Things You Have Found at Work
Posted: Wed Mar 22, 2006 2:11 pm
I am 17 years old, and I am a river guide.
It is summer, so the water level is too low to run whitewater rafting trips... we take people on "floaters" on the Lehigh River in Eastern Pennsylvania.
I am in a kayak, and I spend most of the days paddling lazily with my head down, staring into the water. We are coming up on Bowmanstown, PA--a nondescript former coal town off route 446, overlooking strip mines at the base of the surrounding hills. There's rural graffitti on the concrete walls along the river: "Impeach Chicken Bill [Clinton]. Liberals make more laws, less freedom."
Usually the riverbottom around here features rusted steel plates from discarded auto parts, old tires, empty beer bottles from hillbilly drunkards who go 'camping' by the water.
I'm in my kayak, staring at the stones, and occasionally bottle, or tire. And I see green. Usually the trash is whitish green, or the leaves--I often mistake leaves for dollar bills. But I look a little closer--yup, that's a dollar bill!
Pull out of the kayak and jump into the waist-deep water, duck under and grab the bill. "holy shit, it's a $20!" I look down again... and see another! And another! They're scattered all over the river floor! I'm submerging my head into this slow moving filthy river, coming up with fistfuls of 10s and 20s! Kids are spotting them from rafts--I'm diving for handouts for 7-year-olds!
Three hundred sixty dollars. On the littered floor of a river in the middle of post-industrial nowhere.
It is summer, so the water level is too low to run whitewater rafting trips... we take people on "floaters" on the Lehigh River in Eastern Pennsylvania.
I am in a kayak, and I spend most of the days paddling lazily with my head down, staring into the water. We are coming up on Bowmanstown, PA--a nondescript former coal town off route 446, overlooking strip mines at the base of the surrounding hills. There's rural graffitti on the concrete walls along the river: "Impeach Chicken Bill [Clinton]. Liberals make more laws, less freedom."
Usually the riverbottom around here features rusted steel plates from discarded auto parts, old tires, empty beer bottles from hillbilly drunkards who go 'camping' by the water.
I'm in my kayak, staring at the stones, and occasionally bottle, or tire. And I see green. Usually the trash is whitish green, or the leaves--I often mistake leaves for dollar bills. But I look a little closer--yup, that's a dollar bill!
Pull out of the kayak and jump into the waist-deep water, duck under and grab the bill. "holy shit, it's a $20!" I look down again... and see another! And another! They're scattered all over the river floor! I'm submerging my head into this slow moving filthy river, coming up with fistfuls of 10s and 20s! Kids are spotting them from rafts--I'm diving for handouts for 7-year-olds!
Three hundred sixty dollars. On the littered floor of a river in the middle of post-industrial nowhere.