Life along the Ohio
Thursday, 16 October 2008
Tune in your imagination: this is the house you call home. It’s maybe 1890. From your front porch you see the hustle and bustle surrounding the town wharf of Wellsburg, West Virginia, and watch the boat traffic move up and down the Ohio River. The doctor’s house is across the side street. Your family is wealthy.
Now, things in Wellsburg? Not so bustling. The commercial wharf is gone, replaced by a well-tended narrow park and docking for pleasure craft, which mostly seems to be used by fisherfolk. The economic downturn hit here a generation ago, and the current situation is sharpening the agony. Fishing is a wise plan….