I heard it on the television traffic report early this morning. The draw bridge downstream had just opened for a northbound ship. The upstream drawbridge would open in 20 minutes.
I was, at the moment, harnessing Thelma for her morning walk, and in her old age she walks slowly. That meant there was a chance I'd see the ship pass the end of the street.
I was excited.
I hurried Thelma out the front door.
There was a time when a ship passing on the river was a daily affair, a time when the industry upriver still thrived.
Then, there was a steel mill, a magnet that drew ore ships to its docks. There were coal barges that visited the power plants on the river banks. There was the drywall plant where bulk ships laden with gypsum unloaded mountains of white powder that was pushed about by large bulldozers. There were pipe plants that made huge sewer pipes and a wire rope plant that, in its heyday, provided the cable for the Brooklyn Bridge.
Now, most of the mills and factories have closed. If theiir work is done, it is done elsewhere. Only the power and drywall plants remain, and, with the housing market in shambles, the drywall plant isn't that busy, either.
So the shipping on the Delaware is sparse this far up the river.
An arrival or a departure is a special occasion for those of us drawn to the sea.
I tugged on Thelma's leash, urging her toward the river. It was a gray, drizzling morning, still cold with compacted snow covering most of the ground. Thelma needed to investigate each clump of snow or, in her dotage, stand staring aimlessly, imobile.
I kept an eye down the street, which ends at the river, and no ship had passed before we arrived. Thelma and I left the pavement for the riverside grass and I looked downstream as she sniffed, hoping to see the bow of the ship poke from behind the trees at the next bend, Beverly Point, beyond the green and red buoys. The mist was thick, the riverbank features muted or invisible at the bend, which is nearly two miles away. I saw nothing.
Nor did I hear the thrum of big ship engines.
So we turned back toward home. I tried to see through the trees along the riverbank, see the gray hulk of an approaching bulk carrier or the cranes rising from its deck. Nothing.
Impatient and in need of a nautical fix, I pulled Thelma back toward the river to get a final clear view.
There it was, already well past Beverly Point, making its turn toward us .
But now I had wasted much time. I needed to get home. Monica's bus would be arriving and my job is to driver her there.
As Thelma poked her way back toward home, I walked backward, expectant. But the tide was falling and the ship was steaming against the current.
By the time we turned into our driveway, the ship had not appeared.
Thelma poked some more. Zippy, the cat, who had sought protection from the mist under one of our cars, came up the driveway to greet us, and the three of us headed slowly for the door.
We were on the brick walkway and would be inside the house within a minute when I heard it. Coming from a quarter mile away or more was the deep-throated rumble of those big marine engines, a sound seizmic in nature. My day was starting right.