A rather dark picture, but this is the Fallston Ferry
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The process of my education at Geneva College was interrupted by the discovery of this delightful poem, by James Vale Downie, in an old copy of the Geneva Alumnus (July 1946). 1 never forgot the poem, and with the permission of the author's daughter, Mrs. Theodora Downie Koble, hereby gleefully pass it on to you.
To readers of the Alumnus, Mr. Downie introduced his poem with a bit of an explanation about the ferry.
The poem inspired a reader from Ithaca, N.Y. to write about his own recollections. All of this is reprinted here just as we read it in the Alumnus, together with a print of the ferry reproduced from a glass negative owned by Bill Marx of Chippewa Township.
---Denver Walton
Many years ago, so long in fact that no living person would be able to produce evidence to the contrary, I hope, a cable ferry plied the waters of the Beaver River between New Brighton and Fallston. This barge was attached to a cable or hawse, which crossed the river at a height of about fifty feet, by means of a trolley. Motive power was supplied by the current, the mooring sling by means of which the boat was attached to the trolley being manipulated so as to bring the force of the waterflow against the side of the barge, first at one angle and then at another, in such a manner as to propel the craft in the direction desired. A hundred years ago the ferry and the overhead hawser, or trolley, were superseded by a bridge. The exploit of McCluckey here recounted is based on a legend still circulating in the Beaver Valley; but we prefer that you regard the ballad as purely fictional. Any resemblance between this character and any person living or dead may be considered entirely accidental. - [Author's note]
McCluckey was a tailor with a most peculiar
gait.
Some thought it came from what he drank and some from what he
ate.
Some said he bent the elbow and carried such a load
He seemed to walk two ways at once on both sides of the road,
Which caused a mighty scandal through all the town to creep
He walked this way, they said, by day and also in his sleep.
Such irritating gossip went on spreading, without pause,
Until Mac, in his nightshirt, walked across the Fallston Hawse.
They said he veered and zig-zagged, that he
couldn't walk a crack;
If you thought you saw him going, he was likely coming back.
And this was causing trouble, for these tales, as stories will,
Began to throw suspicion on his craftsmanship and skill.
"A man who couldn't walk a chalk could hardly cut a sleeve!"
His good friends hoped to think so, but not many dared believe.
And so it went. You could have bought McCluckey's business cheap
Before that night he walked across the Hawser in his sleep!
The Hawser was a ferry line that crossed the
Beaver tide
From Fallston, with a trolley sheave, To the New Brighton side,
One and of which was anchored to a giant sycamore
Not more than twenty paces from McCluckey's cottage, door.
The anchor hitch was near the ground; And thus it came about,
One winter night, when Mac had dined on pig's feet and sauerkraut
And slept but wretchedly thereon, with many a dismal dream
He rose in sleep and climbed that rope and strolled across the
stream!
No human eye behold him as he marched upon
his way.
No human heart went thumping fast To see that cable sway.
What witness knew the blast that blew about McCluckey's knees?
Or shuddered when the Alum Rocks gave back McCluckey's sneeze?
He told, himself, the dreadful talehow, in the dead of night,
He braved this hazard of the gale, unconscious of his plight
Alone and sound asleep, with no suspicion where he was,
He marched, or gamboled, westward with his feet upon the Hawse.
In later years, when Blondin, to win a greater
stake,
Walked tight-rope o'er Niagara, by daylight and awake,
He had a pole to balance with - which McCluckey was without;
For all that he could do was wave his scrawny arms about.
In spite of which he hopped along that rope with ease and grace
Arid leaped three feet up in the air after each step, or pace.
'Twas Prancing Joe McCluckey like a ballet nymph did skip!
'Twas Limber Leg McCluckey who took that awful trip.
The hempen prickles tickled the soles of McCluckey's
feet.
The cold wind whipped his flannel gown against his gelid meat;
And all the while, with every step, one, long leg he would throw
Out sideways, like at flapping flail, for all the world as though
Parading down the Main Street with manner gay and airy,
And the cheerful mood of a tailor stewed, from the Tow Bumps to
the Ferry.
And so marched on! McCluckey, his arms stretched out before,
Till down fell he in a sumac tree upon the Fallston shore.
McCluckey shivered lonesomely upon the Fallston
beach,
Then, stumbling to the ferry dock, set up a frightful screech,
To call the ferry-keeper, who kept his shallop tied
Beside his humble dwelling on the New Brighton side;
But this man slept so soundlyhe seldom dined on kraut
His rest remained unbroken by the tailor's piteous shout.
Yet Mac kept up his bawling one thing was ghastly plain
Awake he dared not take a step to cross that Hawse again!
Two hours went by. McCluckey got so hoarse
he couldn't squawk.
The wind ballooned his shirt and still he shivered on the dock.
No answ'ring shout came o'er the flood. At last, in black despair,
The tailor sought that sumac tree and sank exhausted there.
Stretched on the ground, he slept!
And rose! To mount the Hawse again? ...
When next he woke, the morning light shone through his window
pane!
He had somnambulated back across the Hawse one more,
Without mischance, to his warm bed on the New Brighton shore!
I cannot forget the poem on the Fallston Ferry published in your journal many months ago. I meant to write but neglected it. , I crossed that ferry with my father just about 66 years ago. It was the crudest contraption of a ferry I ever saw. It was not driven by the current, as the author seems to suggest, but was drawn by the puffling brawn of a single man. The ferry-man had a stick in his hand, a bit of hard board about 2 feet long, and it had a narrow notch cut in the side of it about two inches deep and as wide as the rope was 4hick. When he wanted the ferry to start, he slipped the notch of his stock over the rope, and then walked backward from the front end of the ferryboat to the rear, pulling on the stick, and as soon as he reached the rear again, repaired rapidly to the front ot the boat, and did the same again and again, from one side of the river to the other. It was a long slow grind. I distinctly remember my father telling me it was Ahe crudest sort of a ferry, and that better ferrys were run slantwis to the stream, so that the current caused the boat to move from one side of the stream to the other.
I'm sure I would not trust myself or horse to such a ferry today.
Our quiet old horse, Fanny, knew it was not safe. Father drove her down to the very entrance of the ferry, which was a plank contraption long enough to hold two small, wagons, and not much broader than the wheel tracks of an ordinary wagon, except that it had a sort of cat-walk along one side of it where the ferryman walked to pull the passengers across.
The horse stopped, and whinnied with a frightened tone, the father got out of the buggy in which we were riding, and took her by the bridle, and led her onto the "boat", where she stood and trembled, and I sat with my hair sticking straight out of the top of my hat.
Well, the poet is entitled to a little license. Here is one who enjoyed it.