Canal Zones 3

In a previous post, I mentioned I was very subjectively dividing the canal into zones from west to east, and I continue that here, and this post is the most personal.  Place a compass needle in the place I did kindergarten through grade 12,  and make a circle around it with a radius of about 2o miles.  All these photos were taken inside that circle.  Although I did move away from there almost 50 years ago, I’m still surprised how little I recognize.  Of course, the water perspective here is one I never had as a kid.  Start here, I’ve driven on that road .  .  . Route 31 between Macedon and Palmyra a hundred plus times, but I did feel like an amnesiac seeing it this way.

Leaving lock 29, there were a lot of folks, but I didn’t know them.

This is the beginning of the “spillway” I needed to cross when I walked to first grade.  The bridge–much like the one in the distance–had an open grate deck, which terrified me the first few days.

I was happy that a friend waved from the Galloway Bridge on the westward trip and another on the eastward trip.

Route 31, travelled many times,  lies just a hundred feet of so off the right side of the photo.

Port Gibson, population less than 500 in 2010.  New York state must have a few dozen towns, cities, hamlets, and/or villages with “port” in the name.

I know this farm on a drumlin well in Newark, NY.  Although the population less than 10,000, Newark is what I considered a big town.

Beyond those trees to the right is a principal street in Newark.

This is the port of Newark.

Just outside Lyons, NY, population under 4000 and shrinking, awaits Grouper, subject of many posts including this recent one.

Inside the village of Lyons . . . a mural on a wall that borders the location of the previous iterations of the canal depicts what might once have been here.

Outside of town, these “wide ditches” are the actual “enlarged canal” of the 19th century.

And ruins like these . . . I never knew existed even though I knew the place name “Lock Berlin.”

Why did I never know the railroad through my world then crossed in places like this  . . .?

I’d seen these grain bins from the road but never imagined the canal lay right behind–or “in front of” –them

Quoth the eagle . . . you can’t go home again if you never really knew your home to begin with.

Al photos by Will Van Dorp.  Many thanks to Bob Stopper who showed me what I should have seen a half century ago.