It’s interesting traveling by boat to the same small towns that we’ve seen all our lives through car windows. Towns like Middleport, Medina, Albion, Brockport, Spencerport, Fairport, Newark, Lyons, and many, many more.
Everything is sterile and anonymous through a car window. At 45 miles per hour up on the highway, buildings blur by. People are mostly motionless and are certainly faceless. And the endless strip plazas, mini marts, gas stations, and franchised junk food joints homogenize the blurry views into a bland slurry of sameness.
Life is quite different at 7 miles per hour. Travel to the same towns by boat and you’ll see the them they way they really are. With buildings that boast architectural personality. With real people who smile and not only acknowledge your existence, they always have a couple of minutes to chat.
People behind the counter in the hardware stores who have a secret stash of doggy treats in case someone like us walks in. And they tell us our dog is welcome anytime in their store.
An impromptu bluegrass band at the gazebo in the town park on a Saturday morning as accompaniment to the weekly farmers market, where country arts & crafts tents have also claimed their sections of the street.
Where the tomatoes are five for three, and they’re bigger, juicier, and so much more flavorful that we wonder how we can grow them on the boat.
Characters, too. The man at the produce stand warned us about his raspberries. He said he tried to get all the mosquitoes and gnats out of them but we may find some meat in the basket. No extra charge for that. He said he especially did not like the gnats because they fly into his ear and then he has to put his finger on his outer ear flap to shut off the air and wait until the gnat suffocates. Other times, he said, he just whacks at his ear and he can hear the bug crunch, being that’s it’s so close to his ear drum and all.
The people who operate the maintenance craft, water controls, lift bridges, and especially the locks are some of the best you’ll ever meet. Stories circulate every season about canal workers going way above and beyond to assist boaters, kayakers, bicyclists, and others who spend time on the system.
The lock operator who drove a boater five miles and back to fill portable gasoline cans because the Captain had miscalculated his fuel usage.
The bridge operator who allowed us to peek inside the control house while he raised the bridge for another traveler. Then he opened the access panels in the sidewalk so we could see the inner workings of that magnificent piece of early 20th century engineering.
But the best story I’ve heard so far involved us on our trip in August of 2022: At about 10:30 a.m. the Main Street Bridge in Albion failed as we approached from the west. We (and two other boaters behind us, whom we did not know) were told it could be 24 hours before it was repaired because some heavy equipment had to be brought in to lift it. We were told to either turn around and head back to Medina for the night or tie up to the wall next to the huge maintenance building. We chose the latter.
There were no power or water hookups, but the maintenance building did have an outdoor power receptacle. The three boats shared that single 20-amp feed and we agreed to use it only to keep the batteries charged.
Same with water. Although we told the nice lady in the office we didn’t need water (we all had enough in our storage tanks), she had a yardman run a water hose from the sink faucet in the utility room, down the hallway, and out of the office window. She also made the office rest rooms available to all of us.
But the kicker was when she arrived just after noon with a huge tray of assorted submarine sandwiches and a cooler full of soft drinks, telling us that buying lunch was the least they could do for the inconvenience. She had also planned to give us the key to the office so we could use the facilities after hours.
As it turned out, that wasn’t necessary. The maintenance crew managed to get the bridge working by about 2 p.m. and we were on our way.
Life — at 7 miles per hour on the Erie Canal — is good.