display different reactions to my driving. Foodie Jan is prone to scream “We’re all going to die!!!!” at the least provocation. She’s also the one most likely to question my food and lodging choices.

Curator Jessica is so young she still thinks she’s immortal, so she takes my driving quietly.

You haven’t heard much about Warriorette Anne lately because she abandoned me for Texas. She kept quiet even when she had good reason to scream. It was on that occasion that Mother, the original Warriorette, said she didn’t scream because she was biting down too hard on a pillow to keep from doing it.

(You can click on the photos to make them larger.)

Now that I think of it

I only knew of one time when Mother expressed any kind of shock.

I was trying to get a good photo of the world’s longest suspension pipeline that links Wittenberg, Mo., with Grand Tower, Ill. I had been there about an hour earlier and got some nice pictures, but after heading north along the river and not finding a good angle, I decided to race the sun back for this shot. I made it with about five minutes to spare. When I went airborne over the top of a levee, Mother yelled, “Whoa!”

I knew there was a road on the other side of the levee, but she, evidently, didn’t.

At the time, I wrote, “She never yells, ‘Whoa!’ She yells, ‘Gun it!’ She must be getting old.”

Getting to the point of the picture

Getting back to the original subject of the tree photo at the top of the page: Warriorette Shari, my old high school girlfriend (briefly, by her choice), and I were hammer down on NN north of where I took the silo picture when I smoked the brakes and did a sliding U-turn. Shari didn’t say a word, even when I pulled off on the side of the road and jumped out.

I had spotted a farm pond that was perfectly smooth and picking up the reflection of trees backlit by the setting sun. It captured the feel of The Bootheel for me: the endless flat ground, the green crops, the trees and buildings way off in the distance.

When I crawled back in the car, I tried to explain my philosophy of “Shoot It When You See It” because I was losing the reflections of the trees in the three or four minutes it took me to get turned around and start making exposures.

This old tree standing sentinel in the field has the same feel as the pond photo, but I like the reflections better in the first shot.

I almost always use a circular polarizing filter on my lens to protect it, reduce reflections and make skies more dramatic. Depending on the angle of the light, sometimes it doesn’t work at all or, like here, it causes part of the sky to be a different shade, which bothers me.

December 5, 2015

Why Does Silo Have Holes?

Road Warriorette Shari and I cruised Scott and Mississippi counties looking for photos to illustrate my Bootheel project. Late in the afternoon, when everything took on a golden glow, we spotted this silo on CR NN near West Granite Road north or Bertrand.

The recent cold nights must have killed whatever foliage had attached itself to the structure.

My silo ignorance is showing

One of the problems with documenting an agricultural area is that I know practically nothing about farming.

Would someone explain why this silo (and couple others we saw in the same area) have holes running up the side? Click on the photos to make them larger.

October 22, 2015

I Missed my Warriorettes

I like driving across the country, but this was a duller than usual trip.

All my Road Warriorettes came up with excuses why they couldn’t go with me this time. (What are the odds that they ALL had to wash their hair during those dates? And, how many times do you have to wash your hair, anyway?)

I got a characteristically late start, so the sun was dipping below the horizon before I got out of Okeechobee county. You can click on the pictures to make them larger.

Florida Citrus Tower

I only made it Clermont the first night. The first place I stopped for lodging wanted too much money. It only took a sweep of my headlights to scratch the next joint off my list. I pulled into a parking lot to do a Google search for what my other options were. It happened to be across the street from the Florida Citrus Tower.

This wasn’t the first time I had ogled the tower.

Road Warriorettes Anne and Jessica drop a dime (OK, it was only a penny, if want to quibble.)
Mother and the tower
Warriorette Anne wants to get frisky with Abe Lincoln

Mississippi River Bridge at Memphis

I usually take two different routes from Florida to Missouri:

Mostly Interstates through Orlando, Atlanta, Chattanooga, Nashville, Paducah and Cape
Cross-country on U.S. 27 through the center of Florida to Marianna, Fla., then Dothan, Montgomery, Birmingham, Nashville, Cadiz, Land Between the Lakes, Wickliffe, Cairo, Cape. Interestingly enough, both route are almost exactly the same distance – 1,110 miles.

This time, I decided to go the U.S. 27 route to Birmingham, then cut across to Memphis and up I-55. That added about half a day to the trip because I pulled into Tupelo at dark and decided to stop so I could drive the rest of the way in the daylight. I mean, why go a new way if you can’t see the countryside? This was slightly longer than my usual routes, but the roads were much improved over the last time I had gone that way.

“Just go”

When I got to the Jasper exit, I called Wife Lila to ask if she wanted me try to find the worst motel we had ever stopped at.

It was well past Cranky O’Clock, with few prospects anywhere near, so I acceded to the requests (demands?) to stop at the first available place, sight unseen. I registered and handed her the room key while I started to unload the car.

She opened the door, turned around and scurried back to the car. “Let’s go,” she said. “Don’t even stop to get our money back, just go.”

She said I didn’t need to search for the place.