When I was a kid, one of my elementary classmates was a boy named Mike Davis. I remember Mike mainly because of the odd hobby he and his dad enjoyed. The Davises had a police scanner in their home and whenever and call came across about an automobile accident, Mike and his dad would speed to the scene to gawk at the wreckage.
Their hobby also included one more wrinkle: When the local newspaper photographer arrived to take photos of the wreck, the Davises had perfected the art of positioning themselves somewhere in every frame.
In this manner, the Davises managed to get their picture in the paper more times than the mayor. If there was a wreck photo in the newspaper, you could rest assured Mike and his dad would be there, grinning in the background.
The Davises’ fascination with visiting the scenes of disasters is something all of us share, most of us to a far lesser extent, of course. After all, who among us has not slowed as we pass the scene of an accident along the highway, craning our necks (rubber-necking, they call it) to catch a fleeting look at the twisted metal and broken glass?
Somehow, we are drawn to these scenes for reasons we can’t quite articulate.
On Thursday afternoon, a small gathering of people stood on the banks of the east bank of the John C. Stennis Lock & Dam, peering at the two barges that have become lodged against the dam, one partially submerged, the other resting on top of it.
Folks have been coming out here since the barges broke loose of their moorings and came to rest here on Dec. 26.
It has proven to be the biggest mid-week attraction the dam has ever seen. Generally, weekday visitors are few — a scattering of folks fishing off the banks, half a dozen empty boat trailers sitting in the parking lot at the boat slip nearby.
But the traffic is steady now, and the biggest attraction is yet to come. In the next couple of days, the salvage operations should begin.
“I bet there’s going to be a whole bunch of people coming out here to see that,” said James Terry, who made the drive over from his home in Vernon, Alabama, to see the barges, along with his wife, Ashley, his sister-in-law, Julie White and Julia’s 5-year-old daughter, Gracie. “If I don’t have to work, I’m coming to see it. I’d like to know how they’re going to move them.”
“We’ve been wanting to get over here to see it since we saw it on Facebook” Ashley said. “I don’t know why, but I just wanted to see it for myself.”
Over the next hour or so, people drifted along the bank, no more than 20 yards from the barges. Most of the conversation focused on just how the barges would be moved.
One man said he believed the partially-submerged barge could be floated out.
“All you have to do is pull that other barge off, then pump out the water,” he suggested. “It’ll rise right up.”
Another spectator disagreed.
“That barge is fully loaded,” he said. “You could pump from here to Christmas and it ain’t gonna float. They’ll have to get one of those big cranes and lift it out, I bet.”
The conversation moved on to estimating the weight of the barges, the size of the boats and cranes that would be needed to move them, how much the salvage company would charge.
“Big money,” said an older man in bib overalls and a wade of chewing tobacco in his mouth. “That’s what I’m thinking.”
Some of the visitors had the presence of mind to take selfies to mark the occasion. The spirit of Mike Davis endures.
In a week or so, the barges will be gone and so will the tourist attraction.
For now, it is a conversation piece and a curiosity.
“It’s not something you see every day,” James Terry noted.
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
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