In the washing of the water will you take it all awayBring me something to take this pain away
Just like clockwork, every quarter-century or so this song of Peter Gabriel’s speaks powerfully to me.
Of course if you’re into things like math and calendars, it’ll be clear that since the song was released in 1992, there’ve been only two chances for me to feel the way I do, and the first did not come about after 25 years but six or seven.
Not only that, but the previous instance around 1999 incited a major faux pas on my part, and I still regret that. So, let’s start again.
Forget the song. This morning yielded ideal weather for a bicycle ride, and I rode to Jeffersonville and back, using the Ohio River Greenway, and riding through the developing Origin Park.
I’ve lived well more than half my life within walking or riding distance of the Ohio; before that it took only ten minutes in a car to get to the nearest vantage point. I’m not a swimmer, water skier or boat operator of any sort, so those aren’t the reasons why the river engages me.
Simply stated, we (metro Louisville) wouldn’t be here if not for the river. It is the defining physical characteristic of the area.
I recently wrote about it as part of a profile of the Red Yeti restaurant in Jeffersonville.
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Historically Jeffersonville, Clarksville and New Albany were known as the Falls Cities, a reminder that the adjacent rapids comprised the only non-navigable impediment to the Ohio’s long journey from Pittsburgh to the Mississippi. Portage was required, and the Kentucky settlement of Portland provided it.
From Portland’s beginnings, Louisville grew into a regional “Gateway to the South,” understandably overshadowing Southern Indiana for the past two centuries, even if we’ve achieved a wee dram of symbolic revenge with the placement of Falls of the Ohio State Park in Clarksville, near to where the Lewis and Clark expedition departed.
Neighboring New Albany became renowned for steamboats and plate glass, while Jeffersonville’s history conjured visions of hardtack, LSTs and Papa John’s. During the American Civil War, a huge Jeffersonville bakery supplied Union armies with hardtack, a form of sustaining yet impregnable cracker also known as cabin bread, sea biscuits and molar breakers. In World War II, the former Jeff Boat’s yards cranked out hundreds of Landing Ship Tanks (LSTs), integral to Allied amphibious landing.
More recently, a youthful John Schnatter honed his pizza-making in a converted broom closet at Mick’s Lounge, a longtime neighborhood joint specializing in Bud Light and your grandfather’s Falls City, back when men were men and boar poutine topped with Balkan donkey cheese and truffle oil had yet to supplant pickled bologna as the favored tavern staple.
Jeffersonville’s civic history delightfully includes a period of regional notoriety as “Little Vegas,” a haven for illegal gambling, and until the 1940s, the city was renowned as a “wedding mill” specializing in marriage parlors offering fast and easy unions to Kentuckians seeking to avoid their state’s mandated marriage bond.
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During my “imperial” beercycling period, roughly 1998 – 2010, it transpired that the gang spent a fair amount of time pedaling along European rivers, canals and various water courses: Danube, Meuse, Main, Albert canal, Regnitz, Veerse Meer, Altmuhl, and many others, big and small.
Obviously I’ve conflated these into a generalized memory of bikes and rivers, to the point that it can be hard separating the experiences. This doesn’t bother me at all. It means that on a day like today, in the saddle to greet the Ohio, I can metaphorically wash away the grunge and relive those lovely times.
As an aside, bicycling revival 2026 is proceeding well enough. Today’s trip might have been 15 miles in all (I’ve no cyclo-computer and don’t want one), and while that’s not much, it felt good.
I just want to take short rides, get some exercise, and have fun.
I’ll be 66 in August, and harbor no grandiose touring ambitions as once before. It’d be nice to ride a bike again in Europe someday, but first my butt need toughening. So far, so good. Since we returned from Vienna and Budapest, I’ve lost 12 pounds. We’re eating well, mostly at home, usually with me cooking.
There have been many “adulting” chores around the house, which always crush the spirit; all the more reason to head over to the Greenway and take in the river’s powers of rejuvenation. Until my next visit to the Vltava, Silver Creek will have to do.
