Bücher der Reihe New York State

Those who built and used the Erie Canal were a bizarre society, proud pioneers on the waterway known in song and story as "the Horse Ocean," "the Roaring Giddap," or "the Raging Erie." Their considerable influence on American life and literature is the basis of this book.Canallers were colorful characters, from the "hoggee" on the towpath to the "shipshape macaroni" with stovepipe hat and badge of service taking command of a packet with the pride of an admiral, even though he was restricted by law to a speed of four miles per hour!Games and diversions were rough-and-tumble, fighting being as natural as breathing to the canallers. Stories about heroes like Sam Patch and Paddy Ryan, or the big fish that could haul a canal boat, or the big pumpkin that drained the canal-these were logical products of this "frontier" atmosphere. So were the songs-carefree, bawdy, or sad, inspired by the canal and sung throughout the land.Photographs and drawings, music and words to folk songs, maps, notes, and index are included in this first paperback edition.

Richard Garrity grew up on his father's boats on the Erie Canal in the early years of this century. From 1905 until 1916, when his father operated boats first in the lumber trade and later for gravel hauling, he was surrounded by the busy life of a now-bygone era in canal boating in Upstate New York. When the Barge Canal System opened in 1918, Garrity began a career that lasted until his retirement as a tug engineer in 1970.This story is chock full of Americana that is not only significant and authentic but engagingly written. Garrity's life and work have been intimately bound up with the famed Big Ditch, which has been referred to in more romantic literature as the "shining ribbon of water." It was a hard but happy life on the waterways of Upstate New York as seen in the text and dozens of illustrations included in this book.

Thirty years ago, John Keats and his family purchased a two-acre island in the St. Lawrence River, at a time when boats were still lovingly crafted of wood and an island could be had for $4,000. Depending on the elements and on their own resourcefulness, the Keats family thrives in the rhythms of island life-fishing, learning to navigate the river and read the clouds for weather, acquiring an "Indian" view of time, maintaining a house, several boats, and three children on a windswept rock. But more than a book about a single family's adventures, this one is strong witness that we all need islands of our own in the midst of life. Originally published in 1974, Of Time and an Island was chosen as a Book-of-the-Month Club alternate selection.