Week 1, Theme 2

Prompt: Adopt a roving point of view, like the one Dickens creates with his fog, and make a moving picture. You will need to decide how to establish the point of view. What does moving allow you to see that standing still doesn't? What does it keep you from seeing?

“I've got a mule, her name is Sal,
15 miles on the Erie Canal
She's a good old worker and a good old pal,
15 miles on the Erie Canal
We've hauled some barges in our day
filled with lumber, coal and hay
and we know every inch of the way from
Albany to Buffalo.” 1

The two mules tugging my barge huffed under the weight attached to their collars. The going had been slow for a beautiful day like this, but it was hot and I imagined that Billy and Jack were loath to break a sweat. Thus the shipment would be late to Buffalo, but the beating sun and my growing reverie allowed me to forget momentarily any profit motives. As we lowered in the lock at Lancaster, I noticed a heifer gazing in the direction of my barge. Her eyes seemed to follow mine as the water level fell. The stare telegraphed a life of pastoral monotony that rendered even my barge going down the lock an event to be scrutinized. Catching myself, I thought: perhaps it was the other way around – my so-called-life on the barge was so boring that I’d started to think for animals. After the lock, the landscape began to shift as we approached Buffalo’s harbor. As we passed the grain silos and machine workshops, the mules were just as likely to step over discarded tin cans as they were to tread on dirt. The bright sun became obscured by the cloud of soot thrown up in the air in the course of the fledgling city’s industrial activities, and the rank smell of the dirty water drew me back from my musings. As we lowered in the last lock, in the heart of downtown, a pair of eyes again followed my barge. This time the weathered stare came from a little boy in rags. I tried to follow his gaze as I had imagined I had done with the cow, but our eyes did not meet. I looked to my side and realized that he was fixated upon my satchel. I took from it an apple and threw it to him as we floated away.

Notes:
1. Excerpted from “Low Bridge,” (1915) by Thomas S. Allen