Tag Archives: Ohio River Valley

2026, Day Book, Ohio River Valley Literature, poetry, Story, the no-scape

Three Caballeros in The Pizza Pub

Been a busy last few days. Monday was a good day of getting ready to leave for the Portsmouth reading on Tuesday. Tuesday was a wonderful day. Good trip along side the river way and through the part of the country I used to call my back yard. It reminded me of the Ohio Valley gothic and that I have been carrying it in my head and in my bones and blood most of my life. Driving east from Cincinnati, we rolled out Ohio Route 32, which carries you from Cincinnati to Belpre, across the Ohio from Parkersburg, West Virginia. It’s sometimes called The Appalachian Highway, which, if you know anything about the Appalachian Mountains, means you’re driving headlong into the foothills of the Appalachia the further east you go and until you cross the river into By Gawd West Virginia. It’s 110 Miles from Cincy to Portsmouth, and we made pretty good time.

The reading was amazing and reinforced in me that I am on the road I need to be on. Art flourishes where it is sowed, and encouraged.  Traveling with my fellow caballeros,  Frogg Corpse and Tommy Bays, I remembered how much I like being out on the road with people I can trust. Our reception was welcome and I hope to return in the future. It was in a place called THE LANDING, which is a cool coffee shop, vintage clothing, old vinyl records, and skateboard shop. It’s the sort of place that small towns grow best because it’s a true labor of love and also a necessity for survival.

We were invited to hang out after, but none of us had eaten, so we found a pizza place that was still open, but barely just.

I’m a sucker for classic bar decor. I think about Freddie’s on Broadway in Louisville, the best hole-in-the-wall dive this town ever grew. It never tried to be something it wasn’t. Freddie was in his 90’s, half blind, and mostly deaf. His approach to race relations were unapologetically unaffected by the fact that his girlfriends were women of color, mostly in their late 20s. The bartenders only took cash, though someone had thought to put in an ATM back in a corner where a pinball machine had been once, and probably a knock off version of Asteroids after that. The walls were covered in the old style boxing posters, the kind that were drawn, that all look a little like the carny posters from a television filming set, back when TV was three stations and PBS, when the antenna was correctly bent.

The Pizza Pub in Portsmouth, Ohio is one of those places, in same spectrum as The Landing, that exists out of need and grew a character based on everyone’s grandpa’s unofficial garage bar. The walls were covered bar with mirrors and hangings advertising every beer and liquor that’s been or was since I was in my 20’s… that touch of old school nostalgia with the flair of someone who grew up in the 80’s and remembers when there were two refrigerators in the garage on in the mud room: one with enough food to survive a new ice age another with almost as much beer. But the pizza was really good. They built that place around a brick oven, and gawd bless ‘em for it. It makes all the difference in the world, and don’t ever let any cheap corporate fuck tell you different.

After that, we made our way to a wonderful fire pit and hung out with some of coolest folks you’ll ever meet along the river. The world is remaking itself in small towns along the world’s great wound, the Ohio River. And don’t let anybody try and tell you different on that, either.

To quote wiser people than me: “Never let the bastards win.”

That Ohio Valley Gothic got its hold
before that winter in February
when I made my entrance
two days late and chased from the start
by weak lungs and bad feet
and a heart that bleeds
entirely too easily.

Follow this blog on Mastodon or the Fediverse to receive updates directly in your feed.

Mick Parsons
Mick Parsons
@rivercitymick

Poet. Essayist. Fictioner. Steamboat fireman. Bit of a grackle.

