If it quacks like a DUKW

How do you ride a duck – because who hasn’t dreamed of riding one?

First, come up behind it. Second, step up carefully, maybe grab a wing on the port or starboard side for stability, or both. Third, hang on and enjoy the ride.

That’s how you ride a DUCK. All caps. Also known as a DUKW. Actually, it’s a DUKW first, DUCK second. The “DUCK” just became its term of endearment.

DUKW, a 31-foot long, 8-foot wide, 13,000-pound (empty), 25-passenger, metal beast. The acronym is military terminology from World War II. The “D” indicates a vehicle designed in 1942. The “U” stands for “utility (amphibious)”. The “K” indicates an “all-wheel drive” vehicle and the “W” indicates it has two powered rear axles.

It’s the only way to travel when you’re in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Well, not the only way, but pretty much the only way you can get a tour of the city on land and then by sea. (Paul Revere would have been in some kind of trouble had the British used a DUKW.)

My wife and I rode a DUKW. Fast as all get out when you’re racing down a decline and splashing into the water like you’re on a theme park ride. Slower than a turtle going up an incline when you’re coming out. Which was an important point our guide made to the latter. “How’d you like to be storming the beaches of Normandy in this at this speed.” Meaning it was easy for the enemy to pick you off. “That’s why soldiers hated this thing.”

I could imagine the panic. The fear and then the relief of knowing that wasn’t us. We were tourists, sightseers. (If you remember my previous column, we were there celebrating our 48^th wedding anniversary.)

Our guide was funny. He was warm. He was eloquent. He could tell a story. Especially the one of Chattanooga. Especially seeing as he was born and raised there.

He told all the basic stuff you’ll find in textbooks. Settled in 1816 as the Cherokee trading post “Ross’s Landing,” it was incorporated in 1939. He talked about how the city was strategic – rail and river – during the Civil War, then he made it personal.

 “Did you know this whole area, everything you see (the city scape) used to be nothing but factories? Chattanooga had more than 200 factories. Everywhere.”

He went on talking about how it had the biggest union representation – blue collar workers – in the U.S. at the time.

“Then a man came on TV. He had a mustache. He would be smoking a cigarette and he would sign off, ‘And that’s the way it is’. Anybody know who I’m talking about?” Well, we (the group) all did and pretty much in unison said, “Walter Cronkite.”

“Yep. And Walter Cronkite gave a report that Chattanooga was the dirtiest (pollution-wise) city in America. Before we knew it, the EPA was established, the Clean Air Act, and they came in here and they shut all of those factories down.

“I’m not kidding when I say it became a ghost town. You could come in here (downtown) and sleep in the street from Monday to Sunday and not have to worry about getting run over by a car. It was dead.”

Then it was resurrected. If you read online you’ll come across things like “Vision 2000,” which local leaders and citizens launched to raise millions in private and public funds, but that’s not what he said.

You would have thought Lookout Mountain, and he did have a lot to say about it, but that wasn’t the answer he gave. “It was the aquarium. The aquarium saved this city.” He went on to give a detailed account of how the money was raised, how he believed it to be true, et cetera.

Today, as you know if you’ve been there, Chattanooga bustles with activity, shops, entertainment, food. (Oh, my word! You have got to go to Monty and have their flatbread and Brussel sprouts!) 

So, if you’re looking for a vacation trip, here’s one I would highly recommend. And while you’re there: Try the DUKW.