Erie Canal

I’ve got a mule, her name is Sal              Fifteen miles on the Erie Canal               She’s a good old worker and a good old pal              Fifteen miles on the Erie Canal I’ve a pal named Sal – he’s no mule, alas – but it’s only a 15-mile trip for me, too, up Route 98 to the Erie Canal, which turns 200 years old this October 26. I while away the occasional summer morn sitting by its banks, editing or writing or reading, coffee washing the donuts down my maw. I love the old canal town of Albion (where perfidy has no place!), its tumbledown Main Street blessed by the silver-domed Orleans County Courthouse. The Upstate New York folklorist Carl Carmer grew up here, as did the sleeping car magnate George Pullman.