The Ribbon - Part One

As a child I felt no guilt for not loving the river. It was my stepfather’s passion and my mother’s obligation but to me it was something I feared. I worried that the dark, foreboding water would snatch me under when no one was watching. To that end my best friend and smelliest companion was the bright orange life preserver I wore like a second set of skin.

Living on the river was lonely, too. My friends and cousins were never permitted to visit because of the dangers that lurked on the shore and on the boats. So I would spend many hours wandering the river bank or just sitting quietly among the grownups, listening to their stories about this boat or that. I didn’t think much about the river once I grew up and started my own journey through life.

That was until one January evening in 2002 as I was driving eastbound on Columbia Parkway from downtown Cincinnati. To my right I saw the black and white image of a large tow, loaded with coal, coming down river, ready to make her delicate dance through the multiple bridges of the Cincinnati riverfront. Something about that image through the winter-bare trees brought back memories of my life on the river. If my stepfather Lou would have been with me, he could have told me the history of the boat that was passing as well as who might be on the crew. We grew up on the river off and on during my childhood and that tow coming down the river just as the day was ending, caused a million memories to flood my mind.

When I reached home, words were swirling in my head and I quickly sat down with my guitar to write “The Ribbon”, a song of faded memories that flood back at the sight of a “lady” slowing coming past the Port of Cincinnati. After the song was written, I retrieved my diary from 1988 and reminisced about the last trip I had made on the river which caused me to go even further back to when I rode the ribbon as a child.