In Chapter 3, we finally see the magical canal boat. If you don't happen to be a grandchild of mine, or live in my home town of Saint Marys, Ohio, perhaps a little background info will help.

There really is a canal boat. It's in the canal (surprise!), that Empress Puffy the Furest calls "the long wetness," but in real life is known as the Miami and Erie Canal. The canal was constructed from 1825 to 1845, connecting Lake Erie to the Ohio River by a navigable waterway, and it flows through the center of town. The canal was I-75, basically, before there were roads, enabling tons of cargo to be shipped almost 250 miles at the staggering mule-power pace of 4 miles an hour. The prototype for the Gooneybird is a full-scale replica canal boat named "The Belle of Saint Marys," on display today in Memorial Park.

The coming of the railroads made canal transportation obsolete by the late 1800s, and the Flood of 1913 destroyed sections of the canal that were never repaired. But Lake Saint Marys (the "wide deep wetness"), built to supply water to the canal, still exists, and many miles of the canal still carry water, nearly 200 years after it was built.

-- Chris Botkin