1,691 posts
0 followers

Fediverse Followers

Standard
2026, Day Book, Haiku, Ohio River Valley Literature, poetry

body remedies: 3 haiku on the first day of spring

1.
song sparrows and ants
promises of the season
call, march this new day

2.

the dogs, being kind
let me sleep in -- grace
is best unspoken

3.

body remedies:
hot coffee, fresh air
a cold face wash

[Daybook 2026: Spring 3.20.26]

Standard
2025, essay, Ohio River Valley Literature, prose

The Gator Horse and Gothic Landscapes: an Ohio River Valley Aesthetic [Part 3: Telos as Cultural Current]

Mick Parsons. Ohio River just south of Cincinnati. Taken October 2024

“The thing that makes literature from the Ohio River Valley distinct from Midwestern literature – and indeed makes it geographically distinct from the Midwest – our telos is the ebb and tide of commerce and things that move. That the river is always in flux is what gives the Ohio River Valley it’s unique and complex history, culture, and art. At it’s core, there’s a stubbornness, a caution when it comes to change; but there’s also an inherent ability to embrace what the river brings. It’s as natural as the ebb and flow of the river. The South, the Midwest, and even Appalachia — culturally, they are built on a resistance to change, that can border on a dangerous nostalgia. The Ohio River Valley, with our deep-rooted tradition kept in the stories like those of Mike Fink and the Gator Horse Keel Boat Captains, takes whatever comes, keeps what is useful, and lets the river carry the rest away.” – from Part 2

It’s taken me a while to suss this out. The idea’s been rolling around in my head for a few years now; it would crop up from time to time, annoy me with my inability to find the proper words. It’s been the catfish that wouldn’t be caught; it climbs up out of the mud, nibbles on my line, then disappears into the channel.

Where I’ve been stuck is in this concept of telos (from the Greek: goal or purpose), which Meghan O’Gieblyn uses in her book Interior States: Essays (2018) to build a definition of Midwestern culture. For O’Gieblyn, the Midwest is defined by the LOSS of telos, which I interpret as a loss of status dating back to Carl Van Doren’s “The Revolt from the Village” published in The Nation in 1921. This loss, which lends to the Midwest being thought of as “pass through” or “fly over” states, makes sense to me as a defining characteristic — for the Midwest. But the Ohio River Valley, which connects parts of five states, which has been both the main artery of commerce and the mythic wild west long before Billy the Kid and the western cowboys, doesn’t fit into the paradigm. Yes, we’ve experienced economic devastations, battles, sickness. Losses of core industries, especially inland ship building dating back to WWII, shifts in shipping building and a general divesting in the river fronts by communities that owe their very existence to the river have all contributed to a what could be described as a loss of purpose or status.

The difference is, though, that while no one was looking, life on the river carried on. Tugs still push barges up and down the river; better environmental laws and communities beginning to take a renewed interest in their river fronts as areas of economic development have led to a resurgence of life. Rivers ebb and rivers flow and so does life along them. Literature from the Ohio River Valley does not linger in the past, but it does connect to it, like tributaries to the main artery. We know where we’ve come from but we know we we’re heading somewhere else. It’s a literature of permanent transition. From the trappers, traders, and slavers, to the mythic keelboat captains like Mike Fink, Gator Horse writers are tied together not by genre, or even a common approach to language. But like the people who passed through on the Ohio River on keelboats, on expeditions, and (in some places) on foot they are tied together by the river itself. The river has defined the life along its natural boundaries and later, its artificially created boundaries, for as long as there have been people and the river. Like any avenue of mass immigration and commerce, people bring their own relationships with language and forge their own relationship with the geography.

Part 4: Laying out the Cartography

When I first started this project, I thought I could just focus on literature; but I’m not one who thinks one should separate the art from the time it was created. So instead I’m going to try and tie a lot of threads together into what I hope will be a much stronger line, connecting writing, music, and painting to the cultural, historical, socioeconomic, and anthropological aspects of the Ohio River Valley. And because I want to start with literature, I’m going to hold off and that and begin with what will end up being an extremely brief version of the river’s socioeconomic story. From there, I’ll be sharing stories from the region’s historical and cultural heritage, including some not-very-pleasant facts that continue to haunt us; and then I’ll end with art, music, and literature, without which we would have no understanding of the Ohio River Valley at all.

Standard