Bag Drag

The bill was slipped under my door when I padded past in the darkness. Marriott efficiency, a good thing. There were newspapers outside the door, the Virginian-Pilot and USA Today.

They are hyping the Masters Golf Tournament and the cut-off off the line to view the Ope’s body and the death of Prince Ranier of Monaco.

Children notwithstanding, that was a life I would have liked to live. Prince of an independent kingdom on the Riviera. Not unlike Norfolk, in a way, and Norfolk has its very own Battleship.

I wandered over that way on the bank of the Elizabeth River. The panel sessions at the NATO conference were over, or at least the amount of time I wanted to devote to them, and I wanted to see Wisconsin at her berth next to the Nauticus Museum. Everything would be closed by the time I got there, but no matter. They do not put the ship away in the evening.

There is a stout concrete wall that girds the edge of downtown. It is pierced periodically by great doors that stand open most of the time.

The doors have watertight seals on them, and when the storm surge pushes up the river they close them. The theory is to keep the waters out of the downtown, and I imagine it works.

I walked from the park to the one of the doors. I could see the gray battlements of the great ship over the top of the wall, and the sun was warm on my back. I had limped briskly along and the first sweat of the outdoor season was dewing on my back. It was a marvelous feeling, to be out in shirt sleeves.

I reached the aperture of the door and turned in. Then I stopped, struck dumb. The razor of the bow soared up to the bulbous nose. The massive bulk of the ship was back there someplace, but this cutting prow was astonishing in its raw power.

This ship weighs 45,000 tons and her four shafts can turn the gigantic screws to hurtle her forward at 33 knots- nearly forty miles and hour. She is 108ft at the beam, and I could see the bulk of it back there. But at the prow, the ship is a knife.

The beam was determined by the width of the Panama Canal, one of the great works of the American Century. When Wisconsin transited the Ditch, she had only inches to spare on either side of the Gatun Locks. Looking up in the sun, shading my eyes, I felt insignificant.

From here, Wisconsin could engage the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel, where according to the newspaper, a driver of a leviathan of the roadways had miscalculated the height of his trailer and jammed himself at the opening to the tunnel.

They say the traffic was backed up forever.

I luxuriated with the paper. It has a feel to it. Old technology is human scale. Like Wisconsin. Or General MacArthur’s Chrysler limousine, parked incongruously in the gift shop of the museum, or the General and his wife who are entombed within the old city hall. Or the British cannonball stuck high up in the wall of Saint Paul’s Church, sheltered by the old trees and the monuments that are crumbling back into the soil around it.

I am hoping the truck has been pulled out of the tunnel. I need to drive that way later today in my large, but human scale Cadillac later today, and take a conference call on the road, somewhere around Camp Perry.

I have to drag my bags now, and load the car. Then I will hurtle along the works of the interstate system, back to Washington, and the start of a new century that appears to be anything but human scale.

If I can get through the Hampton Roads Tunnel, that is.

Copyright 2005 Vic Socotra

www.vicsocotra.com

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