Friday, August 29, 2003
Wabash.
Terre Haute sits on the banks of a river that: is too muddy for swimming, holds too much floating debris for power boating and is too swift and channels too much wind for canoeing and kayaking. The Wabash is ignored by most of Terre Haute.
It seems strange that no one wants a balcony view of the Wabash, but you'll find very few. Once there were two apartments in a ceramic tile building on the river bank. Some of my friends lived there in the 1960s. They now regret whatever damage might have been done by the countless empty beer containers they tossed into the Wabash but we were all less sensitive to the environment back then.
After lunch last week, we began to discuss the river bank apartments and although we thought they had been torn down, Mike and I decided to go check it out. We hoped to find a few bricks and a post or two but found that someone has built clap trap tin roofed shacks on the site of the former apartment building. Two narrow concrete strips form a road that leads down the bluff and switches back once. There is small shack at the northern most point and a larger shack to the south. Wherever possible, colorful ceramic tiles reclaimed from the old apartment building were used. A large “Beware of the Dog” sign keeps the curious away less than the general sense that the whole place might fall in the river under the weight of one trespasser.
I took a few pictures from the top of the bluff and drove away thinking that if you could stand living there, you would have an excellent Wabash River view.
