Sunday, October 17, 1999
Mark Twain Cincinnati
BY PETER BRONSON
The Cincinnati Enquirer
A riverboat in a hurry churns up a furious froth of water, like an outboard motor in a bathtub. Clouds of smoke and steam billow over wedding-cake layers of icing-white decks. Colorful flags flap from railings carved like lace. The gargle of thrashing water is drowned now and then by a hooting whistle or the joyful circus-parade shout of a calliope.
And all that noise and commotion propels the behemoth riverboat through the indifferent, sparkling Ohio River at a stately stroll, slightly faster than a slow jogger.
On Wednesday, the first day of Tall Stacks, I went down to the river and discovered a city I had never seen before: the Mark Twain Cincinnati that has one boot on the riverbank, and the other on a gangplank. It's the one that beckons you up the leafy, winding Licking River and calls you out on the wide Ohio, where dreams ride the steady current to the West. It's the one that conjures daydreams of bobbing along on a lazy raft, winding past an October shoreline painted orange, gold and green.
I couldn't find a Huck Finn raft. So I stole an hour or two cruising through the river traffic aboard Capt. Jack Hern's 33-foot Maxum (500 HP bottled in twin V-8s and more room “downstairs” than my college dorm room).
Jack Hern is just one of the thousands of reasons Tall Stacks and Cincinnati are a perfect match. "The neat thing about this event is 10,000 volunteers who work for nothing but a T-shirt,” he said. “People ask, "How can you spend five days out there?' I tell them, "You haven't been out with me for an hour or you'd know.”' He's right.
Mr. Hern donates boats from Hern Marine and five days of his time to play traffic cop on the crowded river, lining up the riverboat parade and offering rides to people who want to see what Tall Stacks looks like from the water.
It's an awesome sight.
The river is miles wider, the city is more beautiful, the skyline reaches into the clouds and the riverboats loom like floating plantations. The easygoing peace of floating on the river stretches smiles from shore to crowded shore, past the mom-and—kids waiting for boat rides, all the way up the cobblestone landing to the movie-lot storefronts at the Tall Stacks entrance.
But the smiles fade at the concrete gulch between the river and downtown.
Mark Twain quipped that he once paid someone $25 to dig up his family tree — then had to pay another $50 to bury it again. That's what Cincinnati has done to its river heritage — we dug up our history on the riverbank, then buried it under acres of colorless cement. The soul of the city was paved over for stadium parking.
And now there's a risk we're going to do it again.
There's a plan called “The Banks,” to build housing and nightlife on the river, so that the new stadiums aren't marooned like islands in asphalt. But county leaders are afraid they will get stuck with the bill. And the city resembles the derelict little boat it owns under the Suspension Bridge — “Attaboy.”
“They couldn't even spare a few gallons of paint to clean it up,” said volunteers on Jack's boat, who painted the city's boat for Tall Stacks.
“The city this time has not been very supportive as it has been in the past,” said Tall Stacks Commissioner Robert Alexander. “We had much closer relationships with the city, but it has degraded in the recent events.”
Typical. A million people coming to the river — and City Hall can't clean up one little boat or cooperate with volunteers who are working for a T-shirt to organize one of Cincinnati's most popular events.
Now it's time to build a better riverfront, and city council is still rowing a leaky boat in nine different directions.
The river queens that came back to town for Tall Stacks this week are usually described as symbols of the past. But they are more than that.
They are the living, smoke-breathing spirit of our town. Dignified. Ornate. Carefully painted and painstakingly preserved. Loaded to the waterline with history and tradition.
They're so slow their races could be timed with a sun dial. While the rest of the world rushes past at the speed of fax, the Spirit of Cincinnati ambles, stuck in a time when horsepower was measured by real horses.
Out of fashion, maybe. But never out of style.
Maybe we can learn something from the Tall Stacks boats about returning to our riverfront history. It doesn't matter if we make noise and churn up smoke and waves — as long as we arrive first-class.
Peter Bronson is editorial page editor of The Enquirer. If you have questions or comments, call 768-8301, or write to 312 Elm Street, Cincinnati, Ohio 45202.
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