One of my first memories of my dad was at Lock 17. Judging by the number there must be many locks on the Black Warrior River, but this one seems special. It is many years since I have been there, but I can still see it as it was today.
It is adjacent to a dam in the river, flanked by large channels cut out of rock that seem to show the rich deposits of coal and iron ore that pervade north Alabama. And yet the river there is beautiful and serene, as if the most intrusive human interventions can never disrupt its harmony.
My dad was an engineer who loved the Black Warrior River, and it seemed fitting to enjoy these feats of man-made will rising up out of and surrounded by God’s creation. To me, Lock 17 will always be place where the most important people in my life intersected with nature.
In that first memory of my dad, I remember sitting in a swing together in a park-like setting near the lock when I was four or five years old. It may seem like a strange place for a swing but in those days there was no TV to watch. I remember the comfort my father gave me before the awe of the lock and dam and his love for the river.
When I was growing up we went there every chance we got. My dad invented mechanical devices for the U.S. Navy, cut out of metal by precision machines, but every weekend he could get away he immersed himself in the fluid world of fish and water. And we followed.
In those days the Black Warrior River was the place to go to get away from the city, enjoy the fresh air, and play in the water. We didn’t have the hydroelectric lakes all around the state. And we stayed in a modest cabin. There were no multimillion dollar lake homes. I know my dad would wonder who would want one with all the bother.
There was nothing in our cabin worth taking except my dad’s good whiskey. And after a few break-ins where that was stolen, my dad started filling his good bottles with cheap white lightning that was easy to find in the country. He always said he was afraid he may have hastened the end of many unlucky burglars.
The cabin on property my dad leased from Tennessee Coal & Iron was close enough to our home in Birmingham to go just for the day, but sometimes we would stay over. We swam in the river and my mother cleaned and cooked the fish my dad caught. We played bridge on the porch of the cabin, and I loved to watch the barges go by loaded with primordial coal from Alabama’s ancient marshes. There was lots of traffic on the river. At Lock 17, we could even watch the astonishing sight of shutting off and controlling the mighty rush of water to float the coal barges like paper boats and let them descend the river.
I loved watching them go by and, funny, thinking the big bottom pugnose barges heaped high with broken black stone were lovely.
I remember returning as an adult, but rarely, not frequently as we did growing up. I remember going with my dad and taking my own son Bobby to Lock 17. Nowadays it is fenced off and you can’t get near it. But in those days it just sat with its concrete shoulders open and inviting in the bend of the river.
I will never forget when Bobby ran rambunctious and jumped up on the lock wall, just one slip from the river far, far down below.
I will never forget thinking if he stumbled and fell as he ran along the wall that dwarfed him, unaware of danger, that we could never have reached him and gotten him out of the water.
And I remember my dad reassuring me to go quietly up to the wall as if nothing were wrong and lift Bobby down. My dad couldn’t have always been right, but he was one person I could always count on.
When we moved to Atlanta, with two more sons, I saw my dad and the Warrior River even less often. I remember the last time I came. I remember driving over by myself at night, against everyone’s advice, in the big hulking cars we drove in those days. I had never driven by myself on the highway, or at night, but I felt so strongly I wanted to see my dad.
On the five-hour drive from Atlanta, I could imagine the car was like a dark barge gliding on the night river. I was only kept from falling asleep and dreaming by Bobby acting up in the car and tormenting his brothers. But now Bobby is gone, finally carried away by the water. He died after being pulled out in a riptide, leaving this paper to his youngest brother to carry on.
While I was in Birmingham that time, my dad wanted to go to the cabin and see Lock 17. I sat in the same swing with my dad where we sat when I was a child and reminisced about all the old times and everything that had gone up and down and been carried away as if by the river, and how much we loved it.
And now I think how glad I am I did, despite all the advice that it wasn’t rational. It wasn’t long after I returned to Atlanta that we got the word that my dad had died. If I had not come, driving that coal barge of a car by myself on the highway for the first time at night, I never would have seen my dad again.
After he died my mother sold the cabin.
She said she could never go there again. So I’ve never been back. The cabin is gone, and my dad his gone, but I imagine the barges still go up and down. And as long as it may be dammed but still running, I know my dad still loves the Black Warrior River.
Ann Rose writes about our city’s history for Birmingham Weekly. Send your comments to bhamweekly@gmail.com
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