[Howie]

"It's breathtaking in the late Fall when the beech trees are a translucent yellow, the maples and oaks turn deep orange and brown, and the sumacs add a dominant red."

This line reminds me of my childhood working on a towboat, clack-clacking up the Tennesee River, it truly was a sight to remember. Of all the rivers we worked we were all in agreement this was the most beautiful, with the Hickory, and other hardwoods turning to the colors of fall.

Gliding through the Shiloh Battle Ground park was an experience I will always remember. To heck with Europe I want to see America before I die! There is so much out there if one takes the time.

[billhilly]

Howie, your "clack clacking" up the Tennessee River as a boy strikes me at the heart. Many days as a boy I stood on the bluffs in Hickman, Kentucky watching the towboats move massive numbers of barges up and down the river. One of the places I stood watching was behind the library, just across the street from the elementary school where I attended the earliest years of school. From the books checked out there I was familiar with many of the towns and cities along the Mississippi, the river that flowed beneath those bluffs.

Fifty or sixty miles east of there grew the massive dam that turned the Tennessee River into one of the country's largest lakes. I hope your boyhood, like mine, included passage through the locks at Kentucky Lake, outside Gilbertsville, Kentucky.