In the last Note I mentioned that a wrong turn might be made in Germany, but that it could often be put to good advantage. I will describe one such case now.
Eleanor and I had lunch in Bad Wimpfen, along the Neckar River between Heidelberg and Heilbronn, and after lunch we climbed the "Blue Tower". This is a holdover from the days when a tower was used as a lookout and a signaling station. I am a fan of lookouts because they often give you a great view of the surrounding country side. Certainly the Blue Tower did this, including a view of the Neckar River just below the tower. As we were looking around, a motorized, self-propelled barge or boat went by on the Neckar River. Even from the height of the tower I could see that the barge was carrying scrap iron. Just to show Eleanor that I was knowledgeable about these things I drew her attention to it and told her what the barge was carrying.
Later, we proceeded along the road which roughly parallels the Neckar. We did stop at the Guttenberg Castle with another tower, but we continued to follow the Neckar downstream. I was navigating and at one point I told Eleanor to take the next right turn when I should have said "left". She was faithful in the execution of her duties and we took the next right which we realized almost immediately would put us, almost in the river, in the general vicinity of some locks. Since I had never seen locks in operation, I said to park the car and we would watch them in operation, assuming that something came along the river requiring the use of them.
Almost immediately, a barge came carrying scrap iron. Probably it was the one which we had seen from the Blue Tower. We were standing right beside the lock so that we could see the operation up close. To our surprise, a young girl came out of the Captain’s house on deck and she proceeded to handle the ropes which tied the barge in place so that it would not move along the lock. Since it was going down the river, the water in the lock was being lowered and let out at the downstream end. This tended to move the barge forward but the rope held it back. As the water lowered, she had to keep repositioning the rope to allow for the lower water level.
All of this was occurring right in front of us. Eleanor started a conversation and fortunately the girl spoke excellent English. She told us that normally she worked in a doctor's office but she was on vacation for a few weeks and she was helping her father who was the Captain on the barge. The two of them were the crew. The Captain had to be on duty in the wheelhouse and the girl was the deck hand. She put out the lines when necessary to secure the barge. But she probably did not take the helm for any extensive time as it takes a long period of training to be the master of a barge on the rivers.
To this day, we remember this unplanned event most fondly.
(16 Nov 05)
We gratefully acknowledge the work of John Blankenbaker who published over 2,500 Germanna History Notes via the Germanna-L@rootsweb.com email list from 1997 to 2008. We are equally thankful to George Durman (Sgt. George) for hosting the list and republishing the notes via rootsweb.com.